Goodbyes are always sad, but we handled it about as well as we could've. We got up, had a bit more McDonald's, I wound up buying a homeless dude a hot chocolate after he asked for one, and then it was back off to Heathrow. I got a few texts overnight about my flight being canceled and me being transferred to another one, owing to the raging Canadian wildfires, but I discovered upon checking in that I was not headed back to Newark, but to Washington D.C.! For extra hilarity, my mom, and my ride home after I got back, was still asleep, given that 10AM in western Europe is still only 5AM back in Pennsylvania.
Well, obviously, that just wasn't gonna work, and I parlayed my way instead onto a Virgin Airlines flight to JFK. That seemed to work, but of course it was a lot of extra walking to Terminal 3 where Virgin was stationed, and a lot of extra stress figuring out just how I was gonna get to Newark from JFK. Eventually, when my mom got up, we decided that she'd take a train to Penn Station in New York City, I'd get an Uber there (at even greater expense), and we'd take the train back to Newark.
Thankfully, it all went without a hitch. We (just barely) made the next train back home, and it was a major relief seeing my area again after so much uncertainty both ways across the Atlantic.
[joke about me flying home on Virgin here]
Still, let's go back to the goodbyes. It really did start to hit me as I was printing my boarding pass how little I really wanted to leave. Even now, back home and writing this, it finally felt like I was free from the stresses of dating over the Internet, all the yearning, all the helplessness through rough times. It wasn't perfect in person, but we felt complete. Caby and I sat as long as we could in front of the baggage drop, which thankfully was separate from the checking in (which it hadn't been for Air Canada, probably because it was a much smaller airline) and we could share another long, five minute goodbye before I disappeared into security and into the shops and departure areas.
As much as we didn't want to leave each other, though, as much as we were gonna miss each other dearly—we were just glad it happened and that we had the skills and confidence to make next time happen. A lot of that goodbye was spent talking about when we'd decide to reconvene next, because the next time always seems to make the goodbye a little easier. It's not goodbye, it's see you later. That's what we kept telling each other. A little saying picked up from her grandparents, I think.
And so, I went through Heathrow security (once again, amazingly overblown, the Internet makes everything sound so dystopian), and I boarded that new plane, with "Young Folks" by Peter Bjorn and John playing overhead, and took back off towards Pennsylvania.
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Oh, and landed in the aforementioned wildfire smoke. The first thing I saw as we were landing was a Party City. There's a fantastic metaphor somewhere in that.