Meet Me Where I Am
another post in the Big Emotions series
Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water.
Flying at Night, Ted Kooser
I’m flying today. I envy those people for whom a flight is all about the possibilities, the adventure, the visit. I am afraid to fly, afraid of the possibility of falling, of having to grab a stranger’s hand, an intimacy of endings.
When other people are flying, I imagine myself holding up the plane in space. When I am flying, I must use a significant portion of my energy to remain relaxed, to be someone other than myself, to mimic the bored expressions around me. I can breathe through only so much turbulence. I once found myself gripping the thigh of the young man next to me, who fortunately could recognize the violation as anxiety. I will never forget my gratitude when he took out his earbuds and started up a conversation.
For weeks before I fly, I feel tense, irritable, anxious. It’s hard to focus. Everything feels more difficult. I’m aware now that all of this is made worse by my brain wiring, but I have not yet learned to make peace with that tension.
From as early as I can remember, the sight of a lone plane in the sky would make me feel untethered. As if I too were suspended in liminal space, neither here nor there. As if all around me were stars pulsing, dying, falling, soaring; as if I were part of that cosmic shining dust.
My first airplane ride was in a two-seater. It was at night. A friend’s dad took me up and we circled over the sleepy towns, just a few lights on in the houses below. It was magical and surreal. Everything seemed so still and small. I do not remember feeling scared, just lost, as if I had become part of the dark and quiet, as if I no longer had a place within those lighted houses.
When I am adrift in my anxiety – whether on the plane or beforehand – facts do not comfort me. Many well meaning people have told me how safe planes are, how the possibility of my death is far more likely in my old Subaru than up in the skies.
What they do not tell me is that I am already stardust, that I can ground myself, even in the air, by taking stock of what is physically around me. Their facts do not remind me of the adventure that waits or my own resilience. They are meeting me not where I am but where they want me to be.
There are some who understand, who meet me in this point of fear, who do not attempt to remove my fear as if subtracting in a math equation. They offer the ways they manage their own fears. They show up in understanding.
I am flying today. I must meet myself where I am. Meeting myself with compassion. Packing a great book and hoping for a fellow traveler to whom I might listen. Embracing the wide range of big emotions and knowing that my anxiety lives alongside my kindness.
Where are you meeting yourself today?