The worst of my anxiety comes out when I leave home. Or when I know I have to leave home. Booking flights on my phone is an abstract conceptual act, even packing a suitcase is theoretical, but actually leaving, and going to bed knowing I am waking up at an ungodly hour to catch a flight is hell. If you spoke to me the night before any trip, I’d say, I would do almost anything for this to be cancelled. I often hope for traffic jams, sleeping through alarms or anything else that would allow me a free pass to stay home instead. Once in my old life, I woke up on the morning of an exciting work trip that I had literally volunteered myself for, and decided I couldn't possibly go. I emailed the company saying I’d lost my passport and went into the office declaring the same thing. I ignored the response of the quite rightly annoyed PR whose job I had dismissed because I just had a bad feeling about this trip. And the thing is, I have a bad feeling about every trip, every flight. Holly asked, have you ever got off a flight and decided it’s not dangerous and I said, no, actually.
I am definitely worried about impending death, but I am almost more worried about getting through chunks of time feeling that bad. This is literally why I should get on board with prescription drugs. In fact the best flight in recent memory was when I sat next to Judy. 70 year old Californian Judy who was as white-knuckled as me. And Judy, who I originally decided to ignore as she thrashed her head around to keep an eye on the cabin crew, because the logic for us is to keep checking their faces for alarm, like that moment when it sounds like the engine has cut out, or you’re pretty sure the plane is sinking. And my general rule of thumb has always been don’t engage with other scared people, it makes it worse and it’s possible my heart will literally explode. But for some reason I decided to talk to Judy and a) Judy gave me a pill that literally changed everything - I think they call it Ativan. And b) Judy told me her life story and we hugged in the baggage terminal and I thought, well thank god for Judy.
Anyway, I should get a prescription.
Sometimes in a period of turbulence, as my insides start to rage and fret, I think, this is the same feeling you had waiting for a boy to text you back two years ago. The feelings are the same, my life is no less in danger. But being in the air doesn’t help because no matter how many times people tell me the sky is jelly! and turbulence is jiggling in jelly! and that it’s safer than being in a car! I think, yeah but this isn’t a question of logic, this is my bad feeling, this is my sneaking suspicion that it’s because I am so scared things will go wrong. Because I am messing with the game of life.
So I plan the trips and the thing is, I have a great time! And only 10% of me spends the holiday pondering how these are the final days of my life before I board another plane. And every safe landing I think, well ok I got away with it this time, but am I rolling the dice a little too much everytime I go on SkyScanner. It is a minefield in my brain. And I don’t want to ruin other people’s lives, and I want to be brave and go to the places, and have the refreshing thing you get by going to the places, and see the world, and feel warm sun from time to time. I want to experience it, and memories of light beer and a bowl of crisps watching the sunset over the sea. So I do it. And it’s hard.
But this game of life thing. That’s what I’ve been thinking about. And that’s what’s been tripping me up and knocking me off centre. I don’t know where I inherited this thinking, but I think it’s somewhere between the general moral code of Christian education that seeps through our culture, and what I’ll call the manifestation epidemic. So I am partly burdened with an Adam and Eve understanding of good and bad, right and wrong, crime and punishment. And I am partly whipped up by the entitled frenzy of manifesting my own destiny. I even noticed this morning, scrawling my morning pages, that I was worried about writing negative things down in case they came true.
Bad things have happened and I’ve done bad things. Good things have happened and I’ve done good things. Somewhere in me I wonder if everything is being totted up. With one hand he giveth and the other…
Last year I met the love of my life and we found out in the Spring I was pregnant. We were so happy and we told everyone. In June I lost the baby. And, in the darkest most confused corners of my mind I think: you were too happy about it so you needed to be taken down. Or I think: you were too confident it was going to be ok so you had to learn it wouldn’t be. Or I think: you had too much that was good so you had to feel the baddest bad could be. And round we go. And it doesn’t get me anywhere and wiser older people tell us life is random and it will all happen in every shade. So I wonder what’s trapped me here, and mostly I wonder how to get out.
This is complicated because there is some truth that most of us can agree on. Most simply, if someone smiles at you, or holds open a door, or gives you a cheery wave - it feels nice, and you are more likely to be nice to the woman in the post office. And if a taxi driver calls you a cunt as they nearly run over you, well you’re probably going to cry and maybe be grumpy to someone. So I get it and I believe in positive thinking as a general concept. In fact I often err on the side of delusional optimism. My dad describes me as a sunshine person for god sake. And I think you need that lightness to move forwards and try things. But there’s this shadow to it all. And this shadow can really get in your head.
It’s like: can we take responsibility without blaming? And can we accept responsibility whilst understanding we don’t have control?
When you are trying to understand your spiritual position with the world, which in our own way, we all kind of are, things that happen to you gather together to make a case for something. And we frame it how we frame it based on how things are going. A couple of years ago, I was worrying about one thing and then out of nowhere another thing happened. Vague enough for you? As much as I’ll tell you everything, these things weren’t my things to tell. Anyway, at the time I thought, wow it’s never the thing you are worrying about that happens. Like bad things are going to happen, but you can’t predict which angle they come from. So you may as well try to have a nice time.
Wise older people also tell you things happen when they are meant to. Not when we think they should or think we are ready.
And people who have really experienced the harshest cruelties of life have their own understanding just to keep going and get out of bed in the morning. My slightly on the dark side but brilliant nephew Jacob wrote me a note last year when I went to babysit that said ‘everything is meaningless’. And I kept it. And sometimes that is the greatest comfort and the greatest motivation to just crack on. Holly has even coined a phrase that we keep saying we will get tattooed this year: try your best and forget the rest. Thumbs up emoji. And most of the time I think that’s the greatest wisdom I’ve ever heard. And sometimes I want for the meaning so much! Like, will one day this all make sense? Or if it doesn’t make sense, will we be able to accept it?
So the moral of the story? I’m scared of flying, but I do it anyway. I hope for things that are sometimes painful to hope for. Ativan is really helpful.
On a practical note, the only thing that cured me of my fear of flying was flying a lot. Though appreciate flights are expensive these days. Gone are the £20 Milan for lunch return trips of the early 2000’s.
On a less practical note, I am gathering you have read Fear of Flying? If not, worth half a day of your time. It felt like a lot of what you’re writing about sits as a companion piece to Jong’s book.
Oh and also; I love your writing! I hope you know how talented you are. Have a great day!
The whole piece was gorgeous and funny but “I hope for things that are sometimes painful to hope for” got to me. Hope is so heavy to carry sometimes, and yet we try, and isn’t that meaningful in itself. Thank you for this x