flying solo

I have a fear of flying. It's something I can't control, I can't explain, and I can't get rid of. It wasn't always that way though. I used to fly all by myself ever since I was 7 years old. And I took 14 hour flights 4 times a year and I had no problemo.

But then one day, something happened: I got scared. It was a sudden realization of just how much life hangs by a thread and I'm not ready for that thread to break. I've seen death from many different angles and honestly, I don't want to experience any of it yet. There is so much to life that I haven't discovered, so much I still want to do, I definitely do not want to go down on a crashing plane. I know what everyone says: chances of dying in a car accident are like a million times higher, blablabla. But planes in specific scare me. When you're so many feet off the ground, completely and utterly without control on your own well-being with no way whatsoever to protect yourself, nothing makes me feel more vulnerable. Nothing, except of course life in general. Because even though I only get this sickening fear when I'm flying, the truth is, death is always beyond our control.

Now life, that's something we can choose, change, adapt and transform as we go.

I'm having breakfast in Rome this morning, and tonight, I will be dining in New York.

The last time I was in the city that never sleeps was 3 and half years ago, which seems like a lifetime away. I had packed up my bags and left behind 2 unforgettable years, a time when walking through Fifth Avenue, or Central Park, or near the Empire State building was just another walk I took everyday. Now I find myself filled with anguish, returning to this city I was so in love with as a different person. Maybe New York hasn't changed, but I certainly have. The last time I was there, I was 23 years-old. I was a journalist, fresh off Grad School, and the world was at my feet. I wanted to become the next Christiane Amanpour and use the Middle-East's fucked-up politics as my personal training ground. Then I made choices. Choices that you get to make even if they are sometimes dictated by things we can't control. I made it as a news anchor and head of my own news bulletin but I hated it and I quit my job and changed my career. Now I run an NGO, I write a blog, and in my free time I write and act for a TV/Web series. Basically I find myself nothing like the person I expected to be back then. And I know I'm at a crossroads once again, and that the choices I make in the coming few months may completely change the course of my life. Again. And that's okay. As long as I know I can control it, as long as these decisions are my own, then my life is my own.

I don't know what may happen in that flight I'm about to take (hopefully nothing because I'm just a paranoid freak with plane phobia) --it scares the shit out of me and I have to severely drug myself in order to survive it, but it is my choice to go. The way there might be scary as hell for me, but the destination it worth the risk.

I know they say "enjoy the journey, not the destination." I get it and it's true. I say it too sometimes. But not when I'm flying solo. 

the better story

In films and in books and in romance in general, love at first sight is a big thing. Two people see each other in a crowd, their eyes meet, and they both immediately know that they are meant to be. And I've heard about stories like that in real life. My dad always says he knew the minute he saw my mother outside his high-school that she would be his wife someday. And the other night, my aunt's friend was telling the story of how she met her husband: they were in Paris, she was taking a seminar and he was teaching it. She dropped her pen on the floor and he picked it up for her, and their eyes met. She immediately told her friend "I have the strangest feeling this man is the man of my life." And they've been married twenty-years or so now. 

These stories are great. They make us all dream and smile, and hope for the kind of love that you see in "The Notebook" which makes every girl cry her eyes out. 

What's funny though is that many a times, these words have been said and things did not work out --so they're quickly forgotten. If things had worked out, the story would be told on every rooftop. My friend Rebelious got engaged 6 months after meeting her boyfriend, because "they just knew." They were married another 6 months later and at their wedding, he told the story of how the night they met, he told his friend that this is the girl he was going to marry. And he did marry her. But then they got divorced two years later. So much for a romantic story.

I'm not trying to poke holes into wonderful romance. I love these stories. I just think they trap us in these little boxes and make us feel like that's what we should look for, someone we're just going to look at and know within minutes that he's the one. I don't believe that anymore.

I think I was in love once or twice before. And each of these times, I had decided that I was "in love" almost instantly. In love with someone I didn't even know. Now I am convinced this comes from watching too much Cinderella and the Little Mermaid as a child, because how someone can love a person they know nothing about now seems completely absurd to me. You're in love with someone first and then you get to know them? And you find out what they're like and you have to accept them with all their faults because you already decided you love them. You love what, exactly? 

Love at first sight now seems  like a recipe for disaster. You meet someone, fall in love, have a picture of them in your mind and what happens next, in most cases, is that they keep disappointing you --they don't live up to that image. They are not want you wanted them to be, and once the infatuation wears off and you realize it, it only goes downhill from there.

And then you meet someone one day, and you don't expect anything. He makes you laugh maybe, something peeks your interest, but wedding bells aren't ringing in your ears, and you haven't pictured what your three children are going to look like within an hour of meeting him. You just meet him. And spending time with him is what makes you want to spend more time with him. And suddenly you find yourself surprised by the way he is. Good surprised. You didn't build-up an image, he builds it for your, little by little. You discover each other and the more you learn the more you like. And I think that's a better story.