Heartbreak and Terror and Airplanes and Guns

😬

I’ve always been a nervous flyer - not like crippling fear, just gripping the armrest extra tight during turbulence, takeoff, and landing, and always imagining the worst. I went to boarding school in Massachusetts during High School while my parents lived in Texas, and then college in New York, so I flew a lot from a pretty young age. I started thinking…the odds aren’t in my favor here.

Until! Maybe 6 years ago, before I was pregnant, my husband and I were on a small flight from Chicago to Florida for the holidays. We’d just taken off from O’Hare, and something just felt off. About 30 minutes after takeoff the pilot came on and said we’d need to do an emergency landing back at O’Hare, that the landing gear was malfunctioning. Justin noticed that we were flying super low over Lake Michigan, circling, circling, but he didn’t say anything to me at the time.

Since I was already nervous, I started to really panic - at that time, my husband traveled a TON for work, and in sketchy places, sk…