Aviatophobia

I don’t know if you can acquire a fear of flying, but I have. Something that has never bothered me before suddenly throws me into a heart-thumping fit while I close my eyes and grip the arms of the chair (in its full upright position), and as the wheels slowly lift up from the runway, my stomach floods down to my feet and then rushes back up to my throat. There’s no point in trying to calm myself down, because when you’re afraid of something sometimes the best thing you can do is accept it.

Maybe because the older you get you start to realize things you didn’t when you were a kid, and how quickly things can change (like, say, in the amount of time it takes you to fly from New York to Madison, WI). And you sense better the risks of going too high in life, the repercussions of getting too close to the sun and finding yourself with melting wings over a very large and endless sea.

And then I touched down in the Midwest, into seemingly another world. I don’t know what was making me more nervous, the flight or the quiet night I found myself in when I walked out of the airport, and on the drive to downtown Madison, past the endless open fields and large office buildings and shopping malls equip with enough parking lots to hold the entirety of the city’s population at one time.

At night the silence kept me awake. But it’s all about what you’re used to, isn’t it? Like how in New York you’re used to warmer air and louder streets and people everywhere all in a rush to get somewhere. How you spend no less than $7 on a beer and never get a guy to buy you one, how you never meet someone who can hold a conversation, who can hold a door or eye contact. Is it that as New Yorkers we’re always searching for something better? Even being at the center of the world we’re still looking for a way to get more - more men, more money, more luck, more love, more room in the over-priced closets we call home.

Is the mentality of New York one that will never leave any of us fully satisfied? Leaving us left living among the noise of the lives of the people that surround us, all on their on quests towards having it all.

In Madison, WI. Life. Is. Slower. And as a New Yorker thefasterthebetter is what you’re used to, and the fear of slowing down is much like the fear of flying – it can come upon you when you least expect it and paralyze you. Because what do you find out when you stop rushing through life? Answers to the questions about yourself that you’d rather not know? Hear you thoughts? Hear your conscience? Hear your heart?

But suddenly, there I was, surviving another flight and back in New York where I don’t need to hear my heart because I can feel it pulsing in the pavement I walk on, vibrating beneath my feet. Now that I’m older I realize (and I didn’t when I was younger) that there is something comforting about the never-dark-sky of Manhattan, of seeing a world always moving outside your window - and not having a parking lot in sight.