I tucked both of my legs beneath me, criss-cross, and wrapped my gray hooded sweatshirt tightly across my chest. I felt the cold metal of my zipper graze against my collarbone. Leaning back slightly, I nestled into the black linoleum seat in gate 34 at the Amsterdam Airport. In my lap sat a leather-bound journal I planned to write in and a book a friend had lent to me for my flight to Turkey. He told me it was his favorite novel.

The faint noise of wheels from the rolling suitcases that travelers quietly pulled behind them echoed within the open terminal. It was four in the morning, and the smell of coffee sat heavy in the air. I had a three-hour layover before boarding my flight, and I intended to quickly jot down a few words within the lined pages of my journal, somehow stitch them into sentences, and then read for the duration of my stay in Amsterdam, but I had a clear view of security from my seat. And instead of reading or writing, or even thinking, I just watched.

I watched people hurriedly throw their bags and belongings onto the black conveyer belt and strip their shoes off. I watched as they emptied their pockets and removed their watches. I watched a large man in khaki pants with salt and pepper hair shuffle briskly through the line and I noted how juvenile he looked as his pristine, white socks pitter-pattered quickly against the gray carpet beneath him. I watched anger and I watched frustration, but most importantly, I watched goodbyes.

Just beyond the glass barrier that enclosed security, a man and a woman stood. They both had dark hair. The man’s hands were draped gently around the woman’s face, his face buried deep into her short, black curls. I tried not to stare, but I found myself still looking on, watching them say nothing to each other. The man released his grasp and allowed his hands to slide down to the woman’s shoulders, which he gripped tightly now. From behind her head, I saw him remove his face from within her curtain of curls. A dark and patchy five o’clock shadow clothed his square jaw, and although his eyes were bloodshot, his irises remained a vibrant green, the same color as the moss that grew in the creek behind my house. He gave her shoulders two tight squeezes and forced a small smile before joining the line of people preparing to go through security. The woman turned her head slightly to watch him walk away before she did the same, but in the opposite direction. I never saw her face.

I glanced down at the journal and the book that sat in my lap, both still untouched. I felt guilty for witnessing a moment so private and unguarded having been played out so publicly, but I also marveled at the raw emotion I had just seen.

So I continued on, looking at strangers, children and adults alike, that were strewn everywhere, sleeping and dozing off- some with blankets draped over them, others bare. There were those who laid their heads in the laps of their traveling companions, clinging to the comfort of something familiar, and there were those who were completely and utterly alone. They were curled up in chairs and sprawled out on the floor, cheeks pressed against the carpet with little regard for the imprint that the lined carpet would most likely leave on their faces. And while each person looked different from the person next to them, I noticed one similarity- they all wore similar expressions. Their lips slightly parted and their brows at ease, they were all relaxed- all having relinquished control of themselves and their minds, whether it be for a few minutes or a few hours. Everyone was completely candid, and in that moment, I realized a beautiful vulnerability that encompasses an airport.

Airports are places in which our hardest goodbyes and greatest hellos are housed and places in which people find religion in the form of a murmured prayer beneath their breath during takeoff. It is here that privacy is no longer a policy, but rather a privilege that is oftentimes forfeited, and humans that have little in common other than their humanity itself are forced to coexist. It is here that people laugh and cry and live life out in the open, and it is here that people find themselves and lose themselves all the same.

We often forget the enigma that is emotion, and the importance of conveying what we feel to those closest to us. We forget to express the importance of those who have played pivotal roles in the storyline that is our life until we are forced to utter parting words to one another, and we forget to tell each other how much we mean and most times we even forget to allow ourselves to bask in the simplicity of our existence. We forget the importance of being human- burying within ourselves the desire and ability to be vulnerable, to be completely open and bare with one another, for fear of internal injury. But within the walls of an airport, all boundaries are broken down and our fear of failure becomes a fear of the unfulfilled- of what could have been. And so we find ourselves sifting through a labyrinth of thoughts and jumbled words and intricate emotions in an attempt to say everything that needs to be said to one another- just in case.

And I know it's a stretch, to say that airports house so much power, but it was enough to make me wonder why we wait so long to allow ourselves to truly feel, and why the child-like audacity we once possessed to be unapologetically ourselves only resurfaces on occasion.

So I unwound the thin, leather strap that bound my journal tightly together, wanting to quickly jot down everything I had seen for fear I would later forget the sheer display of humanity I had played spectator and participant to. I opened to the first blank page I could find and clicked my black ink pen, setting the tip of it against the top line. I would later leave this pen, my favorite pen, behind in Turkey on a white bus with fuzzy seats and no air conditioning.

I didn’t stop writing until it was time to board my plane.