The

The plane takes the highway run to full speed before take-off, but something goes wrong, the wings shake trepitiously, the pilot abruptly pulls the breaks and the world comes to a standstill. Fellow travelers, taken aback, are forced to look around, beyond themselves and dwell into each other's spirits through conversation. If only I weren't always awaiting a catastrophe, just before the plane takes off and for a few endless minutes of pure horror, I would've reacted with the same commotion. Instead frightful reality was supplanted by the heightened state of anxiety my imaginary fear, as if it were camouflaged and immune to all. As if I knew somehow that moment would come sooner or later.

The severity of things was deeply distorted by my imagination. And though I know consciously that there are more planes in the air at any given moment than the number of commercial aircraft that have crashed in the entire history of aviation, the rational odds dictate there are more real scenarios by which I'll die other than in a plane crash. Still I suffer, and understand that it is irrational, only meditation alleviates the internal bouts this phobia instills.