I spent roughly way-too-much-time picking an image for this week’s post, so here’s a bunch of photos of clouds that I didn’t end up picking. They deserve your time.
A thought crossed my mind as I wrote this, that sometimes I feel like I’m writing a preamble to a recipe but the recipe never comes.
Anyway, all the music in this edition is cruising-altitude-approved™ and I encourage you to listen to it in order. Here’s that in order playlist of all the jams.
Please take your seat and fasten your seat belt.
Most of my friends, and far too many strangers, know I’m terrified of flying. It’s a bizarre fear that’s never actually stopped me from booking flights, but it’s made the entire experience much more stressful than it needs to be.
At some point during the last couple years of a long term relationship that had me feeling completely out of control, my anxiety decided to channel and apply itself to something tangible. It manifested itself into a fear of commercial flight. A behavior that, once you’re on the plane, is pretty much the least control you could possibly have.
I guess you could be on a plane, mid-flight, with a straight jacket on. That’s probably the peak though.
Anyway, it’s bizarre. How did a controlling boyfriend manifest into a fear of flying?
I have a working theory.
When someone else is actively changing so many things about you and dictating all of your decisions, from your career to your health to your friendships and family relationships, you start to run into some identity issues. You start to lose your sense of self. But you have to have a sense of self to be happy. You can’t be constantly living your life as if you’re someone else, wondering what they would do in every possible scenario. Or worse, wondering what they would say about what you’re doing without their input. It’s exhausting and confusing. Your mind wants to be itself, but you’re not letting it. From this place, comes anxiety and a slew of other self-destructive tendencies as your true, internal self battles with your external, insecure self.
I found myself on that battleground and my mind said “fine, if you can’t see how much damage you’re causing yourself by allowing this person to take away all of your control, then I’m going to show you what it feels like to actually be out of control”. And so, my fear of flying made its debut.
Let’s take a quick break from explain why this happened and instead show you the actual mania of my flying experiences over the years..
First, a flight to Iceland was made only marginally manageable thanks to half a bar of Xanax (thanks mom). I cried a lot throughout the flight, I held some guys’ hand who was sitting behind me, and I encouraged a flight attendant to hang out with me for most of the flight. Soon after, a 16-hour flight to South Africa was made nearly unbearable for my seat mate who tried to calm me by encouraging me to close my eyes and simply imagine I was on a bumpy bus ride. I definitely cried a few times, the bus concept didn’t help. The short flight immediately after that one from Joberg to Cape Town involved my sleep-deprived self questioning the plane’s mode of descent. My fellow passengers questioned how else I thought the plane would make it back down to the ground? A valid question, I had no reasonable response. Soon after that, I flew to Amsterdam and Berlin, all over northeast India and back, white knuckling my way through each and every flight.
At some point amidst these flights, a coworker told me that if I had any chance of survival in an accident, the safest place to be seated was in the middle of the plane, so I nearly always sat over the wing, face glued to the window watching that wing wiggle with each gust of wind, reminding myself that a plane can’t be taken down by turbulence, a plane can’t be taken down by turbulence, a plane can’t… you get it.
I’ll never forget one of the many flights to Florida to visit my ex’s parents, when the airline strapped cameras onto the wings so passengers could watch the outside from inside. Super cool, right? Except we hit some gnarly turbulence, as one does during the late afternoon summertime in Florida. The plane started jerking up and down so aggressively that people were far too distracted by the screams to change the channel, so nearly everyone’s screen was stuck on a view of the plane plummeting what felt like a few hundred feet every few seconds. It was a disaster, but kinda funny in retrospect.
Now that you understand the situation a bit better, let’s get back to the point.
It’s important to note that this fear didn’t exist before this relationship and it definitely didn’t exist at the beginning of it. For the first two years of that partnership, I boarded flights fearlessly! Only around the third of fourth year did it all kick in. Weird, right? To make matters even weirder, a few months after I moved to New York City, I broke up with him, and as suddenly as the fear came on, it began subsiding. I stopped crying. I stopped gripping for dear life during take off. I stopped freaking out as the plane descended to land. It just sorta started to fade away, little by little…
These brains of ours are interesting creatures of their own. Manifesting anxieties into irrational fears like nobody’s watching.
Let’s be clear here, I’m not in the clear, which I presume means that I haven’t actually dealt with a lot of the issues that came up during that relationship. I still avoid flying at night and still insist on the window seat, but I think that’s ok. I must admit at this time that I did once spend an entire flight grabbing a random guy’s arm from JFK to SFO, but I swear that only happened once..
It’s crazy to think about how much the people we care about, for better or worse, affect us. Have you ever wondered how much of who you are is based in an effort to be, or not be, what someone else expects you to be? This has the capacity to be particularly disastrous if you actually care about that person. Even against all better judgement..
I’ve spent enough time telling this story to every sorry sucker who sits next to me on a flight, to know that my fear of flying is entirely tied to the fear of losing myself in relationships with men.
It’s a weird association to make and even weirder to admit to all of you, but it’s true. But how very lucky am I? My fear has decided to make itself seen and felt. It’s attached itself to something I love—travel, movement, flight. It has put itself in a position where I can’t ignore it and reminds me that I don’t have control over almost anything in life, especially turbulence. The only things I can control are the situations I put myself in, the ones I decide to stay in and how I feel or react to them.
But sometimes, the turbulence lets up.
And I’m graced with a few blissful moments of calm.
I don’t mean that end-of-yoga-class-laying-on-the-floor sorta calm. I mean the kind of calm where nothing matters and everything in your life is hopeful.
It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to euphoria.
It usually only takes about 20 seconds of smooth sailing for the feeling to set in. It’s more of a headspace than a feeling really. As if it was meant to be, my Liked Songs playlist shuffles and invariably lands on this song and I find myself settling deeper and deeper into the calm. This song plays while I gaze out the window at our beautiful planet. Everything that’s ever bothered me feels so unimportant. I bask in the feeling of possibility. Anything could happen. Wonderful things could happen. Incredible things have happened. Life feels so long and every moment that’s happened up until now feels like a path to this present moment.
I almost always end up journaling or writing an incredibly long text message to a friend or former flame, thanking them for something or other. Everything feels so clear up there.
Take a moment, while this song finishes, to do that for yourself. Just try to think of nothing for a second. Find peace in the humming of this tune.
Welcome back, I’m forcing these two songs in at the same time because I can’t pick one and you should really listen to both.
Now here’s the kicker and I had to phone in not one, but two different editors to come to this peculiar conclusion. The most terrifying and stress inducing activity I do, is apparently the only space in which I can find a sliver of genuine peace of mind.
How fucking ridiculous.
As the plane begins descending, I yearn for it to coast right back up into the sky. To keep going. Give me a few more minutes, or better yet hours in that blissful state. I’ll take the turbulence too. I just want a reprieve from this mental rat race.
Stopping that race is unbelievably difficult. I’ve read more books on the subject than I care to admit. I’ve tried the apps and I’ve gone to therapy. Not even drugs seem to do it for me. Maybe I need more drugs?
I guess all I really needed was Novo Amor while barreling through the sky at 10,000 feet.
So, I’m gonna keep doing that, even though it’s exhausting and painful and makes me feel weak, but it’s worth it. And meanwhile, I’ll keep searching for this feeling elsewhere.
And that, my friends, was too much to text.
Ps - Let this poem be the recipe at the end of the story.
Don’t Hesitate
by Mary Oliver, who is swiftly becoming one of my favorite poets.
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case.
Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.