Backpacking Europe, False Starts, and a Flying Trapeze

My parents and Chewie brought me to the airport in mid-June. It was a couple weeks after my mom’s last surgery, and she was feeling nearly normal already. I’d obsessively planned for this trip for 2 and ½ years, and finally, FINALLY, after a million obstacles and delays, it could actually happen. I’d quit my job, moved out of my house, and put everything in storage. Michael was away on a road trip of his own (which we planned to coincide with my trip). My mom was better. It all felt surreal and too good to be true, but at the same time I also felt a deep, sinking feeling as we left the house that morning. We arrived at the airport, I got my ticket at the ticket counter, and then I went back where my parents were waiting with my bags and Chewie to tell them goodbye. And that’s when I started silently weeping like an unhinged lunatic in the middle of the airport because I was too terrified to physically get on the plane.

A couple of things that are true about me: 1, traveling is one of my biggest aspirations in life and has been since I can remember. When I’m traveling, I feel most like myself. And 2, I’m TERRIFIED of flying.

I wasn’t always terrified of flying. I’ve been on well over 100 planes in my life. What started as a vague nervousness grew and grew and grew into what eventually became a fully-fledged phobia. I don’t know why exposure therapy often doesn’t work for people with flight phobias, but it certainly doesn’t work for me. I know all the facts and statistics about flying. Trust me, I know. I know how safe flying is. I know a weird amount about how planes work because I hoped that becoming more informed would help. I also know I’m not the only person who logically knows these things and still feels this way. And though there is comfort in being able to logically acknowledge statistics and in knowing you aren’t alone, it doesn’t do a lot of good when it comes to physically getting on a plane.

My dream of backpacking Europe has been in constant development since probably 2^nd grade when we studied Ancient Greece in Mrs. Spiers’s class. But more literally, the active plans for this trip have been in the works since the end of 2019. I’d been to Europe a couple of times before for summer jobs during college, but I’d never gone and had the freedom to travel independently. I saved and planned for about two years so I could take 2 weeks off work and visit Portugal and Morocco. It was incredible, but I knew even while I was on the trip that it wasn’t long enough to satisfy the backpacking dream I’d always had. I started planning where I’d go next while I was in Portugal. By the time I got home, Covid was already spreading. Within 3 months, the whole world had changed.

A lot of things happened during the next two years of the pandemic. I lost both of my grandmothers (after losing my grandpa just a year before), two beloved dogs, went through a bad breakup, and we got my mom’s cancer diagnosis. I dealt with the stress of it all by planning my trip. It made me feel better to have something tangible to look forward to and a goal to work toward. I spent countless hours filling notebooks with research and plans. I bought my ticket to Europe during the lull in Covid that happened after vaccines were available but before the Delta variant. Then we got my mom’s cancer diagnosis. I pushed the trip back 6 months. Then another 6 months.

And then, it finally looked possible. The Covid situation was better (not great, but better). My mom’s surgery went well. I waited until we knew she was cancer-free before telling my bosses I was leaving. I’d saved obsessively during the entire pandemic for the trip. I bought trip insurance. Everything was in place. And I knew I’d be nervous about the flight because I always am. I didn’t fly for about 4 years before I went to Africa and Europe in 2019 because of my fear, but I was still able to make myself do the flight. I had a panic attack in JFK airport on the way to Europe and then another while delayed on the tarmac at the Lisbon airport, but still, I did it, and it was worth it. I had no reason to believe that this trip would be different.

But it felt different way before I even got to the airport, even weeks before. It was like all the stress and anxiety of the past two years that I’d been able to hold at arm’s length had finally reached a tipping point in the form of that flight, as if I were latching my every accumulated fear and superstition and negative thought on that and nothing else, and it grew and grew and grew. Even though I recognized how lucky I was when compared to the nightmare experiences that so many others had during the pandemic, I still couldn’t help but feel that so many bad things had happened or almost happened in the past couple of years that it only made sense to assume they would keep happening. But I didn’t know just how bad things had gotten for me mentally until I found myself there in the airport in New Orleans having a public emotional breakdown because I knew I couldn’t make myself get on that plane. My parents watched helplessly, unsure if they should try to convince me to go through security so I didn’t miss my flight or if they should tell me let’s go back home. I called the airline, convinced them to give me my flight credits back, and went home, ashamed, angry at myself, humiliated, and also very relieved.

