Fear of Falling.
When I first became an adult (wait—when did that happen? Some of you are asking in genuine concern), I found that I had more and more anxiety around flying. Funny, that, for so many of us, our control issues get worse instead of better as we actually get more control over our lives. Something to ponder.
Anyhow, I think it was on the way home from our honeymoon that Peter, after peeling me off of him and bathing the claw marks on his face in antiseptic solution, said, “You are getting help, or I am never flying with you again.” It was one of the kindest things he’s ever done for me.
I found out about the Fear of Flying class at the BU Center for Anxiety Disorders:
http://www.bu.edu/card/
and booked myself a spot. They were using an intriguing combination of group therapy (well done!) and virtual reality to simulate experience of the phobia (kind of cheesy, frankly, and the mask was smelly). In group therapy, I soon found out that even though we were all afraid of flying, among the subtypes of phobia, I was unique in my group (you see the common theme in my life?). The others were mostly claustrophobic, or afraid of dying.
I was not afraid of dying. I am blessed or cursed with a strong faith in God, as some people are blessed with a strong stomach. I have a powerful sense of life after this one, and tend to cultivate curiosity rather than fear about it. So I am not afraid of dying when I get into an airplane. I am afraid of falling. That awful, stomach-in-mouth feeling of falling through space, that people pay good money to feel at amusement parks? That is the opposite of fun for me. I hate rides, I hate heights, I hate planes, for this reason. [Plug, though: the class really helped! A lot. Evidence: Peter’s scratch-free face upon our return from Mexico this week]
A bunch of years ago, when I was leading a conference on Peacemaking at my Christian camp, we spent an afternoon on the high ropes course doing that necessary Thursday-afternoon-Christian-camp-activity, “Building Courage in Ourselves Before We are Returned to the Mean, Mean World.” Except, I was supposed to lead by example, as one of the co-deans of the conference, and let me tell you, the only example I set was to make 30 seventh graders say to themselves, “Man, I am sooooo much more together than Molly. I guess everything’s gonna be all right in eighth grade after all.”
Since I had to choose a challenge for example-setting, I chose the one with the big log suspended between two trees 70 feet above the forest floor—the Catwalk? The Burma Bridge? What is that one called? It seemed the safest choice at the time, staring up from the sturdy, wonderful ground. I love the ground. I managed to climb the tree. I managed to move myself around the circumference of the tree to the log. I managed to get a toe on the log. That was all I managed.
There was a wonderful girl in our conference—I’ve forgotten her name, but she was one of those girls who doesn’t make friends easily, journals every chance she gets, and lets her long lovely dark hair hang in her face so you can’t see how beautiful she is. That girl doesn’t say much, but when she does speak, she gets it right.
She looked up, seventy feet, her dark hair falling back from around her face, and hollered up at me, “Remember Philippians! ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!’”
I wish I could say that was the inspiration I needed to carry me skipping across the log, virtually dancing down the staples on the other side, and into the arms of my cheering campers. I didn’t. I managed to stand, woozy and emanating the smell of fear, on the log, for about five seconds, before letting myself get belayed down in shame. But Philippians 4:13 has become a favorite.
This is all deep, deep background for the same thing that’s happening again, on a whole new level. [Isn’t that life though? Learning the same sh*t over and over, at a deeper level. Why are we so hard on ourselves when we find ourselves circling back? We should be proud, that we’ve moved on in our Jedi training to deeper challenges.]
Last Thursday, on our amazing, fantabulous, dreamy, splendid, pre-chemo healing trip to Mexico (pictures and jealousy-inducing stories forthcoming), Peter and I went to Xel-Ha, a natural lagoon south of Cancun that is home to coral reefs, hundreds of species of tropical fish, impossibly blue water, mangrove coves. It has been Disneyfied in the many years since I was last there—now, with trolleys, beer and all you can eat fajita bar!—but it is still possible to enjoy the head-shaking marvels of nature.
One of the man-made features that has been introduced were several points at which you could jump into the lagoon from a height of 17 feet or more, progressively named the Cliff of Courage, and the Cliff of Insanity. If they had had the Cliff of Moderation I might have tried that. They didn’t. But they did have a set of parallel upper/lower ropes suspended maybe 8 feet over the water—you’d put your toes on the lower rope, your arms on the upper rope, and inch across the divide till you got to the platform on the other side. Or, if your arms gave out, fall.
Normally I’d yawn at such a thing and say, “it’s not that I’m scared, I’m just not in the mood today.” But I decided to do it. I’ve been deciding more decidedly lately, to do things that would normally be a little scary for me. What do I have to lose? I have cancer! Non-cancer-related fears start to take their proper scale at a time like this.
Before I had time to think too much about it, I set out—engage the abs to aid the arms, find my balance, too steeped in method and logistics to think about being scared. A nine-year-old girl followed me out on the ropes. Her biceps gave out just before mine, and when she fell and joggled the ropes, I fell. You know what? It was fun. I just floated on my back for a while in the deep, staring up at the blue sky from the blue waters.
The next evening, our last in Playa del Carmen, Peter and I were walking the strip and doing a little shopping. There were scarves on sale, for you, mi amiga! I knew I’d be needing them soon, so I picked out a couple, took them to the mirror, wrapped them around my head and tucked my hair up inside to see how they would work. Looking in the mirror, with Peter behind me, I thought of how different things were going to be four weeks, even one week from that moment. I had not been thinking about cancer or chemo for days, but there it was again, all of a sudden.
“I’m scared,” I said to Peter, as we looked in the mirror.
“I know,” he said.
Then I said, “It must be something like walking out on the rope at Xel-Ha—it’s scary till you start, then you’re so busy concentrating on what comes next, the next step, you forget to be scared.”
“I think it is like that,” said my husband, kindly.
I really still think that I’m not afraid to die. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid to leave: my kids, Peter, and all the people I love.
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