I can't tell you exactly where it came from. In my first memory of flying I was able to stand comfortably in front of the seat and my mom was still taller than me even though she was sitting down. I remember being most upset about the fact that my brother wouldn't let me look out the window, which was Not Fair. Sometime between that episode and the few flights I took as a teenager, and then the more flights I took as an adult, fear set in.
What used to happen was that if I had to take multiple flights in a short period of time (say, a year), by the time I got to the third or so flight it was old hat and my fear of flying had melted away. This changed just last fall when I went to Portland. On the way back we hit some mad turbulence. At one point the plane was in a freefall for probably two or three seconds. It felt much longer, of course. But it was definitely long enough for full screams to have been uttered throughout the plan before we "landed" back on normal air. The two guys next to me were military men; they started whooping it up like we were on a rollercoaster, toasting the plane with their drinks as they laughed. Then the guy next to me looked at me, sobered up, and said, "Ma'am, are you all right?" I said I was but I wasn't. I was in a dead panic. It didn't go away and even numerous flights later, it still didn't go away.
What happens now is that weeks before my flight takes off I have a gnawing anxiety eating at me every day while I imagine the fear that I'll feel, the panicked state I'll be in, when that turbulence hits. Even if it's not bad, it'll still scare the bejeezus out of me. And I know this. And I anticipate this. So I have anxiety for weeks leading up to the flight and anxiety all through the flight and blind panic when there's turbulence.
I meditate. I pray. I make myself right with world. I weigh my past actions against my future plans and decide whether I'm okay with the concept of dying today. I take deep breaths. I tell myself everything will be just fine. These things help sometimes.
I flew to Chicago last week. At some point in the midst of my pre-flight-weeks-of-anxiety it occurred to me to wonder where all this fear came from. Where all this anxiety came from. I used to be a super-relaxed person. Go with the flow, calm in the face of adversity, come what may sort of individual. Where did that go and why was it replaced with this? Not just the fear of flying, but all the anxiety I ever get.
Mind you, this was a passing thought while I walked to work. I got as far as this before my thoughts turned elsewhere: When I was younger, part of my relaxed state was my acceptance that I had no power in my life. When I grew older and developed power over my life, I hit the opposite extreme in which I have near-constant anxiety in my drive to have say over the things that affect me. I went to the other end of the pendulum.
On the way to Chicago, it was an overnight flight. I took a sleeping pill. I took some Jack Daniels. I took some light reading. I took my husband's hand when the flight got bumpy. I made it through just fine.
Chicago was awesome.
On the flight back, during the day, we were trapped in two cramped seats behind two seats that couldn't go back in the upright position. The man in front of me was very large and so whenever he moved, his seat moved from approximately 16 inches in front of my face to approximately 10 inches in front of my face (slight exaggeration). I prayed and meditated and read my light reading. When the turbulence hit, it wasn't too bad. But then the guy ahead of me moved and the seat hit my knee and it startled me and in that moment of startle the turbulence got much worse. It still wasn't bad, but with the startle I was primed, and so flew into a full-fledged panic, whispering frantically "it'sokayit'sokayit'sokayit'sokay." Michael jumped into action, holding my hand, kissing my face, soothing me and calming me.
It was not okay at all.
After calming down a bit, I decided I'd had enough of this. It was time to get to the bottom of it all. Time to make this fear Go Away. So I went into a purposeful meditation. I don't know if there's a name for this state, but I'm calling it that. Meditative state-- calm, inward-- but with purpose. My point to begin with was to define for myself what it is I believe in, especially figuring out this whole Fate/Chance thing.
Here's what I came up with:
I believe that everything that happens in this universe happens in reaction to something else. Many other things. I believe that, in this way, someone much smarter than me could figure out everything that ever has, ever could, or ever will happen. But it would pretty much take an omniscient being to do this. People? No way. It's way bigger than us. So much bigger than us that the pieces of happenings that we see look to us like Chance only.
I believe that Chance is the sum total of the happenings of the universe-- occurring in a pattern, maybe along some plan, but way too big for us to see. Chance is the stuff in this universal web that we don't get to understand with our puny human brains/perspectives.
I believe that Fate is when Chance happens at a small enough scale for us to glimpse some of the pattern. It's small enough for us people to look over a line of events and see how point A got to point B and what that means for us. Fate is the human-understanding-sized pieces of Chance. Chance and Fate are exactly the same thing. Sometimes the pattern moves on our behalf. Sometimes it moves actively against our behalves. Sometimes (most times) it has absolutely nothing to do with us as individuals or us as species. But when we see it, when we understand it, then we know Fate.
