My fear of flying has some basis in reality, all fears do. When I am on an airplane I feel a free floating anxiety that is hard to pin down, and I experience a definite urge to panic. The free floating anxiety is part of my mental problem. I suffer from dysthymia, which is a low grade depression, and anxiety is the flip side of this condition. I call days when I suffer from such a condition as my "grey days". Many of my days are normal, but some dip down into the dumps. Discouragement and despair can sometimes be my companion. Because this condition relates to a low serotonin level, I take Paxil, an anti-depressive medicine, and I go to self-help meetings. I also pray that the Lord will help me be grateful for what I have and I exercise. There is no magic pill that will relieve this condition. But what do I do when I'm aboard a jet, no place to exercise and no meeting in sight?

Maybe that's the main problem: the unavailability of my treatment for the time that I'm on board an airplane. Flying has always been scarey for me. But if I want to be responsible in facing life's necessities, which are sometimes challenges, then I need to fly. My last experience was flying coast to coast in order to see my son, his wife and my two grand-children. For some of us, it isn't undiluted pleasure to feel the body lift off of the ground and to fly. But sometimes we have to fly in order to go certain places at certain times. Not only do I dislike this feeling, but I also experience some claustrophobia at being confined into a small place. Some pseudo-authorities on the flying phobia have asserted that this condition is due to having a controlling personality. This type of neurotic does not want to lose control by losing their footing on solid ground. Whatever the cause, this condition can be debilitating. It's probably no coincidence that I haven't flown for about thirty years until I made this coast to coast trip.

It can be bumpy up there in the skies. I imagine that the pilot makes every effort to make the flight as smooth as possible. This proved to be impossible on one trip I took: I flew in a small prop plane from Phoenix to Flagstaff in a snowstorm. It looked like a blizzard from the window. I had no fear prior to this flight, but I soon experienced a fluttering stomach to match a plane fluttering in a blizzard. The snow hit heavily all around the plane. The windows were completely white. This was a regular commercial flight and everyone was staying calm. We moved from one to two feet horizontally and continually. I was used to bumps but we were taking a beating. However, as far as I could tell, we stayed at about the same altitude, pretty low. I don't fly very often so my chances of an accident are extremely low but I feel that in this instance, I was blessed to land in Flagstaff as expected. The pilot and crew seemed unfazed, but I'm sure they were trying to be reassuring.

It would seem to me that the time when accidents would most likely happen are doing take-off and landing. Of course, all of this is in God's hands who works through the amazingly capable hands of captain and crew. It would also seem to me that most trouble would be caused by weather conditions. Planes are serviced so frequently that mechanical failure is practically nonexistent. Weather is a more unpredictable element in the equation, especially weather near the ground. Above the clouds, the weather is so marvelously clear and calm.

By the way, my bladder sometimes gives me trouble and the trip to the bathroom is also rocky. But acceptance is the key and I need to accept that God takes care of me and that everything will be alright. I wonder how my neighbor, in her nineties, made it to Hawaii time after time. Doesn't the jet stream run over the Pacific? It would seem that there are more air currents over the ocean. I flew from New York to Heathrow Airport when I was young. It was so postcard beautiful looking back toward New York City and seeing all the lights. At one point, somewhere in the Atlantic, we went over a huge bump and the food from our tray went flying. I wasn't scared because I was very focused on arriving in England and nothing could take away that wonderful expectation. Sure enough, we arrived at Heathrow on time and I took the long, arduous journey to London. It was more tiring than the flight.

I believe in the adage that I must accept everything in my life as being exactly the way it should be at the time. In other words, unless I accept every person, place or thing exactly as it is, I will be critical and disappointed. I practiced acceptance on my way to North Caroline. I had to accept the fact that I was above the clouds (that's reality), and thousands of feet up in a heavy plane. I do not mean this to be in anyway a complaint about the airlines: they do a wonderful job maneuvering the modern marvel of the jet plane., I am not, however, of the generation when flying in such a manner was commonplace, though I'm not of the generation when flying was considered "for the birds". Jet planes are now commonplace and my attitude need to change with the times.

Space travel has helped me conquer my fear of flying. No, I'm not connected to the space program but I have studied astronomy and watched many programs about flying in space. Before I took this flight, it occurred to me that, actually, we are always suspended in space, above and below many galaxies. We are held by gravitational fields which I believe are also the hands of God. It is up to Him as to how long we have been or will be suspended. We don't have an insurance policy regarding the earth's gravitational pull. We might be hit by a meteorite or asteroid: craters have been discovered where these phenomena have hit the earth's surface. The air we are suspended in is very much a force to contend with: space is not empty nor devoid of purpose. The air, or atmosphere is able to hold or hurl massively heavy objects, much heavier than an airplane. The atmosphere is a living, vital source of power and life.

