Cowards Die Many Deaths
So. I'm fucking terrified. Which in this case makes me an inutterable coward.
I just booked my flight to Baltimore for the 25-28th trip. It's in March. Not even this week. Yet looking at the itinerary, I felt nauseated, just THINKING about stepping from that quivering carpeted gangplank smelling of recycled air, past the rippled plastic connector, the weathered aluminum, and into the tiny cylinder with stiff wings.The false greeting smiles, and the immediate wash of claustrophobia upon looking down the tube at the various coated humans removing their layers and stuffing them into compartments, each trying to create a brief moment of personal space amid the chaos of seating. Finding my seat, rocking my way down the bland carpeted floor, the noise all around me, peering at number after number until ah! That's mine! A window seat, excusing myself as I stuff laptop and coat above, shimmying my way past people settling in, to stare through a tiny circle into a world I am now denied - the outside! Two layers of thick transparency between me and fresh air. I won't breathe you for hours, air... just exhalations repeated. Finding the clip, using it. Fighting off incipient terror, fighting down the animal inside me who howls to flee home and burrow into my familiar safety. The uniformed person something to look at briefly before my eyes snap back to the window. I feel nauseated by motion without explanation, and that tiny window is my sole outlet to tell my sickened inner ear that the LURCH and shudder, and rocking as our tubular conveyance trundles back under guidance isn't a mirage. No, that gray tarmc underneath is moving, and therefore we are. Taxi-ing along, the attendant droning out, gesturing with truncated pieces of fabric and buckle - are you paid enough to do this? Can anyone be paid enough to experience this hell to my primate mind? Maybe it dulls you, again and again, but I am alive with sickness and fear.
Gum in my mouth, spicy cinnamon, eyes locked on that window, at the snowy grass outside. Chris, I want Chris, I want to be home. Tears stining my eyes. Is everyone this frightened? Why am I such a coward? Once I loved flying. Once, I enjoyed the thrill. Am I so locked to my attachments that being bereft of them even for a day or two reduces me to sobbing misery?
Apparently so.
Flash back to the lounge. Last year, this was. March as well, earlier though. Standing for my first trip solo in a decade. Watching the plane to be ours taxi up. Watching other travellers. A group going to Portugal via Detroit, where this first would go and I would wait for four hours. A man sounding like Jimmy Stewart, conducting his business on a cell phone. Explaining that he was merely embarking on the first of many hops, all the way to Colorado. Experienced people for whom this was merely a thing they knew well, could endure. My own growing terror as I sat there, trying to take comfort in their calm, happy voices. My hideous fear, welling in me like black water until I had to get up, move, do something or scream. Walking like a caged animal by the window as they loaded the jet, staring at it, feeling tears in my eyes. Hoping to every god that no kindly stranger would touch my shoulder and ask what was wrong, because my fragile self control was a breaking thread and any compassion would bring forth gales of sobs, confessions of fear.
What a coward.
I'm sitting here in my safe home, my cats in the front room, my husband upstairs playing music. I'm heading off to the university to sit in a seminar room and prepare my lesson for today. I have eager, brilliant minds waiting for me to arouse them into greater quests for knowledge. How can I so easily lose myself in last year? When did flying become such a nightmare for me that even contemplating it, or seeing a seating plan, THINKING about the plane I'll board March 25th, is sufficient to constrict my throat and churn my gut?
When I was 11, I went with my mother to Champagne-Urbana. I had fun there. The 'vomit comet' we rode didn't even faze me. Before that, flights to California with my family, my brother noisily sick, me... fine. Bouncing in aisle seats, grinning at stewardesses, chattering with the captain when we got invited up to see clouds stream past. At 12, I went to Britain with Mum. It was fabulous. We sat in the cockpit, no windows for my eyes to lock on. Just a fat lady beside us who drank to excess. We laughed and quoted Terry Pratchett to one another. At 16, I flew solo for the first time, to visit my strange grandmother Euphrosyne. She paid for it, and I sat and accepted oatmeal cookies from kindly stewardesses, and enjoyed chicken filled with cheese. I watched Canada unroll under us, and I smiled to see my country. I leaned back, read... everything was great.
