Fear Is A Lie — How to conquer your fear of flying
It was only in my eyes for a second, but it swelled in my mind all day.
‘’Fear is a lie,’’ the hoodie proclaimed. I was standing in the last place I wanted to be. More fearsome than a doctor’s office or the back of a squad car, Richmond ‘International’ Airport was synonymous with the gates of Hell to me. My stomach was full of lava and my brain was mummified with primitive anguish. It had been exactly a year since I had last been on a plane, and last time was supposed to be my last time, at least that’s what I had sworn to myself.
Yet, here I was, I had done it again.
The only reason I was here, was my brother. We had developed a tradition of spending my birthday and Halloween as a package deal in other area codes. I was several hours into being 30, and the bottom line of my digital stub read ‘Nashville, Tennessee’. My last flight had the makings of déjà vu, except I was 365 days younger, and New Orleans was the beacon for my celebration of making it around the sun another rotation.
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Instead of daydreaming about hot chicken and whiskey-fueled dance-offs dressed as Sam Shakusky (Moonrise Kingdom), I was feeling every second of terror in an existential debt to reality. As I rocked back and forth in my chair at…
