We’ve all been there- the home stretch of an eternal flight. Maybe it was crazy bumpy, a baby is yowling, someone is watching an action-movie sans headphones- I get it. Flying can be and often is a nightmare.

So, it can be really tempting to leap from your seat at the first sign that the ordeal is about to end. You want nothing more than to be free, to breathe the stale scent of the airport, the musk of the moldy carpet installed without a thought to how it would impact suitcase wheel momentum.

You want to remember the person you were before your ungodly ascent to the clouds- the person who could laugh, could cry, could eat a $20 cheesesteak in that PHL bar.

That’ll be $45, love, the PHL airport

The moment was there. The wheels kissed the ground. The plane lurched violently forward the way it always does and for that spilt second you wonder if you’re about to die. After what you’ve suffered, you’d almost welcome it.

But then it stops, and the endless taxi to freedom begins. I know you want to fling open the bin, headless of the flight attendant’s droning on about seatbelts and staying put.

You yearn to grip your suitcase as tightly as your newfound lust for life is gripping you; soon you shall be free to wander to baggage claim, and claim you will…reclaim your will to live.

But what if I told you…I didn’t immediately stand up when the plane landed. I stayed in my seat. And my head didn’t explode.

Oh I wanted to. I tried to. But I was in a window seat, and the slovenly slow-moving humans beside me were clearly in no state of urgency. They had become docile, broken…they belonged to plane now.

Things that didn’t befall me when I didn’t immediately stand up.

But, turns out, as I anxiously perched on the edge of my tiny seat, I did not, in fact, bust into flames.

A plague did not befall.

My family did not fall victim to an irreversible blood curse placed upon us by puritanical ghosts.

We were not shoved roughly into the bins under which we waited.

We were…fine.

We deplaned.

All was normal and well.

As I write this, clutching my son’s overpacked duffel bag, making peace with the fact that we’ll never find our car again, it strikes me…

I was made to sit upon landing…yet I survived.