on fear.

like most of you, dear readers, i bought many 3 oz liquids, charged my electronic devices, and headed for the airport this holiday weekend. i had a wednesday night flight into boston, and a saturday evening flight returning home to chicago. like most of you, i went through the lines, security checkpoints, and life preserver demonstrations. but unlike most of you, i was in a blind panic the whole time.

saying i don't like to fly is putting it mildly. i can't set foot in an airport without my throat tightening and my brain projecting the image of the plane ripping apart over the island like the series premier of lost.

i classify it is a combination of obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety disorder, panic attacks, and claustrophobia all rolled into one. as soon as someone finds out i have a "fear of flying" (which they always do with air quotes, which always makes me want to throw them into a propellor blade), one of two things happens:

1. i get a physics lesson. this always starts with an eye roll, a heavy sigh, and a literal pulling up of the sleeves. "penny," they'll say on the exhale, "don't you know that planes want to be in the air? it's the most natural thing in the world. the science proves that this is the safest way to travel." which then leads to my LEAST favorite fun fact in the history of time: "besides, don't you know you're more likely to die in a car accident on the way to the airport than in a plane crash?"

listen assholes, i'm only going to say this once. i'm the lucky survivor of two near-death car accidents, both of which have left me with some pretty nasty physical and mental scars. i understand safety, fear, and the likelihood of travel accidents. but at the end of the day, i walked/limped/was carried away from the wreckage, and i'm sitting here now, virtually no worse for the wear. but people don't walk away from plane crashes. they're mass casualties, violent deaths that result in the very foundation of our society being shaken. but i still prefer this lecture more than...

2. the person i'm speaking with immediately shares with me their worst flight story. "you're afraid of flying? yeah, i know what you mean. this one time, i was on a plane over the rockies, and we hit an air pocket and fell 3,000 feet in a single second." "you don't like to fly? once, i was in the air, and our engine just stopped working!" i don't know if these jerks just like watching me burst into tears, or if they think they're relating to me in some way, but it NEVER helps. it goes in my mental rolodex of horrifying shit that happens on airplanes, and i obsessively think about it in the days and weeks leading up to a flight. unfortunately, there isn't anything a person can say that talks me off the mental ledge i find myself at every boarding call.

getting on the plane is carefully practiced routine, 37 or more steps on the jet-bridge is unlucky, i have to step onto the plane with my right foot, and i have literally yelled at elderly people on southwest until they have given me my preferred seat; the one behind the emergency exit window row, over the wing, on the left side of the plane. yes, i sound crazy. no, i do not believe it helps. but try and mess with my routine and i will saw through your jugular with my bare teeth.

i have to listen to the safety demonstrations. i have to buckle my seat belt as soon as i sit down. i CANNOT ever get up to go to the bathroom (and yes, this applies to international flights). i never ask for anything from the flight attendants, because i want them to be alert and attentive to the captain when he inevitably radios over to them that we're all going down.

takeoff is the hardest part. i play a counting game with myself, partially inspired by that sweet but totally untrue scene in say anything where john cusak is telling that girl who never made another movie that she just has to count until the fasten seat belt sign goes off, and then everything will be fine. i count from the second the engines fire up and we haul ass down the runway until we are well into our cruising altitude, taking note of each and every bump, cloud, noise, and irregularity compared to my memories of other flights.

i wish it wasn't this way. i've tried drugs, talk therapy, immersion therapy, sleep deprivation, yoga, meditating, and avoidance to combat this. none of it has worked. i sat in the boston airport on saturday, unable to breathe, unable to stop crying, CONVINCED that these were my last moments on earth, thinking "why is nobody else around me as upset as i am? am i really going to die like this? how is a flight attendant named brandi with an i going to save my life?!"

i don't want to be coddeled. i don't want anyone to ever have to experience what i feel and the panic i go through at an airport. i don't want to be trivialized for having an irrational fear that impacts my life a lot more than it should. i don't want fake sympathy. i want people to just understand.

but i'd settle for an amtrak gift certificate. and a bottle of wine for the trip.