When I was 14-years-old I decided to put “flying in large treacherous metal machines at 30,000 feet” at the top of my “greatest fears” list. I hated flying. I hated airports. I hated the dread that would slowly build up as I waited for the inevitable “we will now begin boarding.”
Nevertheless, earlier this summer I boarded a nine-hour, trans-Atlantic flight that would propel me into another one of my greatest fears — the world apart from my own.
For my study abroad adventure in London this summer I was required to keep a journal tracking my thoughts, feelings and general views of one of, if not the, greatest cities in the world. I wrote my first entry on the airplane, the first airplane I had ever ridden where I held my sister’s hand instead of my mother’s. To distract myself I wrote in my journal, mainly nonsense as I look back at it now. For example: “… and my greatest fear is that Dickens will never evoke any emotions, positive or negative, in me … but the plane is still soaring!” The title of this entry was “Fear of flying take 121” with a sad face drawn in alongside the words.
But even then I think I knew, in the back of my mind, that neither Dickens nor international flights would ever truly scare me again. I was suspended in mid-air. My rational self told me I would probably not go down, so now, the only way to go was up.
As people have started to filter back into my life, converging from different cities and different parts of the world, we always greet each other with “how was your summer?” As we simultaneously ask and then answer “goooood,” I am always tempted to run screaming in the other direction.
What do you want to know, really? Probably nothing specific unless it involved meeting a celebrity or getting arrested. Most likely no one but your mother wants to hear you rave on and on about
London parks where the dog owners are so awesome and European that they walk their pets “without leashes!!”
So we hug and speak for the allotted 45 seconds about our three months of separation and then get back into the current college conversation. The summer happened, and now we’re here.
But where is here? In one of my final columns last semester I wrote about my upcoming European adventure. I wrote earnestly and honestly that I wanted to be able to say when I got back, “I’m glad I went.” It never occurred to me, though, that this past tense was negotiable. Of course I would go and I would stay and then I would come home and tell everyone about tea time and pubs and the theatre. Boom boom boom. I thought I would experience that natural sensation of following a straightforward series of events. I never thought I would still be suspended in mid-air.
The first thing I told my mother, as she and my father and brother greeted me and my sister as we got off the plane in Newport News, Va, was that “I don’t think I’m afraid to fly anymore.” No one but my mother would appreciate this seemingly insignificant detail. But she did, and she nodded, teary-eyed and smiling.
I think I might still be in London because the Mary Scott from Virginia has never felt quite like this before.
Capable. I feel capable. Not changed or better or different from who I was before. Just altered slightly. So that I can wake up and not become paralyzed by an irrational fear. Whether it’s an international flight or simply a walk down the street, I think at the end of the day, it’s nothing that I can’t handle. It’s this basic knowledge that has made me giddy with excitement lately.
Everything is going to be okay! I can do things, and sometimes I can even do them well! It may have taken 21 years and a nine-hour flight, but I think I finally feel like a person who can act just as much as she thinks.
The last thing I wrote in my journal was a few messy scribblings that I hope may eventually, maybe even 21 years from now, become the makings of a short story. Writing fiction is another one of my greatest fears, which the capable Mary Scott is now attempting to tackle.
As I write up a story line for my fictitious characters I think my subconscious is trying to wrestle with the question of “where is here?” for my very real self. For now, at least, I’ll allow my story to become my reality, I won’t be afraid to let my scribblings become real: “… It did not sound like music to her, more like white noise, the background sounds framing her existence; muffled, messy, but consistent, there.”
Mary Scott’s column runs biweekly Wednesdays. She can be reached at m.hardaway@cavalierdaily.com.
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