« Ferry Landing | Main | The Bride »

August 08, 2005

Fly Away

I’m not sure where it came from, but over the course of the past few years, I have developed a fairly severe fear of flying. It’s gotten to the point now where even thinking about myself on a plane causes my heart to beat faster and my head to feel swimmy.

It’s a strange, unusual thing and it becomes even crazier when you realize that flying has always been a big part of my life. My father received his pilot’s license at the age of 17 and bought his first plane in 1981, when I was five years old. We flew everywhere – to Ohio for our summer vacation; to Florida to visit his father on Spring Break; to Conroe or San Antonio on a random Saturday morning for pancakes. As I got older, it was a special treat for me to take friends up and fly over our neighborhoods, picking out our houses among the trees. I understood things like turbulence and weather patterns in a real, scientific way. When I was in college he would fly into Miami’s small airport and take me home to my mom’s for the weekend, or all the way back to Texas for summer break. I have spent many clear-skied days in my father’s Cessna, and even a scare in 1990 didn’t stop me from flying with him. As a child I would put on the headset and sing into the mouthpiece, loving the way my voice sounded through the earphones. (Due to this habit, I was almost always disconnected from everyone else’s headsets.) When my bother went off to college, and it was just my dad and me, and I finally got to sit in the front seat, I would follow the plane’s shadow on the ground for as long as I could. (Even today, that is one of the visuals I use to calm myself on take-off – the sight of his plane’s shadow growing smaller and smaller as we rose higher and higher.)

My history with commercial flying isn’t shallow either, as after the divorce my mom and I had to get to Ohio somehow. In my college years and adulthood, travel has been a fairly large part of my life. When I was with the Brand I flew to California, the Florida Keys, Chicago and Minnesota. In this job I take several trips a year, one of them always outside the country.

When my girlfriends and I went to Spain in spring 2001, my only concern about the trip was whether I would get jet lag or if the plane would show crappy movies. Soaring over the Atlantic, I slept soundly, awaking to see the Spanish countryside below our wings.

And then… somehow fear. At first I was just a little jumpy when there was turbulence or on take-off. But now it’s progressed to where I can’t even think about flying or visualize myself on a plane 30,000 feet above the ground. Flying to Texas for Thanksgiving last year I somehow ended up on a Continental Express Jet and the turbulence was so terrible after take-off that I became that person who cries. I CRIED, I was so afraid. And I wonder, who was that girl who would fly all the way to L.A. and not think a thing of it? Was it the ignorance of youth, or has something that radical changed in me?

And as a Christian – as someone who genuinely believes in God’s plan and eternal life and that I have nothing to fear from death – I feel like a failure and a fake when I feel the terror creeping in. But even though I pray for peace and certainty that His hand is on me; even though I rationally realize I have more reason to be afraid tearing up I-75 on a daily basis; even though, even though, even though… I can’t help but be afraid.

Between September and February, I will be flying to: Orlando, Puerto Rico, Houston and Jamaica. I can’t even begin to describe to you the kind of anxiety I feel when I think about being stuck on a plane, over the OCEAN, for four hours. So instead I try to focus on the sandy beaches and infinity pools that await me on the other side. I try to focus on the blessings I’ve been given, the opportunities that afford me these journeys, but yet still the fear is there.

My first trip is in a little less than six weeks. I don’t want to dread it, but I’m not really sure how to get over it.

Posted by hannah at 05:53 PM