This time next week I should be in Japan. Hopefully I have reached the hotel in Osaka to rest after a very long day.

I should be excited. I am, in a way.

But I also feel a familiar pit forming in my stomach.

Fear.

Fear of what will happen to the house and fish while we are away. Fear of accidents and misfortune while we are in Japan.

Most of all, a fear of flying.

Specifically, I am afraid of turbulence. I hate that feeling of dropping. I’ve flown many, many times. Through storms and the jet stream, weather fronts and winds. When the aircraft flights into a cloud and suddenly you are rising and dropping. In small planes and the biggest of them all, new and old.

Intellectually I know I’ll be okay and sometimes it’s been that way. Other times I’ve just wanted to scream and cry. And then thought of seven, eight, twelve or more hours trapped on board, not knowing if and when the turbulence might hit.

I’ve thrown up before a flight, hid sobbing in a bathroom, felt horrible, sick.

I completed a course on dealing with turbulence anxiety. It helped, or at least it seemed to. But I haven’t flown in over a year and a half and international in three and a half years. I’m out of practice.

So the demon of fear has returned and I don’t know quite what to do. I want to scream, to rage, to curl up in a tight ball and cry. I also want to be calm, to distract myself with positive experiences. I want people to leave me alone and hold me tight.

I want the fear to go away and leave me in the serene skies cruising high above this beautiful planet, flying to a destination I so desperately miss and returning safely home.