Gray - By Pete Wentz Page 0,56
about my health, they should get me a gym membership. He actually laughs a little bit when I say it. He’s okay in my book. People watch my every move, ask me how I’m feeling. I am under twenty-four-hour supervision. Jen-with-Two-N’s is hugging me every time she sees me. Things are getting ridiculous.
All of this happens just before we are to leave for New York. Timing has never been my strong suit. We have a meeting to determine whether I’m okay to fly, and I lie on the couch and tell the guys I’m ready to go. They say I don’t have to, that they can handle it, and that I should stay here and relax, but I won’t listen. My hand is healing—the cuts are just tiny pink crosses on my knuckles now—and my head is actually feeling pretty clear, and I figure it’s time to meet the shareholders. They’re the ones who paid for this ridiculous trip, after all. I probably owe them an apology.
• • •
I believe I am fine until the night before we leave, when I find myself staring at my bags and googling stuff like world’s safest airlines. We are not flying on any of them. I can feel panic starting to creep in, like ice water in my toes, so I take a couple of Tylenol PMs (the shrink said they were okay) and try to sleep. All night my bags sit by the door in an ominous black heap. At one point I swear I saw them move. Then it’s morning and we’re loaded into an SUV and sent on our way, and I pull my hood over my eyes and try to relax, try not to think about plummeting into the Rocky Mountains, but it’s not working. I’m trying my best not to let the guys know, but I start shaking as we’re going through security, and I can’t take my boots off on my own. Martin helps, unknots my laces and places my boots on the conveyor belt. He tells me it’s going to be all right. I don’t understand why this is happening to me. I am embarrassed to be seen like this by my friends. I never wanted to be the anchor, I never wanted to pull us down. It seems that’s all I’m doing these days.
As we sit on the runway, I can feel my pulse quickening. I’m having a hard time catching my breath, and tears are in my eyes. I wipe them away with my sleeve and try to focus hard on the in-flight magazine in my lap. I play with the tray table. I pray to God, even though I can’t remember the last time He helped me out. I try to get my life in order, just in case this plane doesn’t make it to New York. It’s funny how fears hide inside other fears. The fear of airplanes hiding inside the fear of heights hiding inside the fear of highways hiding inside the fear of cars hiding inside the fear of elevators hiding inside the fear of leaving my room hiding inside the fear of living. Fear tries to own me. In the past, I had paid it rent by downing twenty milligrams of Valium and a Xanax and sleeping through flights, but now all I’ve got on me are some of the PMs, and they’re not going to do the trick. A tranquilizer couldn’t slow my heart right now.
I try to calm myself by thinking logically. I have read about calculated fears and irrational fears. The fear of flying is irrational. The odds of a fatal plane crash are something like nine in twenty-one million. It’s like gambling, only you want the house to keep winning. Only nine in twenty-one million flights crash, but every single person who got on any one of those nine planes was thinking about a statistic just like that. Somewhere out there, someone pulls the lever on a slot machine and wins $30,000 on the first try. Somewhere out there, someone gets on a plane for the first time in his or her life and it crashes into the Atlantic Ocean.
Fear owns me because I let it. Because I obsess over it, name it, raise it, and nurture it to become perfect. It is one of the few things in my life that I can control. “It’s just on this side of crazy,” they say, but I’m not sure what side they’re yelling that from. “You’re