VIRB

There I was, just sitting in the airport terminal, waiting to take a big, comfy plane ride to an all-expenses trip to Orlando, Florida. What's the catch? Oh, maybe I'd have to sign a few hundred autographs, get my picture taken several dozen times, and put up with being harmlessly stalked when I ventured too far from my hotel room.
But apart from that, I get free food, a free trip to Islands of Adventure, and a stipend on top of it all.
Not bad, huh?
Sure, unless you're an agoraphobe whose panic disorder decides to rear its head just as your row is called to board.

Okay, here's how it happened...
I'm sitting there, mildly nervous, 'cause you know, travelling is a stressful thing in and of itself, and I've been travelling a LOT lately. Well, I need to say here that I've had some mild sinusitis with post-nasal drip these past few days, and that can do odd things to your body, or rather unomfortable things. Certainly things that can send agoraphobe into panic mode at the drop of a hat... or the call of a row...
Anyway. I'd had like next to nothing for breakfast, so I got that sort of 'empty stomach' indigestion, and I began to burp a little. I'm a total burp machine, so this is nothing uncommon, but... due, most likely, to post-nasal drip, messed-up tastebuds, and the mild sinusitis, I tasted something odd when I burped that may or may not have been blood. Most likely it was something else, but you get the picture, it scared me.

Okay, so now I'm going to let you into the mind of a neurotic agoraphobe... this is how the thought process went from there: " oh man I think I'm tasting blood and oh shit the plane's about to board okay hey wait what if I can make myself burp again and not taste anything but nope there I did it again and I still taste blood ( or is it blood, maybe it's just PND or traces of blood from having irritated sinuses or maybe I'm sort of conjuring the whole thing ) but no no I definitely taste something oh no oh no what if I'm at thirty-thousand feet and I vomit blood or I cough up blood or I bleed out and oh no oh no I die at thirty-thousand feet " ' F-List V.O. and Stage Actor dies at thirty-thousand feet from... somehow bleeding to death from his stomach even though nothing was apparently wrong with his stomach, back to you Trisha ' "... oh man oh man oh shit I can't skip out on this convention but what if that really is blood? oh shit oh shit oh shit fuck fuck fuck what do I do? oh fuck they just called my row I have to make a decision NO FUCK IT I CAN'T HANDLE IT I'M LEAVING"

And that's exactly what I did. I cancelled my flight at the counter, made arrangements for my baggage to be flown back to Houston, and I left.

Feeling like a tremendous loser, failure, weakling, pathetic numbnuts asshole.

NOT because I'm phobic,
NOT because I was born with a chemical imbalance
BUT BECAUSE I KNEW BETTER. Somewhere, deep down, WAY deep down in this case, I knew better.
But the truth is, if you've ever experienced even a mild panic attack in the sky, you know it's something you never want to go through again.

So, what's the answer? Well, first I DID want to write about it, to somehow put it out there so that it might be deflated and disempowered. To take the mystery out of the fear.
Next. I probably need to adjust the dosage of my medication, which, yes, sucks, but it's a reality.

Now I have to face the fact that I'm letting hundreds, if not thousands, of people down this weekend, I'm missing out on a free roller-coaster riding excursion, and late nights in lagoon pools in a pleasant climate, all because I couldn't surmount the bad chemical trick my brain was playing.

I must MUST control and let go of, my fear.