My heart only fluttered at first. Then, it progressed at a flustering speed to feeling as if it were about to pop straight from my chest, and then it ached. My mind said at me, "You're having a heart attack," and for a few seconds, I considered acting on that thought. But instead, I clutched the arm-rests of the plane and told myself that it was likely only a panic attack.

My mind, however, seemed to have two personalities: one based on logic and the other emotion, the dominant. It screamed, "You're going to have a heart attack, can't you feel it? It's happening! It's happening! It's happening! It's all because of purging! You wanted to be skinny, and now you're going to die! You're going to have a heart attack! You shouldn't have done it! You shouldn't have done it, especially after that overdose! Your heart was already in bad shape, you moron!"

I closed my eyes and counted my breaths as calmly as I possibly could in attempt to push these thoughts from my head. I wished off the plane for a cigarette, off the plane as a whole, for my persistent anxiety had heightened to the point where I was clutching the white arm-rests so tightly my fingers had begun to bleed. It stung brutally, but I couldn't stop. I needed to clutch something.

All the while, the logical part of my mind had decided to break through, and in it's tiny whisper, I heard: "No. You have to be strict with yourself, for it's only a matter of time before this becomes out of hand. Try to get a hold of yourself and take deep breaths before you lose the little control you have left. In the end, you aren't going to help yourself by freaking out; it is only going to make things worse than they already are." And though these words, of which I knew I should follow, were quickly terminated by the deafening screams of my emotional personality.

It had told me that I was going to die. And sitting in a plane so homely, so small, beaten-down, dirty, and cramped while facing the front window of it's blunt nose, it was hardly questionable to ignore. It was standing vertically to where I could see the cloudless sky and only seconds from taking off, and I reasoned that if the "heart attack" didn't kill me than this ride would. It could take off any second now, for I wouldn't be given warning. I lost all control at this point, and though I couldn't take my eyes from the window, I could sense my blood running down the arm-rests and pooling on the floor. My fingers hurt so badly.

"Don't worry," said a foreign voice, "It takes time to get used to this."
I turned to the face of an old man, and a familiar face at that. It triggered a sunshine memory of my paternal great-grandfather (My Nonno, who had passed away in October), for his eyes and smile were so strikingly identical to his. Though I'll never know who he was, sometimes I think that he must've truly been my great-grandfather, only much older.

"A-Are you kidding me? Used to what?" I asked, and he only looked at me, and perhaps through me, without answering. He only had a frozen expression on his face, no emotion, a look of which I had taken as a bad omen. I wished he would've left me alone, and more importantly, I wished that I could excuse myself from the plane in some way. Finally, after a long pause, he said: "So, what are you here for?"

I laid back with closed eyes, and the first image to appear to me was a baby chick. She was so small that her feet fit perfectly on the face of a dime. I loved her so much, and missed her so that it seemed I could literally see her in my thoughts. She hadn't a name, but she was beautiful, and I loved her.

"I'm flying for the chick," I told my great-grandfather, as I fetched the dime of which she'd stood on from my coat pocket.


So, I had seen my great-grandfather in a dream. What could he be telling me?