Another Goodbye

My tongue surfed over the kettle corn chip’s crevasses as I sucked the salt and flavor off of each piece before I finished chewing. I that the process down to a science: take a chip out of the small red bag between pointer and middle finger, take a bite of one corner, suck and savor the flavor, finish bite and repeat for the rest of the chip before moving onto the next.  A very professional and thorough scientific method if I ever heard one.  I focused intently on my step by step process for a very melancholy and cheesy, typical-cliche- girl- out of movie- reason: I did not want to cry on this plane.  I had a developed a tendency -I say tendency because it only happens more often than not- to cry on planes.  It’s terribly cliche in a partially hate myself/ but love myself too for doing so type of way.  

       

But now was not the time to do so.  I was seated in the very back row of the plane, meaning we were very prone to be passed by stewardesses and passengers standing in line for the crawl space of a bathroom.  Additionally I was seated in between my two very loving, caring, and doting parents, whom I adored in a way that I did not have a single desire to cause them an ounce of worry or additional attention.  I was not going to cry this flight.  This proved more difficult than I thought it would be.  See, the feeling coming to me, making me cry, it wasn’t that twisty pit in your stomach, or even the very literal feeling of your heartache.  The feeling came in a very real, very tangible way, very quickly, and straight to the area behind my eyes springing tears forward to fill my eyes, followed by my head thickly clouding over with the dreadful thought of my reason for crying.  

        

He was gone again.  He came, we laughed, experienced more amazing places and things, endured our crazy parents together, and then with a snap of week trip, he was gone.  I am biting my cheek now just thinking of it- yes that’s right, I am not longer at the stage of swallowing or choking back my tears, I am biting myself to avoid them at all and every cost.

       

I don’t know exactly when my brother became so important to me.  I don’t know when I started despising and grieving his every goodbye.  But here I was, trying to accept facts that I couldn't change.  My dad always tells me not to worry about things that I can't control, just control what I can control.  But this isn't worrying, so much as mourning.  I wonder what my dad would say about that.  

J

(Written July, 2018)