Flight Anxiety, a Confession.

“Of all people, you’re scared of flying?”

I get that reaction whenever I admit to having flight anxiety. How do I even travel full-time if I dread the idea of getting onto a plane every time?

Ironically, the more I travel, the worse my anxiety becomes.

When I was 10, my mom had put me on a flight from New York back to Hong Kong alone. As she recalled, I didn’t linger at the airport, nor did I turn around to say another goodbye.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of myself,” I said to my mom and turned my sassy back on her.

A 16-hour flight was a breeze. But flying is my worst nightmare today.

I’ve done my fair share of stupid things that could spell the end of me. I had forced my cousin to take me on an exhilarating motorcycle ride through dirt roads in the pouring rain. He was around 13, and I was probably five.On my 25th birthday, I had gone paragliding in Colombia where safety measures weren’t the greatest. Some strings had unhooked from the carabiner right before we ran off the cliff. The paraglider laughed it off, and I, too.

But I can’t laugh at the idea of dying in a plane crash. It terrifies me.

Two years ago, my friend told me about his flight anxiety and the research he had done to ease his nerves. Plane crashes are much rarer than car accidents, he said. But if they should happen, they’ll likely occur during take-off or landing.

The statistical approach to ease one’s irrational fear has stayed with me. It was the onset of my flight anxiety — I would always think about the likelihood of plane crashes within those fleeting minutes. Turbulence is terrifying, too. Even if severe turbulence doesn’t kill anyone, it can throw people around like a washing machine. Great news for my fellow nervous fliers: turbulence will only get worse because of increasing air traffic. Almost every flight I’ve taken this year was bumpy. I either thought the glass was going to shatter or the aircraft was going to lose control. I can’t even count the times I’ve come close to making peace with death in my own head.

Initially, I even hated airports because the security procedures always made me uneasy. TSA’s security programs were often a joke that allowed the officers to go on their power trips against travelers at the U.S. airports. Take off your shoes. Take off your jacket. Remove your laptop and camera. Put them in a tray separately. Do all these in five seconds before the next person growls at you.

I had overcome that part of the whole anxiety parade by always arriving early and checking into a lounge to relax afterward.

Nevertheless, my fear of flying remains unresolved, and it only worsens with time.

As soon as the airplane starts taxiing toward the runway, I think about the accident statistics. I think about how my life will end in flame today. How I’m leaving behind no legacy for people to remember. How, I’ll be dying alone, although technically I’m surrounded by hundreds of strangers and a few crying babies.

Dying alone in flame. Vanished in a matter of seconds after panicking from a horror out of anyone’s control. As I’m writing this, the mental image of my dying alone in such a dramatic way sends my heart racing and my hands trembling.

I recall being slightly calmer on a few occasions, when I was flying with my ex-boyfriend(s) or Tarene. When Tarene and I were on a 20-passenger jet from Mexico City to Oaxaca, I oddly felt more at ease than usual. The lack of turbulence that day helped. Tarene’s presence helped. Knowing that I wasn’t alone, helped.

My fear of flying is perhaps a fear of being alone, suspended in air, cut off from communication. It’s the fear of having made the wrong decision to board a plane alone, to wander the world alone. Or it’s the fear of not having said my last words, not having written my last prose.

Originally published here. Resources on coping with flight anxiety: Refinery 29 HuffPost.