Airports Make Me Cry for Reasons I Can’t Explain

Airports Make Me Cry for Reasons I Can’t Explain

By Hasnain Shah

Airports make me cry for reasons I can’t quite explain. It doesn’t matter whether I’m the one leaving or the one staying behind; whether I’m traveling for joy or coming home from heartbreak. The moment I step inside those automatic glass doors and feel the strange mix of recycled air, espresso steam, and expectation—something in my chest loosens. Something quiet inside me breaks open, as if airports have a way of sneaking past every defense I’ve spent the year building.

Maybe it’s the way people look at each other in terminals. There’s a softness there you don’t see in grocery stores or office buildings. You can spot the ones who are about to say goodbye: their hands linked too tightly, their expressions pulling in opposite directions—relief for the other’s adventure, grief for their own coming absence. And then there are the people who are waiting, clutching small signs or oversized bouquets, pacing in tiny anxious circles as if love itself depends on timing.

I walk by all of them, pretending I’m simply trying to find my gate, when in truth I’m intentionally soaking the ache in. It feels like standing under warm water after being cold for too long. Their emotions wash over me, and I let them.

Once, I watched a father say goodbye to his daughter. She couldn’t have been older than ten. She wore a glittery pink backpack and had her hair tied in two lopsided braids. He knelt down, cupped her shoulders, and said something I couldn’t hear. Whatever it was made her tiny chin tremble. I felt tears prickling behind my eyes before I even understood it. I think it was the way the father hugged her with everything he had, as if he could imprint his presence on her clothes before she ran off with the flight attendant in the crisp navy uniform.

Something about that moment reminded me of the first time I ever flew alone, when I was nineteen and convinced I had to move far away to figure out who I was. My mother hugged me like she was holding on to the last of her courage. I remember the way her breath shook when she said, “Call me when you land, okay?” And how those words followed me all the way across the country, echoing in my ears even as the plane lifted off the ground.

Airports hold memories like that—yours and everyone else’s, layered on top of each other like old paint. Maybe that’s why they feel heavy, even when nothing significant is happening.

But airports also make me cry for happier reasons. There’s a kind of magic in watching a reunion. The moment the sliding doors to Arrivals open and someone spots their person—God, the way their face lights up. The way their body moves before their mind catches up. All instincts and joy, no hesitation. I once saw a woman drop her suitcase in the middle of the walkway and sprint toward her partner, laughing in a way that made strangers around her laugh too. That sound lingered with me for the rest of the day.

Sometimes the emotions aren’t about others at all. Sometimes they’re about the version of myself that airports force me to confront. Traveling means transition. It means endings I didn’t want to acknowledge and beginnings I’m not ready for. It means sitting with myself—for hours—on a metal bench or a window seat, watching planes roll across wide stretches of tarmac, wondering what I’m doing with my life.

Airports don’t let you hide from your own story. They make you look at it in fluorescent lighting.

There’s also something strangely comforting about the anonymity. No one knows me here. I am just another body with a boarding pass, another name scrolling across a digital screen, another pair of shoes padding across worn-out carpet. And yet, despite the anonymity, airports make me feel connected. All these people moving in different directions, all these private hopes and fears crisscrossing like flight paths—it’s impossible not to feel the weight and wonder of being human.

A few months ago, I cried on a plane before we even took off. Not a dramatic cry, just the quiet kind where tears slide down your cheeks without asking permission. I had no real reason—nothing terrible had happened. But the moment the cabin doors closed, my throat tightened. Maybe it was the realization that I was suspended between two lives: the one behind me and the one I hadn’t quite reached yet. Maybe it was the way travel compresses time until every second feels sharp enough to cut you. Or maybe it was simply the truth I’ve known for years now: airports hold space for emotions I ignore everywhere else.

Because in airports, nobody questions a person who cries. People cry there all the time. Over goodbyes, reunions, fears, hopes, long flights, short layovers, missed connections—both literal and metaphorical. Airports are built for transitions, and transitions are built for tears.

So yes, airports make me cry for reasons I can’t explain. But maybe the explanation is as simple as this: they remind me that I am alive. That I am moving. That I am loving and losing and learning, just like everyone around me. In a world that often feels disconnected, airports quietly stitch us back together—not with words, but with shared humanity.