Feel the fear but do it anyway

I’ve always been low-key afraid of flying. I love the view, I just saw a few airplane crash movies way too young and have always been kind of fearful of them plunging out of the sky. I mean, I’m not “stand up in the middle of the flight and try to open the door to walk out because I’ve gone crazy” afraid, I’m just… I’m a bit claustrophobic and a little dizzy about heights, so those two things together…? Add in all sorts of other things like hijackings or shoe bombs or having to sit next to a racist, and you start to ask yourself… is air travel worth it?

Well, it’s kind of one of two ways to get to the UK, so I guess I’m in.

Weather was bad the day I left, so I wasn’t surprised to get a message that the flight was leaving late. I was a little surprised to get to the airport and see that there were about three planes due out earlier that still hadn’t even left… and quite a number of people shouting into phones. They were all either saying “it’s not my fault” to loved ones who were yelling at them, or “this is all your fault” if they were on hold with Delta trying to change flights.

Oh, and this was funny – “they” advise you to get to the airport three hours before your flight, if you’re flying internationally. That would have put me there an hour before the counter opens to be able to weigh and drop off my bag. Sigh.

I might not fly a lot but I don’t think I’ve ever been on a plane that got to Atlanta at the time it was supposed to get there (not to mention getting from the arrival gate to the departure gate and the relay race THAT can be) so I gave myself a three hour layover. Well, I didn’t give it to me, but Delta did when I was buying the tickets. There were options like twenty minutes in Atlanta, three hours in Atlanta, or six hours in JFK. Hahahahahaha no thank you. A lot of people don’t do that, I guess? Or can’t do that because of the connecting flight times? Guess I was lucky. Our flight was late enough that my three hour layover turned into more like a 45 minute layover; just enough time to get me from Concourse C to Concourse E without panicking.

Going through the TSA checkpoint took about two minutes.

Highlights of the first flight include… nothing. The first flight was pretty dull, and only about an hour long. We like to joke that flying GNV to ATL is long enough for you to get served your soda and drink most of it before they’re asking for the cup to be thrown away. I was on the two-seat-to-a-row side, window seat (even though I’m afraid of heights, my claustrophobia is worse than my fear of heights… so having the window and all that sky to see keeps me a little more sane. ANYWAY. I had the window and she had the aisle and I don’t think we said anything to each other the whole flight.

Highlights of the second flight include… me having the window seat again, and a tall older black man having the aisle seat, and nobody in between us so we were both able to stretch out a little and take up the extra half seat with random things (his earphones, my knitting, blankets and pillows when we weren’t using them. I only had to ask him to let me out once, and that was because I couldn’t find the USB cable I’d put in my purse so I had to get the other one out of my carry-on which I’d put in the overhead bin (I remembered putting the cord near the top of my purse and assumed it must have fallen out in the airport. Turns out it fell out and between my seat and the window, and I found it about an hour before we landed). Later I was watching The Equalizer (with Queen Latifa) and he leaned over to ask me what Delta channel that was on, and then he started watching it, too. He was also very jealous of my dinner (the vegetarian option, which was amazing and spicy and flavorful). He tried to be jealous of my breakfast, too, but I assured him it was awful. It was some sort of hot cheese sandwich which you’d THINK would be amazing, but it also had something that could have been basil, or lettuce, and something that could have been sundried tomatoes, or apricots. It was awful.

Coming into Ireland was also easy. Took a little longer than leaving Gainesville, but it was pretty much just chit-chat about what I planned to do and where I planned to go and how long I was staying. Then it was just a long wait at baggage claim. After that….? Holy shit, I’m in Ireland. Now I have to figure out where I am, how to get a taxi, how to get money…. What I’d heard is that you get a better exchange rate if you get money from an ATM rather than at a currency exchange, so I walked right past the twenty or so people in line at currency exchange to the two empty, no-line ATMs, and got my cash. Three people stared at me, open mouthed, and then got behind me to do the same thing. Hahahah!

Then it was outside. I was going to use the FreeNow app Aunt Gay told me about, but I wanted to get outside first, and when I got outside I was right next to the taxi line and it was moving fast so I just got in it. I got a lovely fun cab driver who loves dogs, and we pretty much just talked pets (and shipwrecks) the whole 20 minute drive to Egans.

I can’t believe I thought this post would be about the first day and a half I spent here in Dublin, and all I’ve gotten done in 1000 words is tell you about the plane ride! And I haven’t even gotten to the Feelings part.

One thing that’s been on my mind lately – of all the gazillion things that have been on my mind – is… who do I want to be? When I became a widow, all of the choices I’d been making in the last twenty years, to be a wife, to be a person with a person, were gone. I mean, they would have been gone if Tim and I had separated…. but he died. That meant we couldn’t even, ever, work things out. So where did that leave me? I had to both remember who I had been when I had last been single, over twenty years previously, and I also had to figure out who I now was and where I wanted to go from there.

Who do I want to be? I’ve always wanted to travel. The last two to three years have ratcheted up my anxiety to previously unheard of levels. I’m afraid of everything. But… I want to be the person who does the things she wants to do, even when she’s afraid of everything around the thing she wants to do. I hope that makes sense.

I’m nervous about being in a foreign country and doing the wrong thing. Twice in 36 hours I have walked in on men in gender neutral bathrooms because they haven’t locked the door – what the fuck, guys, I know that’s on you and yet you glare at me as if it’s my fault? I swear the sign on the door said both men and women!

I’m nervous about flying and all the things that go with that. I did it anyway even though sometimes my hands were shaking and the turbulence was scary. And I wasn’t even the woman who threw up because of the turbulence, all over the two other people in her row! Who didn’t even know her!

I’m nervous about being solo and not having someone here to maybe do things more right than me when I get things wrong. Well, at least there’s nobody here to tell me that I’m doing things wrong…?

I’m nervous about maybe being too old or out of shape to do the things I want to do. I still get so tired, so easily. Extended grief is a health sink, y’all. But I’m taking it slow and there are benches for sitting down everywhere and I’m drinking enough water and eating mostly healthy foods (other than a lot of carrot cake, but even that has carrots in it, so, whatevs). And I’ve walked about five miles a day two days in a row, and while my legs are noodles, I’m doing it. And because I’m doing this solo, I can stop and rest any time I want, or at the end of the day come up here and hide in my room at the B&B and just vegetate.

I’m nervous about being around a bunch of food I don’t know and winding up being allergic to some part of it. Well here’s the good news – allergens are taken seriously at a different level here, y’all! There are numbers on every menu, I think 1-12, listing common allergens. Then every dish on the menu will have the numbers after it that corresponds to the allergen in that dish.

My point about all of this is that I’m trying to teach myself that I can feel the fear, the fear is valid (even if the reason I have the fear is irrational, the fact that I feel the fear is not irrational), but feeling it doesn’t mean I have to let it overcome me. I can be the person I want to be, the person who does things she wants to do, even with that fear. Doesn’t that actually make me … braver? I’ve always thought the real hero is the person who is almost paralyzed by fear of what needs to be done and they do it anyway.

So … that’s what I’m doing. Thanks for following along while I do it. <3