Once you taste the honey-sweet tang of pure, unadulterated control, you will desire for nothing else.
“Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is November – Delta – five – one – two going down at 40.3 North, -73.4 West. I repeat Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is November – Delta – five – one – two going down at 40.3 North, -73.4 West.” As the words exit my mouth I reach for the transponder and squawk emergency 7700. But the plane is losing altitude. The open ocean gets closer and closer. In a brief moment, I find beauty in the glasslike appearance of the water as it reflects the stars with no moon to be seen. I brace for impact as I glide down.
The water erupts all around me like a volcano. I feel the aircraft flipping tail over nose in the pitch-black water. My training tells me to find a handhold — I can’t drift — I won’t know where I am inside my aircraft. ‘Damn, I shouldn’t have worn these winter coats,’ I think to myself as I pushed to open the door once the aircraft was fully submerged. God, it’s so cold, even bundled in layers of jackets. I attempt to swim out of the plane as it slowly dives deeper into the abyss. There’s no use trying to keep my head above the waterline inside the plane, so I take one last deep breath and kick myself out—my clothes, all the while, weighing me down. The jackets, that are supposed to keep me warm in the freezing gusts of winter, do nothing but drag me down as they waterlog. Any control I had, slipped just out of reach, then completely fizzled away. I release my handhold, hardly realizing my mistake as I kick with all of my power, just enough to make some sort of headway towards the surface. The night sky stains the water a dark, inky blue, giving me no sense of direction, no telling which way is the surface. I begin to realize that there is no escape from this icy grave. Once I accept it, I tell myself, the easier it will be to give in, to find rest. My legs stopped kicking, the jackets that I had clung onto pulled me deeper. I can’t see now, and I only feel the burning as I take in a breath of seawater, and close my eyes…
…Opening them to the clear blue sky, and snow on the ground. I roll over in bed, feeling a gust of the chilled air from the crack in my window I had slightly opened the night before. I’m back at school, not in an aircraft. But, the lesson in that dream holds true. The coats we wear keep out the cold, just as the layers don’t keep us from getting hurt and maintain our sense of control. But, in some situations, all those coats do is drag you down, and all those layers do is keep you from letting someone in. So, if you find yourself going into the inky black water, shed all of your coats, they will only weigh you down. And if you find yourself fortifying your layers, even against the people who love you, well, let me know what to do.
Mind of a Freshman is an Opinion column written by one or two first-year Stevens students to discuss life experiences during their time at Stevens, and other related subject matter.
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