When I Should Have Freaked Out, But Didn’t
I should have been totally freaking out…but I wasn’t.
My daughter, husband, and I sat in the back of a Lyft on our way to the airport. My husband shows me his Southwest app and a flight with a departure time of 12:30pm on the screen. My brain doesn’t quite know what to do with this information and I think, “why is he showing me some random flight, is that his return flight?” Because the flight we’re headed to leaves at 2pm and it’s currently 11:43am.
Um. No.
Our flight leaves at 12:30pm, not 2pm and now it’s 11:44am!
My husband had put the wrong time in the calendar and last night when I tried to log in to my Southwest app, my password wasn’t working and I was too exhausted to reset it, so I went to bed not knowing that our flight was leaving an hour and a half earlier than we thought.
What would you do in that situation?
Scream, panic, cry? I did none of those things.
This stoic calmness took over and I believed we were going to make our flight, somehow.
We were only 10 minutes from the airport at this point, so we’d likely be checking our bags around 12pm, when boarding would start. We were flying out of the Oakland airport which usually has speedy (for an airport) security lines and it’s not a huge airport, so I was game to run to our gate once we got through security.
Oh, wait, I forgot to mention, I’m hungry and planned on buying food. I can’t eat any of Southwest’s snacks because of my food allergies. I did have some snacks in my bag, but not what I'd want for a four and a half hour flight during lunchtime! As my husband can attest, I’m a stickler for eating all of my meals (and snacks) every day. If I sleep in, eat breakfast and realize, as I lick the last bit of oatmeal from my spoon, that it’s lunch time, you can bet real money that I’m headed to the fridge in search of lunch. It gets ugly if I skip meals.
When we get to the bag tag kiosks, my husband goes to his own kiosk because he booked his flight separate from mine and my daughter, and when I try scanning my boarding pass to get into the system, it’s not working. I try three times and finally have to read the confirmation code outloud to my daughter to punch in. Then this warning flashes because our flight leaves in less than 45 minutes, they can’t guarantee that our bags will make our flight, I click ok to proceed.
My husband goes running behind us to get inline to drop his bags because he’s already printed his bag tag.
After what feels like forever, we get our bag tags printed and magically a Southwest employee walks by at that moment and attaches them for us. We then hurry to get inline, and I see my husband is just getting called to the desk, so I holler for my daughter to follow me as I duck under the line divider and hurry to catch up with him. The Southwest employee gives me a bit of a look, but doesn’t comment on us cutting the line to join him and accepts our bags, though she says if our bags don’t make our flight we’ll have to go back to the Chicago airport to get them when they do.
We hurry to the security checkpoint. The line isn’t too bad, my daughter and I get in the regular line and my husband gets in the precheck line. I've tried to convince him to board the plane and save us seats, but he keeps saying that Southwest won’t let him save seats. So I let it drop.
We move quickly through the line, but then when we get to the image scanny thingy, it slows down. I keep glancing at my watch. It’s 12:06pm and I know boarding’s begun. Our boarding passes have us in the A group and I start to wonder if we’ll make it before all the As are on board.
Somehow I am so calm in all of this. I’m not freaking out, I feel confident we’ll make our flight and that our bags will make it too. It’s kinda weird because this is the kinda thing where I’d be freaking out at my husband for putting the wrong time in the calendar, saying that we’ll never make it, and turning into a useless mess. Instead I’m so solid and confident that it’s going to be ok.
Finally it’s my turn to go through the image scanny thingy. We grab our stuff, put our shoes back on, and rush to meet up with my husband. He’s already scouted out our gate which is blissfully close to security and he says they’ve started boarding, so we run up and they’re still boarding the As! We’re able to cut in and we’re on the gangplank headed to the plane.
It all happened so quickly and unexpectedly. We made it, we made our flight, and our bags did too.
Somehow I remained calm through it all.
This wasn’t one of those, I was calm during the emergency and then broke down later. This was just me being in a calm mind state as our carefully made plans turned out to not be so careful.
Even now as I write this there’s a feeling of awe as I reflect on how well I handled it. SO of course that’s got me thinking, how did I stay so dang calm through it all?!
It’s not one thing, it’s a combination of things.
My daily meditation practice.
My sessions with my therapist.
My journaling practice.
The aha moments I experience while working with my clients.
The depth of my bond with my husband and the work we’ve put in to strengthen it.
Notice anything missing from my list?
What about yoga? That thing that I’ve done for more than 20 years, that I got trained to teach in 10 years ago. Why isn’t it on this list?!
I don’t think it’s directly related here. Yes yoga brought me to my meditation practice, but my actual yoga asana practice hasn’t been consistent in over a year. After my favorite yoga teacher left the studio I have yet to find my regular weekly yoga practice rhythm. It’s not as important (and necessary) as it once was to my mental health. It’s still important, but not in the I’m going to have an anxiety attack because I didn’t go to yoga kind of way.
It’s like I’ve finally found my place in the world. The place where I feel safe, secure, and free to be myself.
Anxiety hasn’t left me by any means, it just feels more separate from me, it’s something that I experience from time to time, but it doesn’t define me.
Journaling Prompt: What’s your relationship with anxiety?
P.S. Anxiety is normal, it affects all of us. 💕 It’s only a challenge when it debilitates you, when it stops you from living your life and being the person you secretly want to be. One of the ways to nudge your anxiety in the other direction is to have a core group of folks that support you no matter what. That accept all of your awkward weirdness and laugh right along with you to brighten your day. Do you have people like that in your life? If not, my weekly journaling group CommuniTea might be just the thing you need. We meet once a week to share our joys (to reprogram our anxious minds), journal together (because otherwise you won’t set aside the time), and bond together as the awkward and weird humans that we are. As one member says, “thank you all for inspiring & reminding me to embrace & love my weird! I love you CommuniTea”. Stay tuned, I’m offering a special discount in August for CommuniTea in honor of my birthday. 🥳
I want something different for next year. I’m not one for setting resolutions, I gave up on them years ago, I don’t really see the point of trying to make a change that won’t stick.