I believe that people have power within Fate/Chance. True, the choices we make are never without cause. Everything we do is in reaction to other things that have been done, in the way our emotions compel us, in the way that our brains justify us, in the way that our autonomic systems evolved to conduct us. Our power is one small piece of Fate/Chance. Our actions, the oceans' currents, the life cycle of a flower, the creation and destruction of stars, the submolecular movement of atoms-- it all works within this pattern. Our words and deeds and actions have power to affect the small scales, the human scales, of Fate/Chance. We can help or harm others. We can help or harm life. We can affect things. And if our choices are part of the huge pattern, well, the pattern is still too large for us to divine. This is Free Will.
Right around this revelation, I remembered my earlier thought that my fear comes from my lifetime pendulum swing of powerlessness to power.
When I was young, I had no power. When life hurt me it was due to Chance (those things that have nothing to do with me but happen to me regardless) or to human power (those people who hurt me with the power they held over me).
When I grew, I developed my own power, and I used it to improve my life. Growing up was a heady thing for me. I became powerful. I could prevent bad things from happening. I could make good things happen. I could leave bad people behind. I could do things.
So assuming that I took this power and used it as often and as much as I could, one could see how I might become something of a tenacious, list-making, type A control freak. An effective one, I might add. I really like getting things done.
And assuming that I realized that growing up was heady and that I enjoyed this power, one could see how I might be just fine with that.
But assuming that I never actually took the time to consciously think about this gained power beyond "I like it", one could see how I might implicitly conflate power with control.
And here's what I believe: I believe that we as individuals, as groups, as a species, have the power to affect ourselves, each other, the world, and Fate/Chance. We have the power to affect these things. We are not in control of these things.
In all of my time as a powerful woman adult, I have never once been in control of anything. I just never realized it. Without considering what these things meant, I operated as though having power to affect my life was the same as being able to control it. And so when placed in situations in which I have no control (realize I have no control), such as flying in planes that hit bad turbulence, I feel powerless. I feel negated.
Only, I never had control. I could get hit by a bus. My job or my school could be entirely defunded no matter how well I do. A meteor could strike Earth; Yosemite could erupt; my plane could crash. I can't even control my body. I can walk where I want to go, but I get injured and then I can't just walk. I can eat well and exercise, but I can still develop a tumor. I might have had a cancer-causing genetic condition. I can't control these things. I have never been in control.
On the plane from Chicago, in my fear and my purposeful meditation, I thought to myself,
"I will not lose my power if I let go of my illusions. I will not lose my power if I let go of my illusions."
Many times. A mantra. Until it calmed me. Until I believed it. Then I told myself what my illusions were.
"Power is not control. I have power. I have no control. I will not lose my power if I let go of my illusions."
I thought about the things I "have" to do-- job and school and caring for others and making the world a better place.
"I have power. I have responsibilities. But I do not have control. I will not lose my power if I let go of my illusions."
Another mantra. And again I repeated it over and over, trying to settle my fear. I don't have power over the plane, over the flight, over the air, over the pilot, over a lack of meteorites falling from the sky and slicing through the engines. But I am not powerless from this lack of control. Because while I had power on the ground, in my daily life, I never had control. Control was only an illusion. Feeling out-of-control on the plane was only an illusion. Because I had never had control.
And then my heart leapt. And I understood where I was going in this purposeful meditation.
"I have power. But I do not have control. And for this I am free."
Realizing I am not in control means that I can stop being scared about not being in control. Realizing that I have power means that I can stop being scared, because I always have this power. Sometimes I am better able to use it, but it never leaves me.
I wrote in my notebook, "I've come a long way in three hours."
The last six hours of the flight were much easier. Even the turbulence. Even the landing.
My next step will be to internalize these revelations. I've had years and years of internalizing a fear of losing control. Now it's time to internalize the disconnect between power and control.
***
My surgery is on Friday. After completing paperwork and getting preparation instructions yesterday, I was kind of bummed and somber with the idea of surgery. But this morning I was happy again, because hey. I get to keep my boobs. This surgery is the good outcome and it'll all be over soon. This is another exercise in my lack of control. But I have power. I have the power of blind optimism and denial if I want it, and happiness as I look forward to the things that come next. This is going to be a great summer after all.