Starting with the Wright Brothers, we have tapped into this phenomenon as another means of transportation. Just as the suspension of earth by its gravitational pull to the sun is God-ordained, jet propelled flight is also God ordained. We have learned from watching God's creatures,the birds, about the effects of air on a stream-lined object. We have transferred this knowledge to modern aeronautics and the spectacular results are jet travel. Why it all works is much more difficult to answer than how it works,.

It's reassuring to me that jets make some noise and you can feel bumps in the air,. This makes me think that I am aboard a ship traveling through space and time., This sounds somewhat eerie but such sensations remind me that I'm on a mechanical ship that will bring me to my destination. Such thoughts can lead to claustrophobia for the neurotic mind. I've gotten a little of this sensation in a cat scan, or the tube that x-rays parts of the body the doctor wants to examine.

It may sound odd, but I compare the sensation of sitting in a plane as the same as sitting in a submarine, an experience I haven't had. But the tubular form, and the fact that an airplane flies through a space which is otherwise uninhabitable, makes the two modes of transportation similar. When I was on the plane I felt as if I were in a small, confined space, which I was. It takes courage to be confined for great lengths of time. For instance, not everyone could live in a space station for a long period. There's something in human nature which likes to look out to the horizon and have room to roam about and explore. Indeed, some of the first efforts of a small child are to explore and run about. This is not to say that we can't be comfortably confined as we are in space or underwater travel. Airplanes are very comfortable, especially if one owns a jet or sits in first class.

I am very used to enduring what I don't want to endure. This might seem odd, because I have expressed an impatience or intolerance for flying. To me, to endure means to tolerate pain. I've suffered with chronic mental and physical problems during my lifetime. I've had fibromyalgia since I was about forty years old and have endured chronic pain in my muscles and ligaments. Since we're always using part of the body, I'm usually in some kind of pain or another. I've endured labor pains, as many women have, and I endured a less than perfect childhood in which personality disorders abounded. At times, I experienced broken promises, humiliations, the dislikes of friends and family, and many employment failures. Could it be possible that I've endured beyond the normal capacity? And perhaps it's difficult for me to sit through times that are uncomfortable, such as those hours aboard an airplane? If so, I need to steady myself and again realize the great benefits gained from tolerating the supposedly intolerable.

I'd rather be enjoying than enduring. We all would. But interspersed with our joyous times, are those times when we must use our willpower toward our own good. If I get so fearful that I won't even take a cruise in a harbor ship, then I have to do something about it. My recent conquest was that I successfully flew from the West Coast to the East Coast and I actually enjoyed looking down. I saw an incredible cloud bank that stretched for several hundred miles. It looked like a downey feather mattress created especially for our flight. I was also able to enjoy the flight over the Mohave Desert which looked like the red surface of the moon, dotted with occasional silver roofs of trailers and houses. The oases were dark green splotches in the landscape. The flight into my hometown of San Diego is always spectacular as the path is directly through the city to an airport that is surrounded by buildings. It's a live, postcard picture of as many shapes and colors of buildings that you could imagine.

Sometimes I hear gun shots at night in the city where I live, and this startles me. When I was on the harbor cruise, I suddenly thought "Now I'm in the middle of the ocean and I can't get back to shore". These are a few of my recent fears. Now that I made my voyage, I know I feel that I'm in God's hands as the streets below my room have their night visitors. And I surely will not be scared again doing what I love to do, floating through the harbor waters watching the seagulls trail behind, looking for tidbits. By fighting one fear, I have defeated many.

How do you deal with fear? Most of us haven't been on the psychiatric couch, but we do often experience fear. Some of us even have anxiety and panic attacks. What do you do when a fear of heights, or fear of closed in spaces suddenly rears its ugly head? The unexpected fear of an everyday experience can trouble any of us and I hope I can help by sharing my own long-held fear of flying. Some of this article was written aboard an airplane, so it's very true to life. I have only heard of one session at the local airport when a counselor helped people with this fear. I imagine it is more common than we know. Since jet travel is a part of modern life, we all need to deal with this fear, no matter what age we are. For many of us with health conditions, travelling very long distances by car or, even train, is not an option. Jet travel is the easiest and safest way to go. It is not my intention to criticize anything about air travel; the airlines do a remarkable job. I would like more dialogue about the discomfort people can feel using this mode of travel or, perhaps, other modes. A dialogue about fears engendered by our modern world would be helpful to many. By taking up this topic, I have touched upon feelings that don't normally find an outlet in everyday discourse. I hope this changes. As the saying goes, "We're only as sick as our secrets".