Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.

I wish I had said that. John Wayne beat me to it.

I recently flew to San Antonio, via Houston...and back. I was afraid, but I wasn't flying alone so I figured that would help some, and I remembered that I used to almost enjoy flying before that terrifying landing in Orlando back in 2002.

So, I made it through four flights. Four takeoffs. Four landings.

However, after completely losing about 3-4 hours of time upon arriving in San Antonio (and apparently I drove from the airport to the hotel), I decided that it was best not to take the Ativan on the way back.

Those two flights were not nearly as pleasant.

Landing back at home was not pretty. It was my first nighttime landing. The pilot had informed us that there were wind gusts of 20 mph, which isn't much, but "gusts" is not a word you want to hear when you're in an airplane imagining it being flipped upside down and plummeting into the ground.

If you don't understand fear, then this post sounds insane to you. But fear of flying is quite common, and the fear is paralyzing. There is no way to describe it, so I won't try. But I have been doing a lot of online research, and have even taken an online "fear of flying" course. You might be surprised how many online "fear of flying" websites there are. Most of them are run by very experienced pilots (or perhaps they are lonely, drunk, homeless men posting from public libraries and pretending to be pilots, but they are reassuring nonetheless). I "met" other people who are afraid of flying, and found that my feelings really aren't all that unusual. They describe their fears in a way that I can completely identify with, to the point where it's almost funny.

During all of my "research", I learned all about how airplanes are made, how they work, how they actually get off the ground, how pilots are trained, etc. I learned a few very clever relaxation and distraction techniques that I can actually imagine would work for me, to a degree, and with practice. I watched videos of planes taking off and landing, over and over, from all different angles, including video taken from inside the plane. It was very comforting to understand (somewhat) how airplanes work, and how safe air travel is.

I was preparing for another flight I was about to take, alone.

Those plans changed, but for personal reasons that had nothing to do with being afraid.

One big part of the reading I did and the class I took, was the reassurance that plane crashes are extremely rare, and that one of the big problems is the media sensationalism. After all, I probably hear about dozens of car accidents each week, but I don't avoid automobile travel because of it. When I'm riding in a car, I don't scrutinize every little noise, or fear hitting a pothole and being thrown into oncoming traffic (which really isn't all that uncommon). Why should I analyze every bump in an airplane, and assume it means that the plane is about to nosedive?

And one thing that you learn in the fear of flying classes; one thing drilled into your head, is that planes DO NOT just fall out of the sky.

In case you haven't been paying attention to the news, THREE commercial jets fell out of the sky over the past couple of weeks.

Okay, so one of them glided into a river, and no one died. But in that case, the fear itself would have killed me.

I wrote all of this crap to make a point...I am not going to let irrational fears control me.

(Not all of them, anyway. I doubt I'll be riding an elevator up to the 57th floor of a building anytime soon. Yeah, that fear is bigger than the flight phobia.)

I am still going to fly. Maybe soon.

And I still drive over bridges, even though I don't like it.

(Okay, not the Skyway Bridge, but hell, that one really DID fall down once.)

I'm also not going to be afraid to be who I am or do what I like to do, just because of what someone else might think of it. I'm doing quite well with that one.

And I do think I have managed to completely overcome one fear; the fear of being alone. That used to be a big one for me, but I don't think I'm afraid of it anymore.