Something about the rotating door terrified me. Inside colors swirled and trailed after human forms and the whole image was so surreal I had to turn back and take a breath of air before plunging into it.

Portland Airport.
Hellhole.

    The air inside was stale and seemed to accumulate densely around my nose and lips, making it harder to breathe. Voices screamed from the loudspeakers every once in a while, sometimes in words I couldn't understand.
    I closed my eyes.
    Oh, God, I'm going to be stuck for a year in a county that speaks a different language.

I wonder how the airport in Germany will look... If by then the colors might have gained back their warmth and the faces will have twisted back into their normal forms. Or would I be worse?
    Will I even make it there?
    
    My parents had already driven off... But I could still call them to come back...
    I glanced toward customs...
    Paused....
    I could do this. I'm sixteen and in two years I will be all alone anyway.

    I think I wove blindly through the lines.

I still remember how flustered I was, searching for my gate...
    I couldn't get over this immense feeling of aloneness, the realization that I was finally cast out into the crazy, fast-paced world on my own.
    By the time I took my seat on the plane it had subsided into a jitter. As I watched New York disappear underneath me I knew I wasn't just traveling into a different county, I was traveling into my first years of adulthood. And I was already almost halfway there.