“Liverpool Airport does not make announcements, please check your flight number and gate number”

The intercom buzzed with its announcement that the airport does not make announcements. I had always found this humorous but today it merely irritated me. I had been half-asleep in a plastic lounge chair, trying to forget all that I was leaving. I was only going home to Texas for Easter Break but this trip felt like practice for when I would really be leaving England. The thought left me feeling empty. It hurt even more that no one back home could understand. All my friends had been awaiting my arrival back home but for me it was no happy reunion. I looked around me at the empty airport. I had been forced to spend the night here because of my early morning plane. Airports are the loneliest places in the world and I had been through enough of them this past year to leave a permanent scar. There had been those friends and family who had tried to convince me not to leave and I found myself angry at them as I sat alone in this existence of my own making. Didn’t they understand how hard it was to constantly be leaving? The toll these airports had taken on my spirit couldn’t be measured and yet they were mad at me? I suppose that it’s the same either way. Leaving is as hard as being left. As a tear slid down my cheek I thought of those I would one day be leaving forever with the false promises of another tomorrow. I didn’t want to imagine how this would feel in June when I left Lancaster forever. Maybe I would be getting back to my ‘real life’ and I would be seeing all my friends and family that had missed me these past months. I couldn’t shake the feeling that even after I returned to them I would still have an empty space left by this past year.

I looked up at the computer screen to find my flight was boarding. Realizing that this would be like any relationship that you know must end, I walked away. I walked away from the thoughts that I knew would return in a few months. I walked away because staying would have been a pain I could not bear.