When my brother Sean called me today, I was at the Whole Foods market on the corner of 24th and 7th Ave, juggling two giant cartons of organic lactose-free milk and a good-for-you coffee muffin. I had to sit down in the frozen foods section because he had an anxiety attack at the airport, and I realized that my myriad freak-outs regarding flying have rendered me useless to help in such situations. Sean's experience today is similar to my airplane troubles; both of us just started getting zorked out after a bunch of really bad flights. He had a cross-country jaunt two weeks ago that was apparently 2 1/2 hours of being put in a paint shaker even the flight attendants strapped themselves down for the better part of a thousand miles.
Sean asked me a question I've been asking myself all year: why are we capable of developing such chronic anxieties at a time in our lives when we should be mellowing out? You'd think that a lifetime of three decades, stretched thin by the friction of experience, would give us the ammunition to care less about the things we can't control. God knows or should I say the Buddha knows – I've been trying to be good at relinquishing control, having read all the books by the Dalai Lama, along with Pema Chodron's extraordinary When Things Fall Apart, among others. And still I'm finding myself inheriting more childlike fears as I get older.
Suffice to say I told Sean to have a tequila shot and a very large bourbon & ginger - I mean, that's what I would do. I have a stash of Xanax and Ambien for flying, but I really think heavy drinking is the ticket. Hell, if there's turbulence, you'll think it's funny and if there isn't, you'll sleep the stale, dehydrated slumber of the hungover traveler.
One last word about this. I'm not scared of the plane crashing, I'm not frightened of on-board terrorism or a bomb in the cargo. I know the plane is utterly solid and no commercial jet has ever crashed due to wind disturbance while cruising. I even like the act of flying. I just fucking hate turbulence. Seriously, I'd rather walk to California than sit through fifteen minutes of turbulence. And like Sean and I have found out, some things in life just build up in your body like mercury, things that we're unable to expunge in a normal fashion. I was never afraid to fly as a child, and somewhere in the late 80s, I had one too many shitty flights, and now I have to drug myself up. Tessa says that one of the keys to sobriety is to "accept life on life's terms," but sometimes that's a tall fucking order.
Posted by at September 17, 2002 8:57 PM