Page 16 of It's Not PMS, It's You

Was this where the lonely people hung out in the airport?

Was I still trying to process what had just happened to all of us on the plane?

Maybe the near-death experience had affected me somehow.

I saw my carryon come around and then watched it go right by.

What am I doing?

Something was off.

I felt odd.

I wasn’t even sure why I approached the woman or why I was still standing next to her. I usually kept to myself when I was in public, to avoid distractions and to stay on schedule, unless someone was pissing me off, of course. Then, I always found time to tell them what was on my mind. That was different though because nobody should get away with being an idiot.

The woman turned to me. “Life is like a box of chocolates.”

I smiled, thinking it was cute she was quoting something fromForrest Gump. I loved that movie because there were many hidden messages that I didn’t get until the second and third time that I had watched it.

I decided to play along. “You never know what you’re going to get.”

She shrugged. “Or maybe wedoknow what we’re going to get and that’s why we keep doing the same thing over and over again.”

I nodded. “Consistency is a good thing.”

“Consistency is the quality of a stagnant mind.”

“Is that also fromForrest Gump?” I didn’t remember that quote from the movie.

She shook her head again. “John French Sloan.”

I had never heard of John French Sloan, but I was curious about something. “So . . . why don’t you want your suitcase?”

“Everyone grabs their suitcase the moment they see it, like their lives depended on it. If they can’t get it the first time, they huff and puff, disappointed, as if it was the biggest inconvenience in the world to wait one more minute for it to come back around. I used to be like that, I admit. I wanted to see what would happen if I let my suitcase go around again, on purpose. I wanted to see how I would feel.”

I had no idea what she was getting at or if the woman was crazy.

I thought about it for a few moments and finally asked, “And? How do you feel now that you had a chance to grab your suitcase, but didn’t?”

She nodded. “It’s quite liberating, I have to tell you. To see everyone rushing back and forth while I myself amcompletelyrelaxed, not having a care in the world. No hurries. No worries. I quite like it.” She pointed to her suitcase coming by again on the baggage conveyor belt. “Here it comes againandthere it goes! I think I’ll let it go around a few more times. This is fun. Not a care in the world!”

The blank look on her face said otherwise.

I was tempted to ask her if the reason she thought she didn’t have a care in the world was because she had nobody in her life. Because it would seem to me that if you had people in your life that you cared about, you would havemanycares in the world.

Was it really possible that I would end up like this woman for keeping myself isolated from relationships? Alone and convinced that it was liberating to not care about anything?

I wanted to care about something.

I wanted to care aboutsomeone.

I hadn’t been honest with myself or Dee about this, but it was the truth.

Which got me thinking about how many cares in the world Ididactually have, if I wasn’t including my career.

It didn’t take long to figure it out.

I basically had three people in my life that I cared about: Dee, my mom, my dad.