Well Traveled

When I was a child, I remember vividly how much traveling we did as a family. So much so that traveling continues to be something I value above all else today. We would take road trips spanning four days across half the country to visit family in Texas, fly to visit my uncle in Hawaii and everything in between. From a very young age my parents would also send my to fly on my own to visit family and flying was something that I always associated with fun. I knew that if I was getting on a plane or getting in the car that meant I was going to get to spend time with family and I could’ve wished for nothing else.

Fast forward to being in my twenties, flying didn’t feel so free and exciting anymore. It was something that was filled with fear and trepidation for me and almost always something I was doing alone. I would often think to myself, “How did this happen?”, remembering my childhood and knowing that flying was something I looked forward to and enjoyed. When I was 26 I decided to fly to Europe by myself. It was something that I had always wanted to do and I didn’t know anyone who would prioritize taking time off and spending money on a trip like that so I told myself if I wanted to go I needed to do it alone or risk never doing it at all. I remember calling my Dad when I was sitting in the airport and telling him how afraid I was to get on the plane. I was panicked. My heart racing, thoughts flooding my brain and I felt wholly unsafe. I’ve spent so much of my life being afraid that I am used to having to force myself to do things while in that state of mind so at the time I was no stranger to “being afraid and doing it anyway.” So, I did get on the plane and I had one of the best, most memorable trips of my life.

When I was twenty eight I was back in that airport about to take my second trip to Europe. Back in 2016 I met someone on a free walking tour, Sara, who instantly became my best friend and we have been traveling the world together ever since. I don’t often take the time to really think about how special that is but as I am sitting here now writing this blog, I can really feel the gravity of how uncommon that is and how lucky we were to find each other. It was almost as if an angel from above placed her there for me, knowing that all I had wanted for many years was someone to share my life with that had the same spirit for adventure that I did. So, in 2019, I went back to Europe to visit her in Copenhagen where she’s from. My old friend anxiety came with me to the airport that day as it always chose to do. This time my feelings of panic were extremely high. I was crying, having a panic attack at the airport and every bone in my body was screaming go home. I made calls to friends and my boyfriend at the time as I was sitting at my gate, staring out the windows at the airplanes lined up, getting ready to go on their next adventure. I was calling them in an attempt to get reassurance that I wasn’t about to crash to my fiery death in this airplane. I suddenly felt claustrophobic, feeling as though the walls of the airport were closing in on me, wondering what the people watching me cry and panic in the airport must’ve thought of me. I felt like if I got on that plane I would lose my mind and I would want to get off and wouldn’t be able to. I looked at that airplane and saw death, panic, fear, an internal sense that if I got on that airplane that I wouldn’t come home. This was the closest I have ever actually come to not getting on an airplane due to my feelings of panic but, I put my brave pants on and I stepped onto the plane anyway, just like I’d been doing for my entire life.

I am setting the scene of this fear around flying to help illustrate how important it was to me when I was able to realize where all of this fear was actually coming from. When I did make the connection, it was such a DUH moment for me, like, wow, how come you never thought of that before? I had spent many sessions in therapy trying to work through my fear of flying with my therapist and it would always help a little bit but never resolved the actual underlying issue that was leading to the way that I was feeling.

But one day, it clicked. When I was ten, my family and I went on a trip to Disney World. It was me, my mom and dad and my mom’s parents all traveling together. I won’t go into much detail in this post about the circumstances but my mom died on this trip, was killed actually. So, not only did this thing (traveling) that I had adored my entire life suddenly become something I unconsciously started to associate with loss, I also had boarded a plane with my family intact and had to return home with it broken. As I mentioned above, it seemed almost silly to me that I hadn’t been able to fully understand this until I was thirty years old because it seems so obvious now. Of course I was so afraid of flying now. Due to this enhanced understanding of why I was feeling the way I was it helped provide clarity and in turn my anxiety became less intense around flying. That’s the thing about mental health - the more awareness you can create around what is really going on for you and more understanding and patience you can apply to yourself, the better you’ll feel. Your anxiety will not go away but it will become easier to manage. Not something you have to fight so hard anymore. My current partner has a deep love of flying and airplanes and has intentionally taught my a lot about aviation and how planes work and that has further eradicated my anxiety around flying. I still, to this day at 32 get a sense of dread before a trip, a feeling that my life is going to change forever, that I might not come back, that I might die but now I understand why I’m feeling this way, where it comes from and am able to remind myself that I don’t actually have anything to be afraid of, it’s just my body reminding me of my loss.

I’ve continued to travel despite my sometimes crippling anxiety since I noticed it. Going to Europe twice, Thailand, Mexico, and now in two days I am heading to Egypt. A place I’ve wanted to visit since I was a child. It’s a 15 hour flight and I don’t feel scared at all - I actually feel excited and I’m glad that I can continue to carry on traveling and seeing as much as the world as I possibly can while I’m still here to experience it.