Seeing Things From a New Perspective or I Didn't Realize How Shitty New Jersey Is Until I Saw it From a Plane

For some reason, before my mom and I got on the plane to California a week ago, I developed a very sudden, extreme, irrational fear of flying; I was seriously almost hyperventilating before we took off. I snapped out of it once we had been in the air for a while without crashing, and all my anxiety was immediately replaced by how amazing the view from an airplane really is. As we were passing over some Midwestern states I thought "Heh. I'm gonna be somewhere out there pretty soon" before I was promptly distracted by the cellophane-encased airline cheeseburger that was slapped on my tray by the flight attendant. I didn't think too much about the road trip for the rest of the week, what with the Californian activities and off-kilter sleep schedule (I bought shirts for under a dollar at thrift stores, ate really good sushi, visited Hollywood Blvd, and was sleepy by 9 pm).

It was on the way back that the whole thing really hit me. The plane was descending and from my window seat I had a perfect view of New York City and the area surrounding the Newark Airport (whoop-de-fucking-doo, I know). As I repeatedly jabbed my finger against the window and yelled at my mom the exact location of the Statue of Liberty, which she was having trouble seeing, I noticed a line of train tracks leading into the city. I jokingly said to myself, I wonder if I've been on those tracks before. They reminded me of the Brooklyn trip, even though they probably weren't the same tracks. Then I realized that my mom was sitting right next to me and if at that split second she had suddenly been granted the power to read my mind, I would have a shitload of explaining to do. And then it hit me.

I remembered the freedom and independence and goddamn fucking irreverence that I felt when I got on that train to Brooklyn. (I know that doing something your parents would undoubtedly stop you from doing isn't as big a deal for Katie because, hell, her parents let her do stuff.) But I remembered that feeling and in my head I jumped up and down and grabbed my shoulders and shook myself and screamed in my face "THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO DO! You're going to go somewhere you've never been and do something you've never done! You're going to DO SOMETHING."

We've been planning for this since almost the beginning of senior year. And in 3 days, we're actually doing it: blazing into the unknown roads of the West, the unforgiving summer heat, and straight into frantic oblivion. Safety. Obscurity. Just another freak in the freak kingdom.