Fight or Flight

I’m flying back to Iceland en route to London. I finished up a contract at SapientNitro – performing a delta analysis on the content management group of a Canadian giant – and having failed to find an equally stimulating immediate next foray, I instead did the only thing I know how when my brain lacks challenge – I got on a plane.

Icelandair is quickly becoming my favourite airline. The staff exude a kind of calm pleasantness and sincerity that I realize now is characteristic of their countrymen. The food is good. Their earbuds are cool. They offer wifi on flights.

A Polish girl (I say girl, though upon initial conversation she reveals many life milestones that make her arguably more adult than I) is sitting next to me, and she’s terrified of flying. It takes a mere moment to figure out that she’s not a nutty drama queen but genuinely handicapped in this phobia. She whimpers quietly beside me with her sympathetic nervous system in overdrive, eyes darting around madly and sweat collecting between her brows. She asks if I mind that we talk a bit, because it calms her. I don’t mind, I tell her. My mom has always had bad anxiety and there were nights that I stayed awake massaging her legs to try to get her warm and blood circulating around her body. I offer up my hand to hold, should it soothe her, and she grips it instantly, clutching at me with cold, soggy fingers. She apologizes for the grossness of it all, almost releases me from my duty, but I smile that it’s no bother. It’s an intimacy that I tend to avoid like the plague. It embarrasses me to witness other people’s personal pain. In this teeny space, however, it’s unavoidable, and completely in my best interest to keep her from melting down.

We sat like that for four hours. The plane landed, and she gave me a quick hug before frantically dashing out the barely opened hatch and disappearing into the terminal.

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