Airports

I have been spending a lot of time in airports. 

There was a time when I enjoyed flying. I thought it was exciting and worry free. Not that I did a lot of it. 

When Rob and I married I began to fly more. Now I feel like I fly a lot.

One day I felt nervous. For no good reason. No trauma. No mildly bad experiences. Once I felt nervous it sort of escalated. I wouldn’t want to fly and so I’d worry ahead of time. Then I’d be more nervous. It got to the point where I literally felt sick. One time I even went to urgent care thinking I was having a heart attack. Super lame. 

So I began to pray for help. Eventually I was indeed blessed with a flying miracle and I felt better about flying. Like many of life’s miracles it requires work on my part. I have things I do to help myself. I have a list of pilots that I know and like, and who I don’t think of as reckless. I remind myself of them: Rob, Wade, Al, Steve, Steve, Sterling, President Uchtdorf. 

I have my song that I sing. I studied flying. Not the mechanics or engineering but other stuff. And it turns out it is really safe. So I remind myself. 

I also have games on my phone that I only play in the air. It distracts me. 

I also accidentally did some exposure therapy on myself since I didn’t stop flying. 

All those things help the miracle. 

And I am calm, and grateful. Although I still don’t like to fly. I do like the going places and seeing loved ones!

Today almost changed my mind. Here are some things you don’t want to hear your pilot say: “there’s a lot of rough air so they are rerouting us, don’t worry we have enough gas to make it.” I was NOT worried until that announcement. “Folks, that’s turbulence. Buckle up, I didn’t see it and we are flying through the storm” I didn’t see it??? “I’ll let the planes behind me know”, okay??

We did land. So there’s that.