I was poised, welcoming passengers, smiling and greeting them, maintaining a pretense so convincing that not a single passenger would have surmised that I was suffering…suffering from the life I had chosen for myself three years ago.
Perhaps the good thing about suffering is that no one can see it.
I like flying. Being a flight attendant has helped me make this suffering bearable. But today, it was intolerable. My brain had stopped responding to positive affirmations. I found myself trapped in a labyrinth, and trying to decipher its wild, labyrinthine complexity was taking more out of me than I could bear.
I stood there with the poised stature of a demure, decorated damsel when I saw her coming.
I didn’t know her, but I had once stalked her Instagram profile. She was the woman I had wanted to become.
I was awestruck and covetous.
My admiration for this divine specimen of humanity was so intense that, for a moment, it forced me to confront every decision I had made that had brought me to this state of mind, to this place I now call depression.
I didn’t speak to her. Instead, I watched every movement she made.
She was slender and strapping, perhaps twenty-six, I surmised. Her model-like figure seemed to turn every head on board. For a fleeting moment, I was jealous.
Not merely of her appearance, but of the life I imagined she had: the international flights, the lifestyle, and the financial ease of being international cabin crew.
She was seated in an XL seat beside the mid-cabin emergency exit, while I was working as an R3.
And somehow, that small distinction felt enormous.
She could afford to travel in an XL seat without hesitation.
I, on the other hand, was an upper-middle-class, perpetually broke damsel, standing there in uniform and smiling as though I had everything under control.
Perhaps that was the strangest part of it all.
We were both cabin crew.
But looking at her, I suddenly felt as though we belonged to entirely different lives.
And in that moment I kept connecting one thought to another…
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