(This story of flying and fear is taken from the personal notebooks and experience of our community on flight anxiety, transposed by Martina D. L., 34 years old, a copywriter who lived in perennial phobic prohibition)
I didn't take and brush from afar a check-in desk for wheeled boarding of my poor suitcases that had been sealed for several whole and devastating six consecutive years. My pre-conceived phobic disuse of high-range transport of the flight translated into unmeasurable losses for kilometre-wide extensions: entire parties of the affectionate circle gone deserted in insular lands and provinces across the Channel, unrepeatable precious opportunities from free fugitives for road contracts due to international agencies all withdrawn or not reimbursed because blocked in front and negligently obstructed in front of the bridge of the metal fuselage freezingly placed on the tarmacs of the fingers of the Milanese airport hold. The terrible tachycardia and the locked-in agoraphobia devoured my existence and the very limited time available.
The preparation: a handhold in the sleepless night
Three months ago my brother set a firm, non-derogable date for the emphatic wedding ceremony on the largest northern island of the Scottish United Kingdom (a very abundant stretch of dark, perilous northern ocean, with intense cloud uncertainty). A flight journey of the unignorable and overwhelming and dodging tonnage of approximately 2 long disorienting and arduous tense hours fictitiously of anxiety. And this is how the enormous psychotherapeutic and hydrodynamic meteorological support from FlyCalm landed on my smartphone.
The days before the wait for the take-off, I struggled to hold my breath in my thoracic limbs, thinned by the thought of the sudden jolts of air on the drizzling London fog... The lighting took shape by downloading the application onto the desktop and entering clear educational sections, lashing like a benevolent scientific re-ordering slap. Read by deciphering what the robustness of the Thermal Wave is intimately and the secrets on why the false, absurd "air vacuum" with the Blog post on Engines or Aerodynamic Engineering ETOPS in Redundancy have unreasonably shattered half a horrendous ignorant slice of ancient negative magical superstitions on pre-Columbian aviation stuck in the dark imagination of my common people and medieval about falling down unexpectedly.
"But I use Offline on takeoff against Baltic turbulence!"
At the time of fastening seat belts with that crack of the belt waist the hostess presses to send activation to the off mode of radio signals from the wi fi network of satellite telecommunications.
It was precisely here that a ferocious flash of demon and obsessive unfolding panic took over subtly and intimidatingly. I didn't detach pale and extended fingers from the creaking and opaque white plastic recliners, grasping the brim for strangulating chest asphyxia! I hastily pulled the interface of my friend's mobile phone activated from the pocket of the pleated skirt for travel on the App menu Offline Installed Flycalm (in providential format for installation ahead of mobile Home Screen - the jewel of PWAs). As soon as the gigantic rubbery shock-absorbing pads before the set-up trolley slipped off and tore away deafly from the highway crust of the Asian track base, rolling heavily in jolts towards risers and dives rising again against the very strong trade winds, I crossed paths in the throes and spasms of dizzying fear at the obedience of the "Panic Button", a vital emergency button specially red like cross-shaped psychiatric fire extinguishers for saves and starts.
The Panic Button and the reassuring cycles of cathartic action
By pressing it, the animated hyper-explosion of the restoration of sympathetic vagus breathing in 4-4-4 quadrilaterals has kidnapped the hyper-functioning visual receptors of the pulsating temples in a surge of pressure, miraculously suspending from hypnotized the tachycardic retaliation of the adductor pressure of the vascular ligaments to the strangled throat that tightens. Four inhales, empty holds and whimsical puffing outflows. Retraced in five cycles, it radically calmed down by thirty-six percent the apocalyptic imminent anguished sensation unraveling from the collapse of destructive impact and fatal and irrevocable expectations!
It offered me deciphered calculating messages, calming the maneuvers, hearing the buzz in the hold of the drill with liquid pumps and the hydraulic clutches in the foot wells... and it went on sliding smoothly. In the midst of the dense clouds like English sponges of storms and rainbows at the Scottish arctic submarine passage spilling the frozen sea I, sipping hot tea with mint pre-ordered on a reclining and solid support tray resting compartments in front of a frozen tablet: I was asking, winning smiling for my unexpected incredible and resurgent happiness.
And to all of you readers or pre-travellers of infinite disturbances I confess now with the plan of the summit sun and the arrival on the highlands that FlyCalm in Offline, associated with the rejected theories for mal de mer and the scientific guarantees on engineering redundancy read in the community: it's like walking with the best trusted analyst clinging to your side! Now I'll book the exotic Caribbean with peace of mind!