Pilot

Maybe Einstein was onto something. 

It was insane to try the same thing over and over expecting better results. Yet there she was, year in and out, resolving to become genuinely happier. To be able to look in the mirror and not completely hate herself. To say, hey, that girl is someone worth knowing.

For years it was in vain. Her parents held her soul in a box, taped closed with a shipping label to Depression. There it'd sit until January, taking a plane ticket funded off ignorant optimism, back to some sort of neutral land of existence. There it'd make travel plans to Happy, only to be cancelled by the clouds blocking the pilot's view.

She moved out, made stupid mistakes. Failed to find a better pilot. They'd try, and she'd hijack her own plane, burdened by the anxieties implanted by her old pilot. There had to be a better pilot.

Maybe the pilot wasn't the issue. After all, she was the one planning the flight. There was food, and in flight entertainment. New, exciting things, bound to make her happy. Yet there she was, strapped into her seat, waiting for the plane to crash. 

Somehow when it did, it'd always land back in Depression, with her still buckled in. 

This year she hung her calendar, pen in hand to make plans. She scribbled down concerts and restaurant dates and shouted at her neighbors to shut the heck up, because nothing was going to rain on her parade. It was January, and the forecast called for sun.

Then reality hit. Someone had gotten a deadly case of cooties, and the world started to deteriorate before her eyes. All those plans, pen through the dates. The world was shut down.

Flight to Happy, delayed, with her waiting in the lobby.

This year she was going to stick it out.

Digging out her notebook from her knapsack, she reread her work. It'd been a project of hers from the year prior, always tucked away in favor of adventures. Ones that were supposed to keep her distracted from her demons. 

She took her pen and wrote. Pages and pages of nurturing an alter ego as she crafted a new life, and finished. 

In a way, she envied the character, watching her grow into someone worth knowing. That was all she had wanted for years, stuck in this loop. Yet all she had done all year was survive the brutality of a retail job and nowhere to escape to.

Days passed without any sight of sunshine on the horizon. She'd come home deflated, lay on the floor and ask when it would open up and swallow her whole. She could only take so much verbal abuse, getting packed back into those boxes that she thought had been shoved into the bottom of the dumpster this year.

Maybe the tape was weakening.

Maybe she was getting stronger. She'd claw at the tape, trying to break free. This year she'd make her flight.

The tape tore from above.

She wasn't the only one trying to get her out of the box this year.

They'd hug, and she'd walk back home, her little lightning legs carrying her back to sanity. Fifteen hundred miles walked that year. The Proclaimers had gone 500 miles, twice. Vanessa Carlton doubled down on the holy 1,000. Anything to get to that land of Happy.

What would going over that budget of steps do?

Headphones on, quite a lot. 

There was some sort of therapy to belting out behind the guise of a mask, watching squirrels play tag as she passed through the park. Sure, museum art was beautiful. But so was that tree, and she didn't have to empty her wallet to go see it. She could replenish her dwindling spirit for free, with an ever evolving feast for her eyes. Those squirrels had quit their game to enjoy a discarded bagel, smiling as she trudged by.

The summer sun was hot on her skin, an ever growing ponytail collecting sweat. The hairdressers were all closed, and she had half a mind to chop it off.

The other half of her mind had convinced her that some small child she'd never meet needed a wig, because she wasn't the only one trying to board this flight to Happy. A little minor suffering to pay for someone else's ticket? Why the heck not? 

She cried when the scissors broke her ponytail. She felt foolish, getting attached to something as silly as hair. Standing in front of the mirror, she took in her tight legs and short hair.

It wasn't terrible.

Lifting her shirt, she turned to her side and looked at her profile. That bowl of ice cream hadn't gone straight to her gut. She'd spent so many nights on that stupid floor, worried that each bite would tighten and expand. 

Tighter go the pants. The stomach was going to expand out like a balloon. That's what her brain had said for years, ticking like a scratched record. And sure, her brain was still ticking, but she was getting better at picking up the needle and skipping to the next song.

She'd learned that trick a few months prior. Her supposed best friend had ghosted her, right in front of her face. It should have made her world collapse. People had left before, and she had holes in her heart to prove it.

She cried, tried to make sense of it.

No luck.

Yet somehow, by losing one person, she realized how many more she had. Ones that had waited in the shadows for their turn. She could make time for everybody, for people that genuinely cared past their own personal agenda.

This was new. 

Was she, dare she think it, someone worth getting to know? 

Here she was, bumbling through a wasteland, and people were smiling behind their masks, happy to cheer her on. Her flight may have been cancelled, but she was going to make it on foot. Eventually.

She'd take breaks to make quarantine buddies for pantry boxes (because unlike her lucky self, not everyone had someone to survive the year with) and nurture another life (this time a real one, in the shape of the cutest bunny to ever live), but she would keep moving forward.

The sun would find her eventually.

Blinking her eyes open, she found herself strapped back in her seat, with a voice sounding out over the intercom.

"Hello everybody, this is your captain speaking. We are now descending into Content where we will be staying until the next flight. Please remain seated until then, and a happy 2021 to you."

She recognized that voice.

That was her voice.

She had become her own pilot. 

She had become genuinely happier.

She had become someone worth knowing.

You win, Einstein.