Sometimes Not Facing Your Fears Is The Best Thing You Can Do

Face your fears. Overcome your weaknesses. Be strong. Be a fighter.

It's sound advice, but like most things in life, it's subjective to the situation. Sometimes, by not facing our fears, we open up new opportunities for ourselves. Sometimes, our fears exist for a reason.

The first flight I ever took was when I was 18-years-old and on my way to college, leaving behind the fog and rain of the Pacific Northwest for the fresh autumn leaves of the East Coast. Flying solo, I was excited but also nervous, so I had my oversized Cookie Monster buckled into the empty seat next to me, which the flight attendant, to my dismay, made me shove into the overhead compartment before take-off. Once we were in the air, I remember admiring the clouds and daydreaming how this was the start of a new life. I couldn't have asked for a more loving family, but there were financial hardships, including time in a family homeless shelter, that I was eager to put behind me.

After I left home for school, my mom began a new start of her own and became a flight attendant. In the years that followed, I was on a plane often, using the free travel benefits I received from my mom to fly home in between semesters and during extended weekends and breaks.

Having a mom as a flight attendant, I knew how safe it was to fly. Often, I'd fall asleep before take-off and wake up when the wheels of the plane hit the ground once more. Flying was no problem. Once, when a storm shook the plane so bad people were white knuckling their seats, praying out loud, and getting sick, I was in the back hollering from my stand-by seat that it was just turbulence and not to worry. I was cracking jokes, trying to calm people down, while the flight attendants did the same in the front where they had been ordered by the pilot to remain in their seats. As the daughter of a flight attendant, I felt it my duty to reassure those around me that we were going to be fine, and we were.

Eventually, I left the US to study abroad. At 20-years-old, I was a few months shy of being of legal age to drink at home, but as I was on an international flight, as soon as we were over the water, I was offered a complimentary glass of wine, my first legal drink, which I sipped, once again staring at the clouds, once again dreaming of what was to come.

Forward ahead a few years, and I was back in the US visiting family and taking a year to get back on my feet after financial downfall, not uncommon for someone in their 20's. That year, I flew to Houston on a short trip, which included a stop over in Colorado. The next day, on the exact same flight I had just been on the day before, the plane in Colorado slid off the runway and caught on fire. People were hurt, but everyone survived.

The fact that I had missed the ill-fated flight by one day was a conversation starter for weeks after, but I didn't think it affected me; I didn't realize the seed it had planted. A few months after the Colorado flight, I watched on the news as a plane burned in the background behind a journalist reporting its crash in Buffalo, New York. None survived. The flames on the screen memorized me. You hear about crashes, and you see the charred wreckage on the news, but you rarely see the flames rise live, as it’s happening. Soon after, my feelings towards flying changed completely.

I first noticed my fear of flying when I boarded a flight back to Europe within months of watching the Buffalo crash on TV. The entire time in the air, I was sweaty and anxious and wanted nothing more than for the flight to end. When we landed, I could have kissed the ground. After that, I would take one more flight, a short trip between two European countries, which was equally terrorizing, and then I flew no more.

Being young and free and living abroad, I didn't really need to fly. The bus, train, and ferry system in Europe made it unnecessary, as did riding on the back of my boyfriend's motorcycle. But as time passed, and my grandparents got older, I knew I'd have to return home to the US soon. When one of my grandparents did pass, whom I loved very much, it hit me hard that I had waited too long, but still, I could not bring myself to get on a flight, especially as I began having nightmares of planes crashing in open fields around me, dreams that seemed so real that I awoke screaming.

People tried to help me with my fear of flying. They suggested hypnosis, meditation, noise canceling headphones. They offered statistics that flying is safer than getting in a car, and certainly safer than riding on the back of my boyfriend's motorcycle. None of it helped. Facing my fear was not effective. Trying to be strong, to talk myself out of a hopeless situation, was only holding me back, wasting energy that could have been spent elsewhere.

Then, through some media, either an article or radio interview, I can't remember, I heard that David Bowie also had a fear of flying and that he took a ship when traveling between Europe and the US. I don't know if what was reported about David Bowie was true; I never looked it up, but it encouraged me. I didn't think traveling across the Atlantic by ship was even a possibility, not since the days of the Titanic. It never occurred to me that I could sail home instead of fly.

Alit with hope, I turned on my computer and researched ship crossings. To my delight and surprise, there were not only freighters that took on passengers, but there were actual Transatlantic cruises. Some were expensive, far beyond my budget, but I found one that was only $599 USD per person for an eight day cruise, all food and accommodation included, between Southampton, England and New York. It was based on double occupancy, so I had to pay the price of two, but with a loan from my mom, I booked my passage home and began counting down the days until I could see my family again.

(Leaving Southampton, England.)

(Mid-voyage.)

The voyage on the cruise ship turned out to be one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Dolphins followed the ship in the water. Every night there was a spectacular show. And just sitting on the deck, gazing out at an open sea, was nothing short of spiritual. But my best experience was the formal dinner that I decided to take part in instead of hitting the 24 hour buffet.

For dinner, I was assigned a table with other solo travelers. It was quite a sophisticated setting with chandeliers above the table and people dressed in their finest, much more grand than anything I was used to. I worried I’d be judged for wearing the same dress each night, a cocktail dress I had picked up in a thrift store before leaving, but my dinner mates were anything but stuffy. Older than me, they freely shared their life stories. One man was a widower who still referred to his departed wife as, "My Bride." Another man had been a highly respected lawyer in New York during the Vietnam War. In a case that made the national news at the time, he surprised everyone by burning an empty car during his participation in an anti-war protest in Central Park. A pro-war judge tried to make an example of him by giving the man a long jail sentence, but it didn’t go over well, and the man was soon released. There was a centenarian woman who regularly had dinners with African kings to promote her charity work. But the life of the table was a woman who was full of such charm and wit, she had us all captivated by stories of her dual life in London and LA.

When I departed the boat in New York and jumped on a train headed out West, I clung tightly to the email addresses of my dinner mates, grateful for the experience, an experience that never would have happened if I had forced myself, panicked and terrorized, onto an airplane.

(Arriving into New York.)

Sometimes, not facing your fears is the best thing you can do. That doesn't mean you do nothing. It means instead of being weighed down by that which you know holds you back, put your energy towards an alternative solution. Find another way. There's more than one path to all that you want to achieve. Fly, sail, swim - it doesn't matter, as long as you touch land.

Lots of love,

@aescholer

Verification That This is An Original Work

The following images show:

A.) My stateroom on the cruise. Notice the floral suitcase and black waist pack on the desk.

B.) The same suitcase now buried in my closet.

C.) An image from the train ride out west. Notice that the same black waist pack in the stateroom photo is in the train photo.

D.) The computer bag that also appears in the train photo with the black waist pack.

@originalworks

(A.)

(B.)

(C.)

(D.)

Future Documentary

All my posts on Steemit are part of a fundraising effort for a documentary I'm developing on the empowerment of women around the world with the belief that men and women can stand strong together. In 2018, with production currently scheduled for the summer, I’ll begin blogging the filming of the documentary here on Steemit, which will include stories and travel within the US and abroad. Until then, to raise money for the documentary, my blog will include topics of personal interest, like my family's connection to an infamous serial killer and a royal family, as well as fiction, games, and more. Follow me at @aescholer to be part of the journey!

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