Plane mad
There is something about Flight 863 that makes me highly unstable. Perhaps it's not the flight itself, perhaps it's the feeling of having just left New York, just left the well-intentioned yet complicated love and support of my family, to resume my confused existence in Sydney. Regardless of the cause, the past two times I have flown from San Francisco to New York, I have encountered, and been completely floored by, an unexpected psychological response. The first time, I had a minor panic attack and felt confined, afraid and alone. This time, I awoke from a very light, disturbed sleep (the only kind possible on an airplane) to a feeling of intense unease. I felt so alienated and scared by what I was feeling, that I began rummaging through my backpack, frantically retrieving a piece of paper and a pencil. And then, hands trembling and heart racing, I wrote.
My head is unusually heavy and my stomach hurts from chewing through four packs of gum while waiting to board this plane. Around me people are sleeping - I wish I could join them, but my mind is too overactive, too full of random, obscure, nonsensical thoughts that make me feel unsettled. I feel as though my persoanlity has been fractured, parts of me strewn in a million directions, and I am left struggling to piece everything back together. I crave some sort of definite diagnosis right now, I'm quite frightened of the way my brain is always obsessing over such minor, irrelevant details. More disturbing is the content of the thoughts - analysis of the immediate environment quickly progresses to highly obscure ruminations that in no way reflect my true preferences, desires and morals.
I always seem to have psychological breakdowns and frightened epiphanies on airplanes. It's a habit I need to break. Confined space, long duration, alone, no sufficient distractions - it's not a prime location to have a panicky episode of obsessive thoughts and deafening, uncontrollable inner voices. I worry that I'm nuts. What do people think about when they are alone? I find it utterly impossible to clear my mind.
Half an hour later I was fine, as if I had returned to myself after a few hours of allowing my schizophrenic alter ego to maintain base camp within my head. It was quite bizarre. I came close to choking to death while laughing hysterically at Rat Race, which for some reason I found absolutely hilarious. Being on a plane for 21 hours makes one rather delirious.
My head is unusually heavy and my stomach hurts from chewing through four packs of gum while waiting to board this plane. Around me people are sleeping - I wish I could join them, but my mind is too overactive, too full of random, obscure, nonsensical thoughts that make me feel unsettled. I feel as though my persoanlity has been fractured, parts of me strewn in a million directions, and I am left struggling to piece everything back together. I crave some sort of definite diagnosis right now, I'm quite frightened of the way my brain is always obsessing over such minor, irrelevant details. More disturbing is the content of the thoughts - analysis of the immediate environment quickly progresses to highly obscure ruminations that in no way reflect my true preferences, desires and morals.
I always seem to have psychological breakdowns and frightened epiphanies on airplanes. It's a habit I need to break. Confined space, long duration, alone, no sufficient distractions - it's not a prime location to have a panicky episode of obsessive thoughts and deafening, uncontrollable inner voices. I worry that I'm nuts. What do people think about when they are alone? I find it utterly impossible to clear my mind.
Half an hour later I was fine, as if I had returned to myself after a few hours of allowing my schizophrenic alter ego to maintain base camp within my head. It was quite bizarre. I came close to choking to death while laughing hysterically at Rat Race, which for some reason I found absolutely hilarious. Being on a plane for 21 hours makes one rather delirious.