The fear of flying, or aerophobia, is quite a well-known and common phobia. Many famous people have admitted to suffering from it, and this fear has even shaped their professional lives. Singers like Mina, for example, Maria De Filippi, Aretha Franklin, and even someone like Lenny Kravitz have confessed to it \u2014 and just looking at him, you\u2019d think he\u2019s someone who\u2026 well, you just look at him because he\u2019s Lenny Kravitz. I, in my own small way, am no different.
If aerophobia is a common form of anxiety that can range from mild discomfort to a full panic attack when facing a flight, for me\u2014and always in my small way\u2014it\u2019s a moment of terror, an exorcism that takes over and distorts my face and soul. And yet, once I used to fly. <\/p>\n
I started flying when I was a child. As a teenager, I traveled by plane alone for study trips, where you learn languages and, most importantly, freely eat all the junk food from wherever you are. <\/p>\n
But at a certain point, during a flight taking me to Egypt, I feel that something is wrong in my body. Something\u2019s wrong in my mind, too. My hands start sweating, my breathing becomes labored, my head hurts, and then I feel like crying. In short, after takeoff, I decide it\u2019s time for me to get off. I want to get off, to get out of that metal thing flying high up, hundreds of meters in the air. <\/p>\n
But since you can\u2019t get off \u2014 and the flight attendant tells me this bluntly, with no tact \u2014 I feel a rage, uncontrollable and unmanageable. Everyone: passengers, pilot, steward\u2026 everyone, without exception, is my enemy and accomplice in this kidnapping, which is me. <\/p>\n
So I become truly mean. My voice gets hoarse, like in a horror movie. The only thing missing is walking backward on my hands, and I\u2019d look fresh out of The Exorcist. People look at me with an unbearable sneer, and the flight attendants, without even a shred of female solidarity, keep serving fruit juices to the passengers. \u201cFruttini,\u201d as they were called: high in sugar and, one might say, quite inappropriate as a drink while flying through the clouds. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the steward, perhaps impressed by my now yellow pupils and sharp canine teeth that have appeared, comes to hold my hand, thinking he can calm me down, and even invites me to go to the cockpit. According to him, that might soothe me. Imagine me going straight to the home of the person driving that thing and getting locked in there! <\/p>\n
There must be a Greece, an Albania, something to land on so I can get off, I think. But the steward\u2019s steady gaze stops me from asking; I can only growl, howl, or make otherworldly sounds. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a phobia; you can\u2019t control it. Do you resign yourself to it? No, of course not. In fact, I even signed up for one of those courses where you conquer the fear, complete with a psychologist on hand. But it didn\u2019t help, and anyway on that flight to Egypt, I was more scared of myself than of that metal thing. Maybe that\u2019s the real phobia? Who knows. <\/p>\n
Finally, the plane lands where it was supposed to land, Sharm El Sheikh. I fix my hair and skirt and head toward the exit. I reach out my hand to the steward and, with a spark in my eyes, I say, \u201cIt\u2019s been a real pleasure flying with you. Bastards.\u201d <\/p>\n
Yes, maybe the real phobia was toward me, or toward ourselves. Or who knows what really. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The fear of flying, or aerophobia, is quite a well-known and common phobia. Many famous people have admitted to suffering from it, and this fear has even shaped their professional lives. Singers like Mina, for example, Maria De Filippi, Aretha Franklin, and even someone like Lenny Kravitz have confessed to it \u2014 and just looking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1021,"featured_media":900455,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-900454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-omnibus"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n