Don't Look Down

I'm not good on airplanes. 

 

The night before my first ride to D.C., I threw up in my grandmother's plush bathroom, and had vivid nightmares of being wrapped in flames while hurtling toward the ground. Many plane rides later, on board with my even-keeled cousins, I nutted up and spent half of the flight huddled in the tiny bathroom, praying.

 

I'm really not good on airplanes.

 

"Stop looking out the window!" my seatmate growled. 

 

I couldn't.  As I tried feebly to stall another full-on freak out, I could not keep my trembling fingers off the little beige shade, silently sliding it up so I could see the clouds, make sure we were passing them, and see Earth level below us.

 

In my real life, sometimes, I can't stop looking down.

 

Even when I have outrun adversity and outgrown drama, the pull of gravity draws my vision off the horizon of my future to the grim thud of past mistakes, unrelenting angst, and unspoken pain. Not too mention that the ground is comforting beneath my feet. It's stable; it's unmovable. I can sit in one place and contemplate my surroundings. I need not look up, because everything I need is right here on the ground. Why see what's around the corner, or beckoning from the blue skies?

 

 

 

 

Even when things are really, really good - and so far, this year they have been - I can't help seeing my self as I did in my seventeen-year-old nightmare, in the safety of my Granny Rowser's four poster swan-carved bed, dreaming of falling to my death below. Or even worse:  I am suspended in mid-air, not performing a swan dive, but not moving forward either. Not moving anywhere, at all.

 

I know how to stop this fatalism. I know how to keep mine eyes fixed on the glory of a promising future.   But I can't keep my restless little fingers off the imaginary window in my mind.

 

If I fall, who will catch me? I've never been able to answer that question.

 

I think part of the problem is I need to give myself permission to fail, to trip, to make a fool out of myself, to screw up. That's not easy for me, or for most perfectionists who feel if they can just do it perfectly, execute it flawlessly - whatever "it" is (from homemade cupcakes to world domination to the contents of a blog, ahem) - that everything will be sunshine and rainbows and everyone will love them.

 

And I'm finding that the more permission I give myself to be myself, flaws and all, the more other people try to insinuate themselves into my life and my decision-making process. They sidle up next to me and remind me to slow down, hold up, and think twice about all the things that could go wrong in any plan I devise or any deviation outside the norm that I suggest. 

 

This is your Captain speaking: the moral of this story is, from today on, I'm going to do my best to look up, every day.  I'm going to stare at the sun and hopscotch on the stars and sleep in the cradle of the moon.  And the naysayers, the doubters, the haters, and anyone else who's not totally on board this flight with me needs to get off now. If I stumble, burst into flame, or tumble back to earth, at least it was better than sitting home on the ground and only dreaming about flying.