Bali Take Two.

So back to Bali.

When I was on the way to Egypt earlier in the Summer I flipped out. Catching me on the way back to my seat, between my hiccups and sobs, the flight attendent asked me if this was my first flight. I told her that I used to fly internationally two or three times a year and had never had this kind of reaction before. That I had no idea how or even exactly when I lost my mind. That I had felt the weeks before this flight, a sense of impending doom that made my entire body want to revolt in any way possible... And she asked me why I did it, and the only possible response I could croak was, "Because I ought to. I need to."

When I was in highschool I wrote one of my long-gone college essays on my love of flying. I loved how at peace I felt so far above and away from my regular life. It's hard for people to have expectations of you, of the things you ought to be and ought to do when you are 30,000 miles above the ground. Hurdling through the air there is only so much control you have over your own life and the rare opportunity to deny that responsibility, to relenquish all power and surrender yourself, was something I cherished. I've always been in my own head. Like some nuerotic mumbling kid I have the tendancy to mull things over and over and over before acting on them - as a result of this I sometimes completely flip out and do things without any thought at all. Maybe as a result to get some slippery grasp on that feeling I used to love so much I got my nose pierced, went to Spain alone, got a prison tattoo at 13, and kissed a hobo. It's a fucked up system I know.

I am aware that I lead a priviledged life. I am thankful. Really I am. However I am stuck here. For whatever reason, I now hate that feeling while flying. I am so frightened by my own lack of power while flying I imagine myself crumbling apart the whole time... Maybe this is why I can't stand flying anymore, right when I started to feel that lack of control encroach upon my normal life (transfering, having trouble at CNU, feeling alone, ect. ) that powerlessness became to common and all-together too real... Now I dont know how to get back to that place. Being a religion major I pretty much spend all my time devoted to that study, of the kind of submission of will that God requires to believe. The ability to let something slip from your hands (whether it ever really existed there at all or not) is a dangerously frightening thing...