I remember when it changed. I don't understand, though, how the change could have such impact upon me. At 19, I boarded a flight in May to Greece. I remember saying to my seatmate, Derek, that flying was GREAT. That he'd enjoy it. I remember torment, then. I remember the plane rocking and shuddering, and recycled cigarette and cigar smoke, yelling Greek people. I remember crowding, and then sitting stationary at Boston. My body growing frenzied with the NEED for fresh air. If I could have flung myself out a window, I would have. I remember watching the movies on the seat in front of me, the screen bouncing with the seat's occupent, lending an air of pure nausea to Galaxy Quest. I watched the tiny white airplane moving on a projected path over a stylized Europe, flight time displayed with wind speed, temperature and so on. To this day, thinking of that display sickens me. I remember landing at long last, after 10 hours in that horrible jet. I wanted to die. The fear grew in me after our time in Greece, to the point that a day before we left the country, I was sweating to think that I would have to board a similar hell-plane to return home. I think I would have swam if I could have. I'd never thrown up on an airplane before. I shamed myself when we landed once mroe in Boston, and the sickness overcame me. I puked all over my own hands trying to get to the barf-bag. It was horrible.
When Chris and I flew out to Vancouver again, I felt fine, strangely. No sickness. And then on our honeymoon a year later, I sat on that Trans-Atlantic flight, and felt worse.... and worse...... and worse.... until disembarking at Heathrow, I couldn't even make it to the uncarpeted part of the ramp before my guts exploded all over the carpet. Chris, bless his heart, merely held my hair back as I left my mark on Heathrow. I remember rinsing my mouth, curled in misery with our luggage as we waited for the next leg of our trip to Spain. And I remember coming home. The flight from Barcelona to London was windy, the plane leaping and diving like a fish. I felt no sickness. I felt a wild exaltation. I would die, I knew it. I held Chris' hand as the London rooves approached perilously close, our poor plane gyrating like something maddened. It landed, we applauded. We didn't die. On the long flight home, I read Lord of the Rings while the Atlantic rolled somewhere far below us and my husband slept. I did not throw up. I did not panic. I endured, like an animal in a trap, waiting for its ending.
And then last year. I've never felt such terror. I couldn't believe its intensity. I broke down when I got into my hotel, crying loudly like a child for her mother. I fell on my quilted bed, buried my face in pillows, and wailed in gusts of pent-up emotion so great that after a few seconds they were silent, gaping mouth and snot leaking with tears into the cotton pillowcover. When I could breathe, I called Chris. Poor darling to be woken at midnight or 1am by a hysterical wife in Maryland. What could he say or do? I... I simply needed to know he was there. That he existed and so therefore did I. Thinking back to that night now, I feel tears in my eyes.
I'm so scared. They say a coward dies many deaths but a brave man only one. Well, I'm a coward to be anticipating this trip with such fear that I'm almost in tears two months before it.
I think I'll give my students a quiz today if I can't master my emotion.
I just booked my flight to Baltimore for the 25-28th trip. It's in March. Not even this week. Yet looking at the itinerary, I felt nauseated, just THINKING about stepping from that quivering carpeted gangplank smelling of recycled air, past the rippled plastic connector, the weathered aluminum, and into the tiny cylinder with stiff wings.The false greeting smiles, and the immediate wash of claustrophobia upon looking down the tube at the various coated humans removing their layers and stuffing them into compartments, each trying to create a brief moment of personal space amid the chaos of seating. Finding my seat, rocking my way down the bland carpeted floor, the noise all around me, peering at number after number until ah! That's mine! A window seat, excusing myself as I stuff laptop and coat above, shimmying my way past people settling in, to stare through a tiny circle into a world I am now denied - the outside! Two layers of thick transparency between me and fresh air. I won't breathe you for hours, air... just exhalations repeated. Finding the clip, using it. Fighting off incipient terror, fighting down the animal inside me who howls to flee home and burrow into my familiar safety. The uniformed person something to look at briefly before my eyes snap back to the window. I feel nauseated by motion without explanation, and that tiny window is my sole outlet to tell my sickened inner ear that the LURCH and shudder, and rocking as our tubular conveyance trundles back under guidance isn't a mirage. No, that gray tarmc underneath is moving, and therefore we are. Taxi-ing along, the attendant droning out, gesturing with truncated pieces of fabric and buckle - are you paid enough to do this? Can anyone be paid enough to experience this hell to my primate mind? Maybe it dulls you, again and again, but I am alive with sickness and fear.
Gum in my mouth, spicy cinnamon, eyes locked on that window, at the snowy grass outside. Chris, I want Chris, I want to be home. Tears stining my eyes. Is everyone this frightened? Why am I such a coward? Once I loved flying. Once, I enjoyed the thrill. Am I so locked to my attachments that being bereft of them even for a day or two reduces me to sobbing misery?
Apparently so.
