To live on an island is to be bound by the sea and ruled by the sky. Every departure, every return, dictated by the rhythm of aircraft engines. There’s no road, no bridge to reach the other side. Only the thin air between here and there.
And I have always feared the air.
And that sucks.
The irony? I’m writing this mid-flight, probably 20,000 feet above the earth, the plane trembling beneath me. My head feels light, my breath uneven. My watch pulses a warning that my heart is racing, faster than it should be. I hate this. I hate how my body reacts before my mind even gets the chance to tell it that everything is fine.
But is it?
They say turbulence is nothing, just air shifting like waves on the ocean. I try to believe them. I even tried that whole “think of turbulence as jelly” trick people talk about on social media. It’s supposed to help.
It doesn’t.
All I can think about is how I was once left alone somewhere high above the ground, frozen in fear. Staring down at the vast, unsteady world below, unable to move, unable to cry, just waiting for someone to return, for solid earth to feel real again.
Perhaps I never truly climbed down. Perhaps I’ve been trapped there ever since.
Maybe that’s why every shake of the plane makes my stomach drop.
A Life in Freefall
The more I think about it, the more I realize I’ve always been like this. Unsteady. Wobbly. Like my whole life is a plane in rough air, and I’m just bracing for impact.
I remember getting a high fever once, so severe that I forgot how to walk. My body felt weightless, my feet barely touching the ground. Just like now. Just like every time my mind spirals out of control.
They say it’s fight or flight. I’ve always chosen flight. When things get too hard, I don’t stand and fight. I run. I forget. I push things away until they blur together like a bad dream.
I thought if I ignored my fear of heights long enough, it would disappear. But here I am, trembling at every jolt of the plane. I guess some fears don’t fade. They just sit quietly in the background, waiting for the right moment to remind you they never really left.
Fear does not forget. It waits.
The Only Way to Land
So I return to the one thing that has always steadied me. I write.
Writing has always been my escape, my way of keeping myself from completely unraveling. Maybe it’s saving me now, just like it did before. Because when the world tilts and my pulse betrays me, words are the only thing that do not blur.
Maybe this is what survival looks like. Maybe this is what it means to keep flying, even when your heart begs for solid ground.
I don’t know. I just hope this flight ends soon. Turbulence in the sky is bad enough. I don’t need more of it inside my head.
But for now, I write and wait for both the sky and my mind to be still again.