airports and airplanes all day

I really miss pre-pandemic travel!

My alarm jolted me awake at 4:20am this morning. I’m traveling to Tennessee today to visit with new-ish and old friends. I’m so excited for the connection and nourishment with my people that I’m in desperate need of at the moment. I’m in Charlotte, NC on my layover as I write this (most of it anyway, the beginnings of it were scribbled in my notes app on the plane from Minneapolis). I’m exhausted and anxious, and writing to distract myself. And this newsletter is “overdue” in that the full moon/lunar eclipse was a week ago. But yesterday was the first day of Libra season and the Autumn Equinox, so today is as good a day as any to send this to you. You can always count on the celestial bodies to be up to something, facilitating my desire for astrological congruities, even, just for fun. 

I used to love airports. Strolling through security to my gate, and onto the jetway, filled me with whimsy and a sense of adventure. People watching enthralled me, warmed by the thought that everyone I saw was on their way somewhere, imagining strangers’ stories in my mind’s eye. Often I found myself lost in the fantasy of it all. 

Air travel was familiar to me from a very young age: from moving to Ethiopia and back in my pre-school age years; traveling to Honduras with my Grammy when I was 10, with my aunt when I was 16, and then again on my own when I was 17; traveling to Puerto Rico on my own at 15. Then of course studying abroad in Chile, a post-grad trip to Peru, and countless flights across the US mixed in. Into my teenage years, when I began to travel solo, it gave me a sense of freedom and independence I hadn’t tasted anywhere else.

I cherished the adult feeling of navigating an airport, feeling competent and capable, and wondering if anyone was noticing me, imagining my story, the way I noticed the strangers around me. Airports buzzed with possibility and romance, and I ate that shit it up. I even have a playlist dedicated to the specific vibe of walking through an airport (the title of which is the same as this newsletter’s title), and I’m a sucker for a romcom airport chase scene. 

Now, airports are a place where I most acutely feel my disability: all the standing, walking, lifting, and then cramped prolonged sitting. More lifting, standing, walking. Ouch. Since 2020 there’s also the public health nightmare of air travel adding to my anxiety. The knowledte that the risk of a COVID infection is high, and even for all the layers of protection I practice…it really might be all for not when most of the people around me are taking no precautions, and some are even traveling while sick, some even knowingly positive for COVID and fine with recklessly endangering their fellow travelers. 

At the onset of the pandemic I actually felt much safer in airports than I do now. I traveled to Chicago in June of 2020, to Alaska in July of 2020. In the fall of 2020 I cancelled a vacation to Mexico and an investigational journalism trip to Guatemala, because the ethicality of international travel while a pandemic raged on, pre-vaccines, weighed too heavy for me to justify the travel. On my trips to Chicago and Alaska however, I was able to maintain some whimsy and possibility, because there were still federal mask mandates and I derived some sense of safety from that collective act of protection. This of course, was at a time when the shape of my chronic illness was still beginning to form. I wasn’t including the risk of a COVID infection further disabling me in my risk assessment. Lockdown had just ended and I was desperate to see my long distance besties, and for the most part, my body was still chugging along. 

In Decemebr of 2021 my partner and I went to Costa Rica to celebrate our first anniversary. The fact that vaccines were widely available altered my ethics on international travel, so we masked in the airports, airplanes and everywhere we went, including in rideshares, and spent most of our trip outdoors, and we enjoyed our vacation! I saw lots of sloths in the wild for the first time and to this day it’s a highlight of my life. 🦥

This is all to say in different eras of the pandemic my risk calculus, sense of safety, and anxiety-level around air travel has changed. Since the very beginning of the pandemic, it’s something I’ve taken seriously, and made the best decisions I could with the information I had at the time, which is all I could expect of any of us. 

The trip I’m on now is probably the most anxious I’ve felt in an airport throughout the entire pandemic. We’re in a surge aka risk of COVID infection is high, and barely anyone is masking. As much as I value maintaining my baseline and protecting my health, I also value travel, especially for the purposes of connection, and I have a lot of long distance besties to see! It’s tough to constantly be put in a position to choose between things I value, and for a while now my physical health is constantly put at odds with in-person connection and relationship.

As I sneak apple slices into my mouth under my mask, I am wistful for a time when an airport and an airplane were the most exciting thing, when travel promised to fill me with inspiration and hope, not fear. As I sit at the most empty gate I could find and hear someone coughing wetly a few rows back, I tense up. Begging the universe or god or whatever power that be to not let me get a COVID infection for the fourth year in a row, now knowing that the virus’ damage is compounded with each additional infection. With my body already functioning suboptimally, I’m terrified of how much another infection would set me back, and of the unknown long term consequences. 

I moved to Minneapolis almost four months ago now (wow!) and as hoped for, it has been a healing balm. The spaciousness, the smaller population, the access to nature, living 10 min from my longgggg time bestie, and so many other delightful little things have made living here the change I needed. Reflecting back on the first half of this year in Chicago, I was miserable. I was in pain, feeling trapped, confused, and lonely. It was hard to go outside, being on the third floor, driving anywhere was overstimulating and stressful, and it rarely felt like I could really exhale.

More than feeling physically limited in where I could spend my time, I was struggling to see a possibility for a future there, for growth, expansion, even healing. I’m so thankful that the change of scenery has helped in the ways I was hoping for. While a lot of the things that were hard for me in Chicago are still hard, namely exisiting in a pained and faitgued body in a capitalist-colonial-patriarchal society, I’m finding room for me here. I’m finding possibility. And I’m scared a fourth COVID infection would rip the progress I’ve made away from me. I don’t know if I’ll have the energy to get back up if I’m knocked down again. It’s already been so hard for so long and I’m beyond tired. 

I don’t know if air travel will ever be the whimsical experience it once was for me again. The world has changed and so has my body. The government abandoned us in the middle of a public heath crisis for the sake of profit (surprise surprise), and pandemic denial, or pandemic indifference, runs rampant. I don’t know if we’ll see mask mandates again. Or if enough people will have access to accurate information about the transmission rates and risks of COVID infection to change their behavior. It truly feels like I’m screaming into a void, begging people to care about themselves and the people around them.

Individualistic approaches to public health, are not only counterintuitive (because public health by nature is a collective issue) but also poisonous. It leaves people dead, disenfranchised, and disabled. It results in lifelong consequences and poor health outcomes that could have been avoided with policies that center collective wellbeing over the continuation of the capitalist death machine. 

Whatever the future holds, and I certainly hope it holds something better than this, I’ll always cherish my pre-chronic illness/pre-pandemic airport escapades. Whether it was just youthful doe-eyedness or not knowing the climate impact of every flight I took, that imaginative, romantic, and adventurous person is inside of me. Adulthood has a way of tainting things that were once so carefree, making every decision a Very Serious one, and leaving little room for silliness and fun in the midst of all the doom and gloom. Even though the doom and gloom is Very Real, I do hope my future holds safer, accessible, and minimal-anxiety travel. There’s so much beauty and wonder out there to behold, so much connection and education available through exploring new places, languages, and cultures, and I don’t want to miss it. I probably won’t be the globetrotter I envisioned I’d be when I was 16, but maybe something new, something truer will take shape. That said, if anyone wants to book me an all-expenses-paid trip to Italy, I would be a JOYFUL recipient. ;) 

with care,

sage

P.S. no recommendations or advice today, because I need to catch my next flight. BUT if you haven’t checked out the collective’s zine To Work a Body, PLEASE do!!! And if you haven’t made any contributions to Operation Olive Branch yet, check it out. Palestinian families still need our solidarity.