Flash back to the lounge. Last year, this was. March as well, earlier though. Standing for my first trip solo in a decade. Watching the plane to be ours taxi up. Watching other travellers. A group going to Portugal via Detroit, where this first would go and I would wait for four hours. A man sounding like Jimmy Stewart, conducting his business on a cell phone. Explaining that he was merely embarking on the first of many hops, all the way to Colorado. Experienced people for whom this was merely a thing they knew well, could endure. My own growing terror as I sat there, trying to take comfort in their calm, happy voices. My hideous fear, welling in me like black water until I had to get up, move, do something or scream. Walking like a caged animal by the window as they loaded the jet, staring at it, feeling tears in my eyes. Hoping to every god that no kindly stranger would touch my shoulder and ask what was wrong, because my fragile self control was a breaking thread and any compassion would bring forth gales of sobs, confessions of fear.
What a coward.
I'm sitting here in my safe home, my cats in the front room, my husband upstairs playing music. I'm heading off to the university to sit in a seminar room and prepare my lesson for today. I have eager, brilliant minds waiting for me to arouse them into greater quests for knowledge. How can I so easily lose myself in last year? When did flying become such a nightmare for me that even contemplating it, or seeing a seating plan, THINKING about the plane I'll board March 25th, is sufficient to constrict my throat and churn my gut?
When I was 11, I went with my mother to Champagne-Urbana. I had fun there. The 'vomit comet' we rode didn't even faze me. Before that, flights to California with my family, my brother noisily sick, me... fine. Bouncing in aisle seats, grinning at stewardesses, chattering with the captain when we got invited up to see clouds stream past. At 12, I went to Britain with Mum. It was fabulous. We sat in the cockpit, no windows for my eyes to lock on. Just a fat lady beside us who drank to excess. We laughed and quoted Terry Pratchett to one another. At 16, I flew solo for the first time, to visit my strange grandmother Euphrosyne. She paid for it, and I sat and accepted oatmeal cookies from kindly stewardesses, and enjoyed chicken filled with cheese. I watched Canada unroll under us, and I smiled to see my country. I leaned back, read... everything was great.
I remember when it changed. I don't understand, though, how the change could have such impact upon me. At 19, I boarded a flight in May to Greece. I remember saying to my seatmate, Derek, that flying was GREAT. That he'd enjoy it. I remember torment, then. I remember the plane rocking and shuddering, and recycled cigarette and cigar smoke, yelling Greek people. I remember crowding, and then sitting stationary at Boston. My body growing frenzied with the NEED for fresh air. If I could have flung myself out a window, I would have. I remember watching the movies on the seat in front of me, the screen bouncing with the seat's occupent, lending an air of pure nausea to Galaxy Quest. I watched the tiny white airplane moving on a projected path over a stylized Europe, flight time displayed with wind speed, temperature and so on. To this day, thinking of that display sickens me. I remember landing at long last, after 10 hours in that horrible jet. I wanted to die. The fear grew in me after our time in Greece, to the point that a day before we left the country, I was sweating to think that I would have to board a similar hell-plane to return home. I think I would have swam if I could have. I'd never thrown up on an airplane before. I shamed myself when we landed once mroe in Boston, and the sickness overcame me. I puked all over my own hands trying to get to the barf-bag. It was horrible.
When Chris and I flew out to Vancouver again, I felt fine, strangely. No sickness. And then on our honeymoon a year later, I sat on that Trans-Atlantic flight, and felt worse.... and worse...... and worse.... until disembarking at Heathrow, I couldn't even make it to the uncarpeted part of the ramp before my guts exploded all over the carpet. Chris, bless his heart, merely held my hair back as I left my mark on Heathrow. I remember rinsing my mouth, curled in misery with our luggage as we waited for the next leg of our trip to Spain. And I remember coming home. The flight from Barcelona to London was windy, the plane leaping and diving like a fish. I felt no sickness. I felt a wild exaltation. I would die, I knew it. I held Chris' hand as the London rooves approached perilously close, our poor plane gyrating like something maddened. It landed, we applauded. We didn't die. On the long flight home, I read Lord of the Rings while the Atlantic rolled somewhere far below us and my husband slept. I did not throw up. I did not panic. I endured, like an animal in a trap, waiting for its ending.
And then last year. I've never felt such terror. I couldn't believe its intensity. I broke down when I got into my hotel, crying loudly like a child for her mother. I fell on my quilted bed, buried my face in pillows, and wailed in gusts of pent-up emotion so great that after a few seconds they were silent, gaping mouth and snot leaking with tears into the cotton pillowcover. When I could breathe, I called Chris. Poor darling to be woken at midnight or 1am by a hysterical wife in Maryland. What could he say or do? I... I simply needed to know he was there. That he existed and so therefore did I. Thinking back to that night now, I feel tears in my eyes.
I'm so scared. They say a coward dies many deaths but a brave man only one. Well, I'm a coward to be anticipating this trip with such fear that I'm almost in tears two months before it.
I think I'll give my students a quiz today if I can't master my emotion.