Prologue
Before I Learned to Fly.
People often say that childhood is supposed to be the happiest time of your life.
I used to wonder if they were talking about a different childhood from mine.
My earliest memories aren't filled with bedtime stories or family vacations. They aren't painted in warm colours or wrapped in comforting laughter. Instead, they are fragmented pieces of loneliness-small moments that lingered long after they had passed.
I don't remember my mother.
Not really.
At list not the way most people remember theirs. Not in detail. Not in warmth. I remember absence more than presence. I was only one when she left, which is funny in a cruel way-too young to understand abandonment, but somehow still shaped by it
My father didn't leave completely. That would have been easier to explain.
Instead, he stayed... loosely. Like a shadow That only appeared when it was convenient. He would show up sometimes with promises wrapped in tired smiles, telling me he was trying, telling me he cared, telling me he'd be back soon.
And then he would disappear again.
So I grew up with my aunt..
She wasn't cruel, not exactly. But she wasn't gentle either. She believed love was something you earned through discipline, not something freely given. Her house was stable, but not warm. Safe, but not soft.
I learned early how to stay out of trouble. How to stay quiet when I wanted to ask questions that I had no safe answers. How to swallow disappointment without letting it show on my face.
I used to watch other kids with their parents and wonder what it felt like-to be chosen every day without question.
That's when I started looking up at airplanes.
They looked like escape. Like freedom. Like something that never stayed in one place long enough to disappear on you.
That was when I decided I wanted to become a flight attendant.
Not because it looked glamorous.
But because I wanted to belong somewhere that was always moving forward.
Somewhere with no broken promises.
And somehow... I did.
