Fear of Flying

I was sitting on a Southwest Airlines flight in early 2004 between Phoenix and Los Angeles when I was jostled in my seat by some mild turbulence. I looked out the small window in my row as I felt something unfamiliar creep from my stomach towards my throat: fear.

I have ridden on airplanes from a very young age. My father taught English in Japan when I was a toddler, which resulted in our family taking long transatlantic flights. My parents loved to travel and were not going to let children slow down their trip taking, so we often went on planes for vacations. When I began asking to go back to Buffalo to see my relatives at the age of eleven, my parents were so confident in my comfort flying they put me and my brother on the 4 hour flight to Buffalo unaccompanied and off we went.

When I got to college, Southwest afforded me the chance to take ridiculously cheap flights from Tucson to see friends in Vegas and LA. Even after the air travel changes which accompanied 9/11, I would get on planes without a second thought. I was worry free during take offs and landings, read or wrote calmly through any turbulence, listening to my Walkman the whole time. I didn’t think it was unreasonable other people were afraid of flying–being stuffed in a pressurized metal tube thousands of feet off of the ground is not a natural experience–but it is an experience I had gone through so many times it had become second nature to me.

Which led to the second emotion I felt, after the warm bloom of fear in my stomach on that flight in 2004, being shock. I was shocked at myself, at feelings which I could not rationalize. There was more turbulence as the warm Santa Ana winds whipped through the desert air, but the flight went by quickly as I sat distracted alternately by my fear and then puzzlement at my own terror.

I landed and called my mother to let her know I had arrived. She asked me how the flight was.

“It was so weird. There was some turbulence and it scared me. It really, really bothered me.”

“Was the turbulence bad?”

“No–just the usual bumps. The winds were high leaving Burbank. But I just can’t remember being scared on a plane before. Ever.”

“You know,” my mother said, “they say if you think you are afraid of flying, you are really afraid of something else.”

I laughed, “Well of course it means I am scared of something else. I am scared of dying. I don’t give a shit about the actual flying part, but rather what will occur should the plane cease to fly.”

My mom laughed, glossed over any remaining thoughts about my trip, and asked me to pick up some Tanqueray if I was going to come by the house to see her.

I tried to forget about the plane ride and the feelings which accompanied it. I had been in a state of emotional disarray between the death of my father, the aftermath of dealing with my mother, and trying to find a direction in my own life. If my anxiety was a muscle, I had been working it out extra hard around the clock for 18 months. Maybe the fear I felt on the plane was sign of a muscle sprain. A sign I needed to dial something back, anything back.

When I got on the plane in a few days to go back to LA, I was hopeful. But by the end of the short hour-long ride, my experience was the same: small bumps, which wouldn’t have consciously registered with me in the past, now resulted in audible gasps and my fingers whitening as I clutched the arm rest. I didn’t think the plane was in any real danger of not completing its flight during the ride. I kept my eyes on the flight attendants, who I hypothesized would be the best barometers to indicate if anything the plane was doing should be of real concern. But even as the flight attendants glided about the cabin with placid smiles, my fear remained until we touched down in Los Angeles.

Nearly fourteen years later, I am annoyed to report my anxiety in the air has not gone away. The sprained muscle theory never worked out: I am the most rested and the least anxious I have been in my adult life, and yet the fear remains. It does not stop me from flying or enjoying travel: I completed my first flight to Europe this fall as part of our honeymoon to Ireland and I fly often for work. Having Basil there to hold my hand is much better than enduring my panic alone. But the fact I still feel this fear, which for over two decades of my life did not exist, irritates me. It sticks in my craw.

I have often thought back on what my mother said, wondering if the panic which still manifests itself on short flights and long ones is attributable to something else besides the flying. And I stand by my response: the fear is attributable to dying, as in I do not want to. Which seems like a standard desire. And so I should just conclude and move on, accept my intermittent terror for what it is. I am facing the fear and not letting it keep me from doing what I want and need to do.

And yet it does not leave my mind. It is a pebble I turn over and over in my palm. I think if I learn the intricacies of its curves, I will be able to put it down. But no matter how many times I touch it, I feel like I am still missing something essential about it.