The albatross journey

4 - Don't leave me

Sanem

As if in a trance shortly after I find myself following Yigit out of the agency, I feel completely at the mercy of events which I can hardly understand and face, I stupidly accepted to go to Izmir with him, but right now the only thing I want is to hide under the covers in my room and give free rein to all the tears which are pressing to be shed since Can has turned his back on me and left.

All the way to the airport I can't help but think back to all the times we had made great promises to each other. In a flash my mind takes me back to the old abandoned house where I used to take refuge and write when I was a little girl and in which I had hidden a message for my future albatross. I can still hear his voice when he had whispered to me with his mouth - I think we should never leave each other.

That was just one of the hundreds of times he had said we would be together forever and then I see us at the cabin romantically prepared for the most poetic marriage proposal possible and again I seem to hear his words - Until the end of life I don't want my eyes to part from yours and my breath to part from yours, will you marry me? -

How could he after all this come to say, at the first difficulty our relationship encountered, that it is over forever between us?
How could he turn his back on me without hesitation and look forward to a new life without us?

I get out of the taxi at the airport lost in these lucubrations, I can't believe it's possible that it really happened. I drag the trolley following Yigit without realizing what I'm doing, my mind is still on his words "Hoşçakal, goodbye" and on the image of him walking through that door leaving me behind without any hesitation.

I continue to follow Yigit unaware of everything around me, it's the first time I take a plane and right now I should be full of excitement at the mere idea, but I would have liked to live this experience with Can, he promised me he would introduce me to the world and instead he left to explore it without me.

I shake my head unable to accept that this has really happened, that all this is not a terrible nightmare from which I will soon wake up and find him next to me, ready to take me in his arms as he has done a million times before.

After all the check-in procedures, Yigit makes way for me in a large waiting room, he sits on a chair near a huge glass window that divides this area from a neighbouring one, I guess it must be the one reserved for international flights. He signals me to sit next to him, I obey mechanically continuing to be unable to do anything but think about his words - Hoşçakal, goodbye - a whispered goodbye that now screams continuously in my mind.

I wander absently around the room and then through the huge glass window towards the adjacent area where a spot of electric blue colour attracts my attention, I jump up in disbelief. It's him, he's getting up from the small chair he's sitting on and together with Polen he's walking towards the gate, once again I can't see anything but his back as he leaves me.

I walk frantically along the glass window to the extreme point where it ends up joining at an angle with the one overlooking the runways below, I see him hand over his documents and nod in thanks towards the stewardess who indicates to them to proceed with boarding. Polen says something to him and Can turns to her smiling... that's the last image I have of him before he disappears into the moving boarding bridge that will take him from the gate directly onto the plane that I see standing right under the glass window in front of me.

I don't know why, but this fleeting image of him departing manages to shock me in a way I didn't think possible, maybe because I no longer expected to see him again, maybe because I simply have the reality of his departure in front of my eyes along with that woman smiling at her as he used to do with me, maybe because this situation has confronted me with the reality of his final decision to turn his back on me forever.

I put my hand on the window as if I wanted to .... I don't even know, maybe touch him, stop him, ask him to forgive me, ask him not to leave me, to stay by my side and never leave again.

After an interminable time in which I felt like I couldn't even breathe, I see through my tears the mobile boarding dock slowly retreating while the plane carrying my most precious possession, my heart and my whole life, slowly moves to take position on the runway.
I follow between the sobs I am now unable to control its gradual acceleration, when the wheels leave the ground I feel like dying, I realise I can't make it, I can't accept what is happening and I certainly can't leave. I move away from the glass, grab my trolley and with a soft - I can't do it - to Yigit I head in a desperate run towards the exit of the airport looking for a taxi to take me home.

In a corner of my mind I regret for having created discomfort in Yigit's plans but there is nothing I can do at this moment but go back home and try to face the reality that from now on I will have to face, there is no more us, I will probably never see him again, I will have to find a way to continue living an existence that I don't know if it will ever be worth living again.

An existence without him...