1,000 Lies Told At 40,000 Feet High

In the summer of 2009 when I was 15 years old, my parents got a divorce. The relationship had been falling apart for a while and, although my parents tried to hide it from me, I still saw the cracks. I wanted to blame it on something, on someone, and for a little while, I thought that maybe it had something to do with me. Maybe it was my fault. But it wasn’t my fault and I slowly learnt that. Soon after my parents separated my father moved to Sydney and took on some big important job at a company that made kitchen appliances. My mother remained in Melbourne where I was born and had lived all my life while.

The new distance between my parents, both physical and emotional, made my life awkward and confusing. Anyone else I knew with divorced parents switched between their parents’ house each weekend. But with mine separated by more than 800 kilometres, things became more difficult. My mother wanted me to stay in Melbourne with her, she said it was too much pressure on me to move to a new city and start at a new school when I was still trying to cope with the divorce. My father said he had a right to see me and it wasn’t his fault if his promotion at work involved moving to Sydney. Loud arguments took place over the phone and words were thrown like arrows fired from a bow. Eventually lawyers were brought into the mix. At some point in time an arrangement was made and things calmed down.

In the beginning it was okay. I spent three weeks with my mother and then I took the one hour flight to Sydney and stayed with my father for the weekend. But after a while, it became harder. My father became used to living the life of a rich bachelor and having me come to stay was more of a chore than anything. We stopped going out to the movies and cooking and swimming at the beach together. It became awkward between us and in a poor attempt of patching things up, my father started to buy me expensive gifts and gave me a credit card that didn’t have a spending limit on it.

By the age of 17 I resented the time that I had to spend in Sydney, but I felt obligated to continue visiting my father. He was my father after all. Often the short amount of time that I spent on the plane between Melbourne and Sydney was more exciting than the time that I actually spent at my destination.

This was for one reason only. I made each flight a new adventure. I gave myself a new name and created a new history for myself. If my father wouldn’t remember the time that we spent ‘together’ then maybe I could at least make the person who sat next to me on the plane think of me -well, a version of me- for a fleeting second when they left the plane.