Disappearance

By Tamika Whitenack

I am standing at a charging station in the JetBlue terminal of JFK. I have been in the terminal since a little after 12 noon, and my flight doesn't begin boarding until 3:10. I took a nice stroll down all of the gates of the terminal and discovered a nice outdoor space. I feel very much like my father's daughter because I am trying to minimize seated time as much as possible. My plan is to write this post (standing) and then perhaps go do some yoga in the corner (or maybe in the kid's play area, that sounds like a good idea!).

It is a bit surreal to me that I am finally leaving, and also that I have been living in New York the past four months? I am trying to process it, but I am also mainly just so, so happy to finally be going home.

Yesterday was long, but not terribly so. My friend’s uncle generously offered to take the two of us out to breakfast before our Psych final, so that was a nice way to start the morning. I then went on a last run on the farm. I really enjoy running in this snowy aesthetic, it makes me feel like a woodland creature. I spent the two hours before my psych final doing last minute review and also laundry! The final itself went okay, I think. It only took an hour, which was nice. After that, I headed to Skinner for a last flute and piano session and to get all my music stuff to take home. The rest of the afternoon was spent packing, eating a last dinner at the dining hall (which was so dead, it was eerie), and having a little private dance party in my room. I then decided that having a dance party was probably not a good way to prep for actually getting sleep, so I read in bed for a bit in an attempt to calm myself down. This helped a little bit, but I still had difficulty sleeping. The past few nights are probably the closest I’ve gotten to the night-before-Christmas feel of my childhood, but I think that going home is probably better than any present I ever received.

In case anyone else suffers from insomnia (excitement-induced or otherwise), here are some things that I’ve been using in an attempt to fall asleep.

-visualizing yoga routines

-body mindfulness, starting at my toes and working up

-shivasana + breathing

-stuffing my head in the crack between the wall and the edge of the bed

-fetal position

-making my mind fuzzy

-cupcake decorating visualization

Since I don’t plan to post over Winter Break, I feel like I should end this last post of 2017 in some meaningful way to sum up the semester. I was originally planning to share a list of things that I’ve learned, but that would be a very long list and I’m not in the mood for that right now. Instead I’ll pose a question that came to me while I was trying to sleep last night:

What would be your preferred method of mystical disappearance?

-I envision mystical disappearance as a person standing in the woods and then deciding it’s time to go and somehow their body will vanish. I think my preferred method would be to explode into a mosaic of rainbow colored (but not traditional rainbow, like deep metallic colors) shards and float away into the wind. I also think that radiating light from my heart that eventually consumes my whole body could be cool. Other options I thought of were gently fading away, crumbling into sparkly dust, or shrinking into the ground. However, there are countless other options free to your imagination, so please let me know what you would do! As a side note, I feel like these things sound a little bit like death but that is not what I had in mind at all, I was thinking more like magical teleportation, since we can’t all come and go by bubble.

I suppose I’ll sign off now. I think I’ll miss writing over winter break, as I’ve really enjoyed this blog as a creative outlet, a way to process my life, and a way to have fun with words. Words are great! I’ll end the post with a nice quote shared by my boss at the ALANA center. It reminded me of several of my blog post titles:

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” ~ Thich Naht Hanh