Anne

When life gives you tragic loss and unbearable pain, all you want is for it to be over.

First, you wish for things to be like one of those normal boring days when absolutely nothing happened. Or at least right back to the last moment everything was all right. Then you remember that you can’t actually turn back time. Second, you wish for the time to rush forward so you can live in the after. But then, this would also be changing time. So third, because you finally realize there is absolutely nothing you can do to change anything, you are forced to recognize the battle that has been raging inside your mind, in your world and face it. And, of course, each time you relive the moment of pain in your head, this cycle restarts. So you probably go through the same horror and heartbreak hundreds of times per minute, because, you know, it takes less than 4 seconds to go from one to three.

All this occurred to me while I stared incredulous at the screen saying my flight had left without me.

The list of reasons why I should start panicking started rolling on my mind like credits. And the list of measures I should start taking, some pretty extreme, fell on my stomach like bad greasy junk food.  But I couldn’t move. It was like one of those moments, where the world becomes blurry and your vision gets unfocused, you can’t blink, let alone move your legs, because you are locked inside your own head, trapped by a million thoughts.

So there I was, standing in the middle of São Paulo’s International Airport in a Friday evening, while hundreds of people that hadn’t lost their flights, well, some could actually have had, rushed by me as I stood frozen to the ground. 

- One month earlier -