Flying these days….

I will be going home for the holidays and lately this has become sort of an issue for me.

For a while now (8-10 years, can’t remember exactly when…) I have started to have these predictions that I would die with some sort of metal inside of me - probably the reason I fear knives more than guns. I am not saying that I will die soon, but that one possibility would be stabbed, gored, cut, whatever….I know it sounds dark, but trust me I am using this to explain my fear of flying.

So now that you know what kind of mindset I am in and how somehow I feel as if flying might bother me a little bit you will understand how getting in a plane and sitting in it for hours on end is literally making me VERY anxious. Since a plane is made out of sheet metal and it travels at speeds in excess of 500mph, and that anything at that speed might be used as a cutting tool, EVERY time I fly and we hit turbulance I panic.

It never bothered me as a child, but now as a gown-up this has been the single fear that I have to face. Sweat, heart racing, panic, confusion, all the feelings of an anxiety attack and it all hits me at once. I have come to a point where it is almost not worth it to fly home, but what do I tell my family. I know some people will not fly - no matter what. Maybe I am becoming one of them. I can not deal with the panic every time I have to fly home. Its true that as the flight goes on I do settle a little bit. The exhaustion and lenght of the trip makes me a little bit at ease.

I have considered help, after all this is family that I only get to see twice a year and giving that up will be too hard.

Now on to the worst part. Plane crashes have been happening more often and I understand that with more planes in the sky the numbers of planes crashing should increase too - simple math. BUT, the amount of planes crashing in the part of the world that I am going to has increased and that does not help me deal with my problem. Control tower workers are on strike all the time, pilots are falling asleep in the cockpit and anything else in between is causing these planes to come down.

I have had some dreams where this actually was happening and now with the holidays around the corner I hope I do not get to live them. Again, these are horrible feelings that I have only while flying. The sense of not having control over your life is a horrible one.

JH

PS.: If anyone objects to this post, please le tme know. I can take it down.