Sleeping On Planes

“I love places that make you realize how tiny you and your problems are.”

-unknown

All five feet, nine inches of me is crammed into a plane somewhere over the pacific on my way to Australia. A younger me used to be able to tolerate the tight quarters of the plane, running off the adrenaline of going somewhere. Somehow I would even manage to sleep. I used to take pride in being *travel savvy,* today however, I am at odds with this perception of myself.

The only way I have figured out how to sleep on a plane is to cram as many things into my carry on bag as possible and then rest it on the tray table where I can lean into it in a cute little triangle. This ONLY works if the person in front of me doesn’t recline their seat. Naturally, on today’s flight, the woman in front of me has gone full tilt, leaving me with no option other than to rest my head on the top of her seat. I feel strangely close to her and hope that she doesn’t snore.

Mid-flight I hear the rustle of the flight attendants, but I’ve managed an almost half-asleep, so I decide to stay in place. The woman in front of me tilts her seat up and I can finally fully wedge my torso between the back of her seat and my seat. The flight attendant almost tries to wake me, to my dismay, but with ‘Hot chocolate and ice cream?,’ to which I almost rise and then decide to continue to ‘sleep.’

What happens next is something I am equally embarrassed to admit for myself and for the woman in front of me. I am awoken by a seat reclining directly on my head. Given the fact that my torso is quite literally wedged butt to head, seat to back of her seat, I don’t need to push back because my spinal column does it for me. I assume she will look back, see someone sleeping and settle in for not reclining her chair. I was sorely mistaken as she continues to try to recline her seat! This time I refuse to budge, using my head as the stronghold, and after four more (yes four) attempts on her part, with no words exchanged, she settles in defeat.

I am immediately flooded with waves of embarrassment, following my brief moment of victory. I start running through all of the reasons this woman must hate me now, and how she won’t sleep, and how it will be my fault, and how awful it will be to make eye contact when we are waiting to get off the plane. I don’t have time to entertain these thoughts though, because at the moment, I have the tray table and a brief moment of full spinal extension for sleep.

If you had told me that I would be the curmudgeony, space-mongering, woman on a plane ten years ago, I would have laughed. I used to pride myself in being easy going. Able to curl up in a tiny ball and make-it-work. I still have elements of this, being me after all, yet apparently I have a moral code-of-conduct for how to exist as a traveller that I have been operating on.

The truth is that I envy the people who can unabashedly, fully recline their seats, knowing full well that they are invading the space of the person behind them. I have gone to many years of therapy to learn how to take up more space. I have practiced in many uncomfortable ways, how to feel comfortable in my own skin, and trust that I belong in each space. Planes however, do not feel like the time to exert this practice.

Planes are a unique social experiment where we are forced to look out for each other, and suffer silently together within the confinements of our tiny little seats. The most amusing part of this internal dialogue is that from the outside, I look like a carefree backpacking, vagabond. I don a bright yellow sweater, and corduroy hat, with baggy jeans and doc martins. Nothing about me screams ‘please don’t come into my space,’ aside from my head on the back of the woman in front of me’s chair.

If this flight is any indication of how this trip will go, I am ready to be amused. I am ready to share my mostly-optimistic-but-kind-of-cynical view of the world, and to write about the quandary of nothings that make up my life. I am ready to take up some space, as you will, ironically this post from the plane.

Thank you for being here with me. I would never recline my seat on you.