Read Online I Can Barely Take Care of Myself by Jen Kirkman - Free Book Online Page B

motioned to the gazillion million controls, gadgets, lights, and levers before them. “This is where the magic happens!” the pilot said. My hands got clammy instantly at even the casual thought that the only thing keeping me in the sky would be “magic.”
    We left the pilots to their gadgetry and magic making. Therewas one more stop on the airplane tour. My father led me up amini–spiral staircase to the lounge. I know what you’re thinking. What lounge? You mean the metal snack tray that the flight attendant wheels around? No. That’s a cart. I’m talking about a lounge; an actual lounge with a bar and alcohol and bar stools. Men and women who looked like they were graduates of Studio 54 sipped drinks, from real glasses, at the bar. Both sexes wore feathered hair and shoulderpads. I thought to myself, I want my life to be just like this: glamorous, high rolling, and permanently tanned. Gone were my clammy hands and the memory of the intimidating cockpit. This glamorous world seemed safe. The people at the top of the spiral staircase had no worries. They were jet-setters. Maybe one of these rich people would adopt me and we wouldn’t have to tour cockpits or fly coach.I could sit next to my glamorous mom and dad and sip a Shirley Temple while they got bombed on gin. We would travel the world together—always maintaining the perfect amount of fantasy to counteract life’s reality.
    Soon I went back to coach to join my real mother, who had her rosary beads in her lap. The beads only came out on big occasions—like funerals. When the beads came out it signaled thatmy mom was in dire need of strengthening her long-distance connection to God. She had taught me once how to pray with rosary beads but I could never remember the routine. I had no interest. Madonna hadn’t come out with “Like a Virgin” yet. It would be a little while before I found out how cool they look as an accessory.
    I excitedly relayed to my mom that there was a whole other universe/cocktaillounge right above our heads. She snapped nervously at my father, as if he had been the architect of the plane: “Ronnie, there’s a bar on this plane? How on earth can this plane hold that much weight? We’re not going to make it!”
    During takeoff my dad remained silent, fully focused and staring straight ahead, like he was trying not to get seasick on a boat. He gripped our shared armrest. He grittedhis teeth and said over and over in a forced singsong, “Here we go! Here we go!” As the wheelsleft the ground, I realized that I was in the hands of two parents who were anything but grounded themselves. My dad was terrified of flying and the tour of the cockpit had been more to calm his white knuckles than mine. My dad clenched and my mom prayed. I was sandwiched in a chorus of “Here we go!”and “Hail Mary, full of grace . . .”
    In that moment, I knew I was going to inherit this rosary-saying woman’s fear and this cockpit-touring man’s denial. It couldn’t be stopped. And the exotic people wearing blue eyeliner upstairs represented a fantasy world, an alternate universe in which I felt I should be living but that I knew was impossible. Later in life, my various therapists have calledthis sort of thing “conditioning.” My mom calls it “We weren’t that bad. You have such an imagination.”
    From then on I could panic on airplanes even if the view was fantastic, even if there was no turbulence, even if the flight attendants were actually smiling that day, even if the pilot said, “This is God. I will be your pilot today and I swear to myself—we will not crash.” I could panic evensitting in first class, where they serve warm cookies and champagne. Distractions and logic do not help temper what my psychiatrist explains to me is just some overintense fight-or-flight response that is left over from my caveman DNA. I have nowhere to put my adrenaline on flights, since my inner caveperson cannot club the wild beast that is chasing her