Lift

The sky would only hurt you if you never left the ground before. -- Tim Easton

I was nine and airborne when I learned the definition of phobia. Buckled into my window seat, watching the Orlando lights recede below, I asked my mother: "What if the plane goes down?"

"We'll cross that bridge if we come to it," she calmly replied.

Twenty minutes later, the DC-9 pitched and shuddered violently in the rough blackness. A flight attendant, red-eyed and rough-voiced, announced our passage through "extended turbulence;" she lost her footing mid-sentence. I looked out upon the narrow sea of tears and clasped hands and cursed myself for cursing us. Some passengers breathed into paper bags; others sat statue-like, pale and breathless, eyes slammed shut; all of us hoped this was the worst of it.

And then the bottom dropped out. The plane plummeted for a neverending split-second, bellyflopping into the void and eliciting screams from both children and adults. The actual fall was no doubt much smaller than it felt -- likely only a few hundred feet and not the thousands I would later claim -- but to a nine-year-old, it seemed catastrophic. The plane soon recovered and climbed above the turbulence to cruise smoothly for the remainder of the flight, but I was too far gone. By the time we landed in Detroit, I was officially afraid of flying.

Since that traumatic experience, I have flown sporadically to destinations as far as London and Rome, but despite the uneventfulness of nearly all of these flights, I have yet to completely conquer my fear. Tomorrow, I will fly to Seattle to see my friends married; like it has before every flight I've taken in the last fourteen years, "the drop" keeps replaying in my mind. I think of the reassuring facts I gathered from websites aimed at assuaging phobic flyers' fears, and though my mind understands the overwhelming statistical evidence of air travel's safety, my palms still sweat when I picture myself packed into an aluminum tube hurtling through the sky.

The irrationality of phobias is widely known, especially to those plagued by them, but the sheer embarrassment they cause sometimes escapes perception. I cringe explaining my fear to friends who regularly fly between coasts; some of them have spent more time on planes than they have behind steering wheels. Even I know that no convincing justifcation exists, yet remain trapped by a deeply ingrained physical response. I'm arguing for a cause I never chose to support.

No one decides to contract a phobia, but one must decide to overcome it. Two Decembers ago, after eight earthbound years, I agreed to fly to Florida for an equestrian awards banquet. Takeoff and turbulence still terrified me through the hangover haze of the Dramamine, but I somehow kept my composure and deplaned in one piece. At the time, the utter foreignness of the experience, the disconnection from reality implicit in traveling miles above Earth, eclipsed its significance. Only later did I realize that my initial reacquaintance with the sky had torn open a new world of travel. Without Florida, I would not have known Italy, and would have balked at the now-looming Seattle trip. Flying still frays my nerves beyond description -- combating the phobia will remain a lifelong struggle -- but thanks to once choice (and to the soporific marvel known as Tylenol PM), it is no longer an impossibility.

So when I prematurely shake myself from sleep tomorrow morning and set out for the airport, I will remember to remember the comforting facts I've learned: that the plane is just a fish swimming in air and physically cannot fall from the sky; that the human body feels turbulence more than turbulence affects the plane; that all aircraft have stabilizing systems. My heart will still pound and my palms will still sweat upon takeoff, but with the help of a few pills, I will hopefully remain asleep as we traverse the limbo between towns and time zones. And what better reward than a weekend of warmth, laughter, and celebration with my dearest friends? I can't think of a better incentive for facing my fear once again.