True Life: Season 21, Episode Pathetic

Serious post coming your way...

We all have fears. Some of us special ones have true phobias.

Just to catch you up on the latest phobia news...
The top 5 normal phobias are:

1. Arachnophobia (fear of spiders) Seriously. Who doesn't have this?
2. Ophidiophobia (fear of snakes)
3. Acrophobia (fear of heights)
4. Agoraphobia (fear of leaving one's home)
5. Claustrophobia (fear of tight spaces) 

...just to name a few.

Let me just point out that my phobia is no where NEAR the "top 10" list of common fears. In fact, it doesn't have a "-phobia" name.

True Life: I have a phobia of planes flying over my head. (Plane-fly-over-head-o-phobia?)

My friends taunt me all the time about my off-the-wall fear, but in fact, it is all too real for me. I deal with this fear almost daily.
The size of the plane doesn't matter if it's low enough. But small planes (Sesnas, single-engines, under 10 seats) freak me out period, whether they're on the ground, in the air, on the runway... anywhere.

I don't even know what it is that I'm truly afraid of happening. Crashing, falling apart above me, crashing on me, even touching a small plane. I constantly have recurring nightmares of planes crashing around me, dropping things around me, sometimes really gruesome things.

Worst fear: 

I watched a show yesterday called "My Food Obsession". I know... what the flip does food obsession have to do with an weird aviation problem? Just go with it. A (white) girl (named ...Shiseido...) on this particular episode was terrified, and I mean shaking and crying if she's near it terrified of... mayonnaise. This is not a joke. She was butt crazy scared of mayonnaise! As I was watching this, I realized how much my fear is impeding on my daily life and how important it is to get over it, or at least learn how to cope with it.

My reaction to a plane flying overhead isn't similar to that of someone seeing a large spider. Don't get me wrong. I am a whole-hearted advocate for spider conservation because they really are important to our environment. But yes, I hate spiders. No, I will not kill them. Yes, I have had multiple people come rescue me from my own shower because a pinky-nail-sized spider is trying to attack my vulnerable and naked body. It's like they know!

I have had two particularly bad reactions to Planes Flying Overhead (to save time and my fingers, I'm just going to refer to this from now on as "pfo") that I vividly remember.

Story time!

This was January of... 2009? I think? My mom and I were going to the annual Medieval Faire in town, and of course it's held about 200 yards away from our Regional Airport. I knew this going into it, but nothing had ever really happened that was bad enough that I didn't want to return. Well, this year was a little different. They had started busing patrons in from the parking lot instead of having the local JROTC conduct the traffic for parking. So we get in line and are waiting for the next few buses to load up. This line was fairly long, maybe about 50 people. I notice a little red bi-plane that was flyin' around the fair ground. I kept my eye on it and was just making sure it wasn't going too low. Everything was fine. It changed direction and started to fly away from the faire and I began to relax a little. But, that would be too easy, right? Instead of leaving like a normal plane would, it did a 180 degree turn and headed right back for us. Well... sh*t. The stupid thing was coming directly for us. And I don't just mean it was going to pass over us at a respectable height. It was buzzing the freaking field. It was diving towards us. Literally. So I see this, and I hide behind my mom's back. I was so terrified and I was crying so hard all of a sudden that nothing was coming out of my mouth. Not air, not words, not sobs. I was so petrified that I was shaking and felt like I was going to throw up on the little girl dressed like a fairy behind me. I probably looked like an autistic child having a panic attack. I don't mean that in a funny, ha-ha-mental-retardation-is-hilarious kind of way, because trust me, you will never find me laughing about that. I was holding onto my mommy for dear life. If this WAS 2009, let's just say I was a tad old to be holding onto my mommy's hand.

If you're still awake, this is the more recent, slightly scarier story.

I was on my way out of town about a year ago. On this route that I had never taken before, I had to drive behind the runway of an international airport. Little did I know, there were two runways. Surprise of a damn lifetime. I drive past the first one thinking it's over and that I don't have to expect another plane encounter. Picture this... I'm driving alone, windows down, bopping along to Country Grammar by Nelly (brownie points for Erin), and I see a plane that is getting ready to land. Holy poop, didn't know there were two runways... Okay, no biggie, as long as it lands before I pass the runway. Well, in my head, the trajectory of me and the plane was such that I would pass DIRECTLY under it. My thoughts, "Well, I'm on a highway. 80 mph. No shoulder besides a ditch or a guardrail. Great." As we were getting closer together, me and this nice large "Continental Airlines" plane, I notice my breathing is a little more shallow and less controlled. Fast forward what feels like 5 whole minutes but is probably 12 seconds, the plane lands on the strip just before I would have passed under it. Or passed out under it. I keep driving because, what would I do... park behind the freaking runway? Once I assess the situation, I realize that I had been hyperventilating for the first time in my life. Hyperventilating while on a busy highway, while your eyes are fixated on a plane that is about 400 feet above you, while you have Nelly blasting on your radio, AND you have no "out" just in case you need to pull over is a little stressful. I'm actually very surprised I stayed on the road.

