Leaving Home

Walking down the aisle of the plane, I looked at the people around me. Some talked on cell phones, others buried their noses in the binding of a book, and the rest simply sat, waiting to ascend. None of them knew me. None of them knew I was about to leave home. No one knew.
But it was happening anyway. I sat down next to the window, preparing myself to wave goodbye to my home. Eighteen years of laughing and loving with family and friends. I did not know anything else. And now I was going to turn around and walk away, leaving  those past eighteen years to gather dust in my memory.
The plane started and began to move slowly along the runway. The girl sitting a row ahead of me began to make friendly conversation, laughing with the boy next to her. He laughed too. But my mouth didn't move. My entire body was focused on what appeared through that tiny peephole of a window. The plane began to accelerate, gaining momentum as the seconds ticked off the clock. I anxiously waited to enter the weightless world, when the wheels of the aircraft would separate from the hard earth, touching nothing but air. Moving faster and faster, contact with the ground became a thin grip, the wheels barely skimming the runway. It was at this moment that I let go, my grip on the past loosening to embrace the future. It was at this moment that the plane lifted off the ground, and I left home.
Gaining altitude brought an incredible change of perspective. The tiny buildings and antlike cars were all I could see of my home, all I could see of the past. But the endless horizon ahead gave grand hopes of a brilliant future. And as the plane moved closer to that horizon line, a gust of excitement rushed through my mind, blowing away doubts and fears to bring the warm wind of possibilty.