Turbulence
A Neurotic Monologue
Will you find this entertaining, horrifying, or just plain cringe? 👀🤷🏻♀️
At any rate, trigger warning for readers who have a fear of flying.
If it makes you feel better...the TLDR is:
turbulence = potholes of the sky = not that dangerous! 🚗 🕳️ 💨
What do you think of people who applaud when the plane lands?
I used to roll my eyes at it—if anything, it was the opposite of worldly sophistication, a sign of naiveté. It was something for people taking to air for the first time in their lives—something especially common when I’d flown in countries like Nepal, Ecuador, Peru. Something for people who don’t trust that they are owed solid ground.
Sept 2024 (LIS → GVA)
Saturday mid-afternoon, and the plane drops, and I’m convinced we’re all going to die.
The sky catches us again, laughing.
This does not soothe me. I am an anxious animal—I scan my environment, gauge my neighbors’ reactions, try to master uncertainty through observation. Instinct is like a dog-eared manual, usually shoved into a drawer but thumbed through in times of need.
Jesus, this plane is having a full-on seizure.
From the window, I make eye contact with the woman in my row’s aisle seat. Her husband sits in front of her, reassuringly bulky and bearded.
I'd noticed them when they first strode on board—she with her brightly patterned dress and coral red lipstick, he with his t-shirt a little too tight, wafting cologne that I couldn’t actually smell but could practically see. Mr. and Ms. Vivacious. I’d felt a little self-conscious about my own sweatpants, but now…
Now I find myself latching onto their European blasé like some sort of emergency blanket. Surely...they are too glamorous to die! (And so, surely I am included by association???).
The woman and I smile at each other, almost conspiratorial in our fear.
Haha, we say with our eyes, the pinched smirk of our lips, isn’t this quite the ride and isn’t it so dramatic of us to think that this could be it?
To think that we could be special enough to end up on the news?
There’s a Kindle on my lap, a novel on hers, and I notice that neither of us has tapped or flipped to a new page in the past fifteen minutes. This is actually kind of hilarious.
At this point I go a bit disjointed:
This plane ticket is less than half the price of EDC, and probably has double the drops.
Have I always been this easily stressed? I’ve solo-traveled before. I’ve had layovers, I’ve been sleep-deprived. Am I old?? Maybe once you hit 30, your body changes at a cellular level. Maybe that’s when biochemical signals transform death from a someday-concept into an everyday-feeling.
Crap, am I turning into my mom? She’s become increasingly convinced that cancer is in the kitchen, and disaster right outside the front door. Oh my God, she is going to kill me if I die. She’ll be devastated but even worse, she’ll be right. It would be so incredibly ridiculous to die on vacation.
Another gut-wrenching drop. I wonder what would happen if we just…kept falling.
The man in front of me is hunched over like a vomit-flavored shrimp. The flight attendant is actively avoiding my eyes. I text one of my friends some profound last words, "lol this plane ride is bumpy af juuust letting you know haha" but there’s no signal, so the message hangs.
In the meantime, our plane continues to impersonate an elevator.
(If you have plane anxiety, definitely don’t watch Society of the Snow on Netflix, because at this point I can't help but visualize a mountain face suddenly forcing itself up against the window like some sort of giant squid—hello!)
Mr. Vivacious reaches his arm back through the gap between the seats, squeezes Ms. Vivacious’s bare ankle, rubs its delicate gold chain. She caresses his arm. It’s kind of unclear who is reassuring who.
…I am single and lonely and desperate for touch. If we crash, I’m launching myself straight into my neighbor couple’s embrace. Pride? Left it somewhere in the clouds! Here's your newly adopted thirty-year-old child! Surprise!
That empty middle seat that looked like such a #blessed valley? A curse.
That free upgrade to first class (aka, the crumple zone)? A curse.
My blood cortisol content? Far above the legal limit.
My gut? Curled up tighter than a pill bug.
Why do we do the things we do?
I apologize to my parents. Bargain with fate. Promise never to fly frivolously1 again. I would do anything to kiss ground. To praise ground, ground as God. Oh God. Is this all there is? I need more time. Time for what? I haven’t done what I’ve meant to do.
