Transcontinental

If you’ve never taken a long flight before, I can assure that you cannot imagine the misery that this entails. I left Baltimore at 10:30 on a Sunday morning and arrived in Suzhou more than twenty-four hours later by way of New York, Seoul, and Shanghai. The long stretch was between New York and Seoul—more than fourteen hours with my long legs cramped in economy class. For the first seven hours, I was able to read without too much discomfort. It’s the last half of this stretch that got to me and led me at the twelfth hour to pound on the emergency exit and beg the pretty Korean Air flight attendants with their matching hair pins to kick me into the clouds.

However, in retrospect, I can see an unexpected benefit. I departed feeling melancholy at the thought of leaving everything familiar behind for so long. As the flight dragged on, physical discomfort drove out the psychological pain. Emotions become a luxury to discard when the body begs for reprieve. I arrived at last in China thankful to have my feet on the ground and would, in fact, have been happy to land in hell. I have never like taking medication, so the first thing I did upon arriving was to toss my antidepressants into the wind. If any problems of this sort arise while I’m here, I’ll just book another long flight