SKY 04.07.2013

Before we even left the runway, her knuckles were white from gripping the vinyl seat in front of her. The way her nails dug in, I was sure she’d tear right through. After takeoff, she bolted to the bathroom and returned with a pale face and bloodshot, watery eyes. Her father, obviously shaken, led her back to her seat with a hand between her shoulder blades.

“Anxiety,” he said apologetically to those seated around us, “Fear of flying.”

The girl, either from sickness or embarrassment, buried her head deep into her knees.

From where I sat, I could see her between the seats. While everyone else politely averted their attention, I watched her.

Just a few years ago, that was me. I don’t have a fear of flying, but I have struggled with anxiety for most of my life, and it spiked once on a flight to San Francisco. The anticipation of spending a week with a recently all-consuming lover, combined with the inherent confinement and lack of air circulation of the airplane, resulted in sweaty palms, a quickened pulse, and waves of nausea that sent me sprinting to the bathroom more than once. 

The next morning, the same anxiety ruined a hand-in-hand walk down Folsom Street, as I broke away to vomit in a storm drain. Not my finest moment.

There was a time when I sincerely believed that anxiety would plague me forever; it seemed too complicated and deep rooted to ever conquer. I was so convinced in the inevitability of panic attacks that I didn’t seek professional help until they were so extreme that I hesitated to leave my house. “You don’t deserve this, you know,” my (amazing, beautiful, brilliant) therapist said one day, “This doesn’t have to be your fate.”

And just like that, my reality shifted. I struggled, I fought, I healed.

From 32,000 feet in the sky, I watched her back roll with intentional and rhythmic breaths, indicative of someone who is struggling and fighting. The process was hard to watch; she was deep in a pain that I knew intimately. My heart broke for her.

Then, just like that, my perception of reality shifted again as I noticed her hand. She was squeezing her fingers into a tight fist, then spreading them wide, over and over again; a tactic I recognized immediately as one I still use to this day to reign in my anxiety. The feeling of fingernails digging into my flesh never fails to keep me present and grounded. I didn’t learn this in therapy-- my body already knew.

Whether she was aware of it or not, she was struggling and fighting, but also healing. Her body was teaching her how to cope, how to move forward, how to reign it all in.

Her body was choosing a new fate.