Life is full of confounding factors.
What is it you mean to do? Do you even know what you mean to do? What would you do with time, even if you had it?
—
We land.
Perhaps not a shocker…but until that point, I would have given anything to read a spoiler.
There are laughs, audible sighs of relief, scattered applause—although honestly there should’ve been a standing ovation.
In the moment, though, I have no coherent thoughts, just gratitude, washing me head-to-toe.
Feb 2025 (SFO → EWR)
Nearly half a year later, I still don’t think what happened qualifies as an epiphany. Nor — as far as I know—were we actually in any danger. (Normalize turbulence!)
Plenty of people have had real brushes with death, plenty of people have “memento mori” tattoos, plenty of people have used the “eulogy exercise” as a mental framing. But even these high-intensity realizations can easily be smoothed over by the days.
Still, I no longer believe that post-flight applause is a sign of statistical naiveté. Sure, you’re more likely to die in an everyday situation like a car accident, but it takes a certain level of courage to actively acknowledge that you are subject to forces beyond your control, that the full space of possibilities include ones without you.
(I am probably not special enough to be a lightning rod, but also not not so special that I couldn't still be struck by lightning).
This personal essay, if one can call it that, ended up diverging quite a bit from its origin. The adventure that followed the flight—an ultramarathon called Wildstrubel—is the story I originally meant to tell (and maybe still will?).
When I ended up writing way too much about the plane ride itself, a friend told me “there must be something there”, and encouraged me to unravel it to completion.
So…what was the point? It’s all still a mystery that I find myself coming back to every now and then. An open question. In fact, there’s really no real purpose to writing this, other than capturing that particular lived experience.
(I realize that that’s pretty unsatisfying, but in a world marching towards automation, “lived experience” is arguably still something of value...?)
—
But what is it you mean to do?
I'm being coy. Some post-hoc accounting did happen.
First off, I realized that I am not ready to die. (For various reasons, several years prior, I had been ambivalent on that point).
In terms of travel and novel experiences...I know I’ve been incredibly lucky to reach peak hedonism so early in my life. Of course there's always more to see, but if I get hit by a bus tomorrow? I'm good, fam! No real regrets about fun-that-could-still-be-had.
In other ways though? Even though I didn't fully register it while I was on the plane, I was crushed by incredible guilt. At this point in my life, I’ve taken far more from the world than I’ve put back in. I could be a more generous friend, a more patient daughter, a more enthusiastic colleague.
Even if my existence is a negligible blip in time and space…even if I'm unlikely to ever impact anything in a global way...couldn't I at least use my blip to spread happiness to the people immediately around me? (Or in nerdspeak—focus on locally maximizing good vibes?)
Despite losing the conviction of my early 20s, isn’t it funny that some quiet self still thinks it has something to say? ("There is too much noise/but perhaps I have misheard/the grand orchestra"). Still I am trying, still I am shouting into the void, even if all my voice has to offer is the off-pitch, nearly inaudible note of a plane-experience-was-never-actually-life-threatening.
This is the longest piece I’ve written a while.
—
I started writing this in October 2024, but ironically enough, ended up finishing most of it on a plane back to NYC. It turns out you can write long essays on your phone’s Notes app, at least when sufficiently motivated.
It’s been less than a week since the DC crash. Plane crashes were already on my mind, having flown to Japan two days after the Jeju Airlines tragedy. Weirdly enough, despite the emotional proximity of all these events, it was a great coping mechanism to write this in midair—although I did get a bit apprehensive during the violent rattle of the descent.
When the plane hit the runway at EWR, I was still typing away with my thumbs. However, I am happy to report that there was, indeed, a single person who clapped.
An hour after picking up my luggage from the carousel, and after reading several Reddit posts from real airline pilots (if they were to be believed), I was:
newly well-versed in global warming and the uptick in clear-air turbulence (never mind that we were flying through grayed out skies)
eager to explain how bouts of turbulence are the potholes of the air — bumpy for the backseat, but not dangerous
mass-texting my friends about all of the above
painfully aware of how I will be the grandma spreading fake news in 40 years, if I’m not already