There are many other stories that I could bore you with, but my point is, I've had full blown panic attacks as an adult and nearly driven off the road multiple times. I need to get this taken care of ASAP.

This isn't something that just started. We have home videos of toddler Erin screaming and crying saying "ehpane!" as you can hear a PFO. This isn't something I joke about because it's very real for me and very very scary. The weird thing is, I love to fly! I love taking flights on regular airplanes. Keyword, regular.

My heart is pounding just looking at this picture... 

I have recently contacted a therapist who deals with phobias. I'm absolutely beside myself terrified that I will have to undergo "exposure therapy" where you have to physically face your fear and do the extreme to get over it. Petrified. And my heart rate is climbing just thinking about the soon-to-be fateful day...

 But I can't go through life not doing things or going places just because I'm irrationally scared of something. Time to nut up or shut up, put my big girl panties on, go balls to the wall, put on some lipstick...you get the picture... and do it.


I will be posting the nitty-gritty on my progress through this whole deal, to show what it's like for someone to go through this. Just so you think twice next time you want to make fun of someone's fear of a condiment. For some people, it's very real.

A rite of passage

So, this will be a thoughtful, sentimental post, compared to the "Cat's ringing" and other fun posts to come!

I watched Erin drive away yesterday afternoon, off for a fun weekend in Jacksonville. As she packed her bags, debated about what to take and carried loads of stuff down to her car, I was feeling such mixed emotions about this. While I was going to miss her, I was also kinda looking forward to a quiet weekend - a 4 day weekend, no less - all by myself without any noise, distraction or interruptions. I have a book I've been dying to read and now I can read it straight through without any interruptions. And I can watch whatever I want on tv without having her burst through the front door, toss her shoes by the dining room table, flop down on the sofa and change the channel without asking. I can cook what I want for dinner without scrambling to find a clean knife or the measuring spoons.

Erin is 19 years old and most of her friends are off at college - sleep-away college, too, not at campuses less than a mile from their mommies, and they are all experiencing their first out-of-mommy events (first break-up without mom, first hang-over without mom, first bad grade, etc.)  Erin is not. Since she attends a college within walking distance from home, and since we don't have the money to rent a separate apartment for her, she lives with me. She is an accomplished college student, holds down 3 part time jobs, participates in 2 dance companies, and yet she comes home every night to me, shares food with me, watches tv with me, checks in with me, calls me to find out where I am if I am late coming home. We haven't strayed far from the relationship we had when she was in high school.

I don't know if that is good or bad, but I am trying hard to make the most of it for both of us. I am relishing every moment I get with her even while I try to let her go and live her life without mommy breathing down her neck.

My son left for college when he was 19 and he attended a college that was a 12 hour drive away. He went through momentous changes without me hovering nearby for involvement, guidance or support. He went through rigorous military training, he found new friends, he struggled with a math class, he found and wooed the love of his life and he even proposed to her, all hundreds of miles away from mommy. And he did fine. He is in a happy, stable marriage with a healthy son and a successful career. I am so proud of him, and yet I know I missed all those pivotal events in his life and they can never be relived. As much as I feel the loss of those years with him, I am trying very hard not to take that out on Erin and be TOO involved in her life as she moves so deliberately and maturely into her adult years.

After she left yesterday, I straightened up the whole house. I picked up all her shoes dumped by the front door and put them in her closet. I picked up all the papers and magazines she left splayed across the coffee table in the living room and put them in a neat stack on her bed. I washed and put away all the sports bottles she left sitting by the kitchen sink. I took all her clean laundry she left on the dining room table and put it on her bed.  And I've been enoying a neat and organized household for these hours she's been gone.  It's refreshing to go out for my power walk and come back home to find the entry way still cleared from scattered shoes and backpacks. And to go into the kitchen to make some dinner and find the sink still cleared of dirty dishes.

But, when she bursts through the door Sunday evening, dropping shoes, purses, keys, water bottles and clothes in her wake, I will be oh so happy to have her home again.