The Only Way Out Is Through

I’m terrified of flying. Well that’s not true, I love flying; I’m afraid of crashing & burning. The terror doesn’t actually have that much of an impact on my life. I fly a hell of a lot (this year alone 15 flights--not including layovers), but I do limit my international flights: South Africa is flat out of the question, as is Australia & New Zealand (although I got an invitation to Fiji today so we’ll see).

Before The Accident (my life is divided into 3 phases: Before The Accident, After The Accident, After My Mama’s Death), I was really into flying, after the accident not so much. But things really came to a head on a flight back to Chicago after returning from my “gap year” (we totally didn’t call it that back then) overseas, when the plane dropped several thousand feet suddenly. And it’s getting worse every year.

I post about it on my Facebook page & it’s become a thing about yams (long story, nevermind). I will also post during flights if the turbulence is bad. After one such post, a friend offered to gift me 4 EMDR sessions with her (the last one ended up being sensorimotor therapy & boy is that wild) to try to nip this thing in the bud.

It came out in one of the sessions that basically my body views it as a betrayal whenever I get on a plane. While my conscious mind has no memory of the pain & fear that I endured crawling out of the burning vehicle on 2 broken legs, my body certainly remembers it; and cannot believe that I keep risking it happening again by getting on these goddamn metal tubes that fly.

I was shocked. And I kinda feel stuck. What can I do with that information? How can I apologize to my body for the repeated betrayals? How do I convince my body that that is totally not my intention?

It’s very uncomfortable. So I’m just sitting with it, sitting with that discomfort. I started a conversation with my body about the things that we want to do, and getting an agreement from my body that these are in fact the things we want to do. And then I explained that this, this flying, this being trapped in this scary vehicle that could make my body have to save us again, enduring unimaginable pain while doing so, is currently the only way to achieve the things we want to achieve. It’s not clear if my body is buying it.

I know that my entire life’s work is built around listening to the body, heeding it’s wisdom, but what’s the wisdom in my body’s belief that I’m deliberately & selfishly putting it in harm’s way? I cannot, and don’t want to live a life where I’m literally grounded, unable to move beyond these imaginary borders of city, state, nation, continent. But neither do I want to be at war with my body.

So I sit with this discomfort. And I hope that starting the conversation will be enough to shift it. Now that my body knows that it’s been heard, perhaps we can come to some sort of agreement, some sort of way to move together rather than in conflict.

“The only way out is through.” So I sit with this discomfort & wait for it to guide me through.