Fight or Flight?

Fight. Scream. Cry. Numb.

Flight. Take off. Runway. Departure.

Maya just took one to run away from the other.

Airports create the perfect atmosphere to escape.

Exactly what she needed to walk away from the war that has been brewing in her personal space for the last couple of months.

She was the epitome of perfection with her salon-blowdried hair, manicured nails and the matching ochre pantsuit. Her personalised name tag hanging against the Pinterest-inspired stickers on the cabin luggage showed off her adventurous side. A contradiction of sorts, her professional persona clashing with her personal values. A no-nonsense businesswoman with a wild streak, privy only to a private audience.

Then, there was the vulnerable side- one that had been undiscovered for years. To the point that she began to even question whether she had one.

Nothing would move her, she sometimes felt like a robot, mechanical in her approach to things and she realised that she was quite happy in this protected state of life. It came out of nowhere and suddenly, she transformed into someone who wore her heart on her sleeve.

The heady adrenalin rush was a high that she had never experienced ever and it didn’t take her very long to open the gateway to the very core of her.

The moment was etched in her soul. The moment she knew she had been changed forever.

As the first rays of the morning lit her face up, she realised that she has fallen, truly, madly and deeply in love with herself and this man who completed the broken pieces of her. He felt like her twin soul, an extension of each other The connection was instant. A mirror image of each other, echoing the same ideals, values and dreams.

Little did she know then, the same piercing gaze that she fell in love with, would rip through her heart and shatter it into a million pieces. Shards that would hurt everyone in her path, creating a bloodbath of sorts. It is ironic, all the things she was once deeply attracted to, now annoy the living daylights out of her. The space that he gave her in the early days, which she considered as a breath of fresh air in a world where you constantly have someone breathing down your neck. The same space was now as long as the Great Wall of China between them. Like the forced space she has put between them now with the unnecessary work trip she took on to get some perspective on where they were heading.

It’s silly, but all she craved for was for him to ask her, “How was your day?”

The turbulence in the flight breaks her reverie and brings her back to the present. It reminds her of mindfulness exercises she practices- live in the now and focus on the present. The man sitting ahead of her can’t stop yakking. Israel, the Dead Sea, the local bazaar, 1000 pics of the bazaar and the reenactment of local tour guides’ opening speech. Mornings are sacred for Maya. She has her rituals and he is disrespecting the sanctity of the morning. Maybe she is being too harsh on the man. Maybe she is being too harsh on the people in her life. She is probably being too harsh on herself, that where is stems from. She has always upheld herself to the highest standards which eventually trickles down to every element of her life.

The pilot announces that they are ready to land. Is she ready, though?

From the zoomed out view that she has right now, 50,000 ft. up in the air, everything seems so small and unimportant.

The petty arguments, the ego tussles, the ‘me time vs. us time’ conundrum. They would probably figure it out. Or not. She would be okay, either way. It didn’t depend on this relationship thriving, what mattered was her happiness and peace of mind. She had to filter out the crap and focus on the larger landscape. Like she tuned out the loud man and focused on the sweeping view from the tiny window. It’s all about perspective.

Fight or flight? Fight for your flight of fantasy.