I stayed at my parents’ house for what I thought would be another week. And then another week. I went with my mom to follow-up doctor’s appointments and read books in the bathtub and hung out with Chewie and made myself read a book about flying even though just reading about flying made me anxious. Looking at pictures of planes made me anxious. Seeing Instagram photos of friends in airports made me anxious. I didn’t know how I would ever be able to go on my trip, and the pressure I’d put on myself to do it made my fear worse. But after a couple of weeks, I decided I had to do something different because as long as I was sitting in my parents’ house, nothing would change. A cruel component of anxiety is that for me, the best cure for it has always been travel itself. This creates quite a predicament. Once before during a time of terrible anxiety, I felt immensely better after spending 96 hours on Amtrak trains on a trip to Canada. I decided if that cure worked once, maybe it could work again. In theory, if I could put myself into the mindset of traveling, maybe it would shake some of the anxiety away. I needed to start my trip without actually starting my trip. So I bought an Amtrak rail pass and had my parents and Chewie bring me to the train station.

In Montreal, I took a flying trapeze class. I’m quite afraid of heights (just one of many factors in the fear of flying issue), but as a circus enthusiast, it felt necessary to try flying trapeze while in the circus capital of the world. I knew I’d lost my mind when I started climbing the tiny ladder and felt it shaking. I missed the signal to jump from the platform like 4 times on my first try. My hands were shaking and sweaty and my heart was trying very aggressively to fly out of my body. But what’s the worst that could actually happen, I asked myself. And the answer, of course, was that I’d know I hadn’t done it. That was the worst thing. So I jumped. And it was horrifying and exhilarating, and it never stopped being horrifying and exhilarating no matter how many times I did it. And I think that was the night I knew I could make myself get on the plane.

After a week in Montreal and Quebec City, I took the train to DC to try again to get on a plane. The night before my flight, I thought about rescheduling it again, but I didn’t. The day of the flight, I went to the zoo to distract myself and still didn’t change the flight. And then I went to the airport… and panicked again. There I was again, crying in a corner of a different airport on the phone with my mom, watching flights take off out of the window with dread. I decided I couldn’t go. Then I decided I had to. Then that I couldn’t. Then that I could. Then I got my ticket and decided I could still change my mind at the gate. I went though security. Then I told the nice lady at the gate that I have this phobia and she gave me a better seat. And somehow, kind of bewildered, I found myself on the plane.

And here’s the thing. I haven’t cured my flight phobia at all. I can’t tell you how to do that. It wasn’t fun and it was turbulent and I was miserable, and I can’t tell you that I had some epiphany and realized the magical joys of flying machines while we were halfway over the Atlantic. Instead I paced up and down the plane (when the seatbelt sign wasn’t on) for 7 hours like I’d lost my mind. But I did successfully get on the plane. And the flight attendants were all very encouraging and understanding when I told each of them privately that I might panic. And then it was morning and we landed in Scotland.

And so here I am. Still feeling a bit tentative and cautious and fragile, as if I’m still trying to emerge from some traumatic emotional ordeal (which I suppose is exactly what the past two years have been). I’m trying not to put too much pressure on the trip or have too many expectations. I’m still learning how to be in the world again after having been in intense covid-hiding for so, so long.

I decided to share the whole ordeal of getting here in case anyone else has a phobia that it feels impossible to face or anxiety they can’t emerge from. Perhaps we give these things more power when we treat them as secrets to be ashamed of. Don’t give up on that thing you’ve dreamed of doing since second grade. Perhaps taking a train ride to Canada and flying on a trapeze (or, you know, whatever sounds exhilarating to you) will help give you a boost of confidence, too.