Carry-On Baggage
By Erin Deborah Waks
‘What’s in your carry-on, madam?’ the security guard asked me at Luton airport on Friday morning, inquiring as to the contents of my handbag.
‘Oh, you know. Passport, purse, phone, keys. Clothes for the weekend. Toiletries. Several books,’ I retorted, impatient as I eyed the nearby Starbucks.
What was in my bag, precisely, though? What was it I was carrying around on my shoulder, lugging across London and then all the way down to Portugal for the weekend?
All the essentials: my increasingly useless UK passport, my purse filled to the brim with loyalty cards for various coffee shops and bakeries across the capital, the keys to my flat with a keyring engraved by my best friend, my old and yet perfectly functional-thank-you-very-much iPhone.
Cute matching pyjamas, even cuter matching workout set, and the cutest of all matching underwear (duh, have you met type-A, organised me?). An assortment of thrifted tops from Free People, Mango and my mum’s wardrobe. Silver hoop earrings and my trusty Adidas Sambas.
A pink toiletry bag, filled with must-haves only, of course: Charlotte Tilbury mascara, several pink lip glosses, skincare and red lipstick.
Three books, naturally; one for the plane ride there, one for the trip itself and one for the journey home.
A notebook, filled to the brim with musings about anything and everything. Filled with memories of my year, both good and bad and yet all equally fundamental to the person I’ve become.
And slightly more weight on my back, in the form of the emotional baggage I seem to have gained in the form of my first real heartbreak. A worry that I’ll never fall in love again. A hope, stronger than that worry, that I will. A knowledge that I have far more strength, resilience and power than I thought. A tiredness and need for peace I haven’t known before, the type that comes from adulting hard. A growing love for my friends. Even more love for my family. Genuine friendship with my brothers, who were never old enough to be considered as such - until now. A newfound understanding of what boundaries are.
And, the greatest thing in my carry-on baggage: just a little bit more certainty in the knowledge of who I am.
