The Monster under my Bed
Fear is like the monster under our bed — we never see it but it’s always there. It grows and grows and without even noticing it, it takes over our bed, our life, our soul.
Any night before traveling: I woke up in the middle of the night. It was maybe around 3 am, my boyfriend at the time was snoring like a bear and I stared with my eyes wide open in the dark.
I crashed again. It was the third time this week. I survived as usual but I felt so exhausted as I came from an airplane crash for real. Every accident was different.
Sometimes, the airplane lost all its engine power, sometimes it flew too low, and sometimes it was just because God willed it. Whatever be the cause of the crash, the anxiety of the moment was always the same.
The nightmares before flying increased over the years. I was haunted countless times by my fear of dying in the sky, leaving behind my family, friends, and unpaid bills.
I was in a war with myself, with this unknown and terrifying monster under my bed, that gained territory every time I had to fly. I felt like a child closing my eyes and hiding under the blanket to make this black scary shadow go away. I was in denial for a long time, but deep inside, I knew this is not the way I could win this battle.
When I was younger I was happy to take an airplane. Going on vacation with my family far away was an adventure. You don’t see yourself as a mortal, you don’t worry about anything or anyone, you are thinking that you are just too young to die. And add to that, your loved ones were with you in the same airplane. Why worry?!
Some time later, I got a bit tensed when I had to fly. I started to lose battles against myself. The tricky thing with fear is it is difficult to detect at the beginning and then, some day, it dominates your life.
Back then, I tried to find strategies to wrestle control over the situation:
Phase 1: Distraction
I started to get a bit tensed while taking off. To calm my nerves, I chose some peaceful music — peaceful for me, because hard metal bands like Rammestein may not have the same effect on everyone.
For a while, I controlled myself this way. Later on I sampled other distractions — like talking to other people, doing crochet or working for a while. However, my fear grew bigger with time. Distractions could not sway me anymore, and I spent my time on the flight contemplating death.
Phase 2: Numbness
I learned after some time that I’m calmer if I had a drink before or during the flight. A slightly tipsy mood distracted my thoughts. I was just too distracted to focus on possible engine failures or suicide bombers. The same happened when I was tired enough from the night before, then the airplane was a wonderful place where I just could rest after a long and tiring journey through the airport. This is a strategy that may have worked sometimes, but it still made the trip uncomfortable and strenuous.
Phase 3: Control
I come from the Mecca of compulsive controlling behavior. No other country has an average of six insurances per person. The idea to gain control over any situation is in my blood. So it was no wonder that I figured out learning more about how an airplane works and who flies it would help exercise control. I also actively read up on what I could do to survive in case of an emergency.
I consumed books like “Inflight Science” and watched all seasons of “Air Crash Investigations.” I went as far as booking seats in the last row, because statistics say that more people survived there than anywhere else in the plane. Sometimes, I asked the flight attendant if I could talk to the pilot before take off to check on the weather and if he had slept enough the night before.
With time, I just got more obsessed. I started to check for traces of metal fatigue on the skin of the airplane. I think it was disturbing for me and the rest of the passengers.
Final Phase: When everything implodes
Each one of the phases worked for a while. Looking at it from the current perspective, these strategies worked like drugs. The first time it gives you a great high, but after several times you just do not get the same effect.
I was constantly running away from this fear; this monster just freaked me out. Sometimes none of my strategies worked. I could not choose the seat every time or flew with an airline I saw crash on the telly or found the flying conditions fatal.
I struggled to accept my ineptitude at not being able to dictate the way my plane flew. And my paranoia led me to see possible problems everywhere. Over time, I started avoiding airplanes.
Sometimes, I just cried when it was time to take off. The constant nightmares and mental stress weeks before flying got to me in the moment of high tension — the take off.
In the end I made my peace with the fact that I may never fly to another continent. To me, a transatlantic flight was a shape-shifting monster that made me nervous every time I thought about it. As bigger the airplane, the bigger my concern to getting killed in a horrifying crash.
The moment I thought about not taking an airplane anymore to visit my family in Germany but to drive more than 2000 kilometers, was the moment I knew I lost the war and my freedom.
My fear had full control over me, choking my life and my decisions. I started to find strategies and excuses not to fly and when I had to, I struggled for a month before actually flying. I felt ashamed about myself that I couldn’t act like an adult, even when I was one. Joking about it was the only way I could open up about this with other people. Deep inside, I resigned myself from the problem and that was my solution.
All this changed a few years later, when my personal and professional life went through a seismic change, forcing me to start over again. The perspective I got from the new turn in life allowed me to change things and define my life again — but now, in the way I would want it.
Somehow that gave me momentum and without thinking so much into it, I messaged my friends in Brazil to visit them in December and spend Christmas there. This was July, a full half year before I would have to do the cross-continental flight. I convinced myself that I’d rather be scared when Christmas is around the corner and not think of it until then. I enjoyed the European summer and flew around a bit locally, mentally registering it as a practice for what I counted on doing in December.
December came and with the pre-Christmas preparations, I was more than occupied. Honestly, I didn’t realize that I had to take the plane until I stood in front of it. I shared my concerns of flying on this gigantic airplane and its ability to maintain itself in the air with a nice stranger. He laughed in a warm way and shrugged his shoulders as we climbed up the flight of stairs on the aircraft.
In all, the flight was amazing — the take off much smoother than in a normal short distance flight. I slept like a log for eight hours on the plane, exhausted from all the mental gymnastics.
Since then, I have flown a lot. I backpacked across Southeast Asia and India. I was in airplanes that looked like flying cans, struggled to land, to take off or to stay in the air.
I still don’t want to die, but I’ve lost my panic and obsession with at least this part of my life.
The other day, I had a look under my bed. There was nothing there. Looks like I took control over my life and decided that the scary monster had to be evicted after all. Sometimes I see him looking through the window, and I raise my hand and greet him with a smile.
We all are scared of something, even if we are too proud to admit it. All the strategies in the world didn’t help me as much as the one seemingly obvious thing — confronting your fear.
If you run away, if you avoid or deny what scares you, then you continue feeding the monster until it takes over your mind. Fear it’s just a lack of confrontation. If you do something often enough, it becomes normal.
As a child I lived close to a cemetery and had to cross it when I came back home no matter the time. I realized that something that was normal for me scared the wits out of my friends. Confronting fears in your life isn’t any different.
I’m not a fearless person, I’m scared of a lot of things but I learned to confront my monsters, no matter how uncomfortable it is.
I still don’t want to die on an airplane, but I can travel.
I still don’t like spiders, but I can live with them.
I still have a bit of stage fright, but I can enjoy a karaoke night.
I still see my monster, but I don’t let it control my life.
