Travel affords us the unique opportunity of leaving our shells to confront new people and situations. Despite having much to worry about at this stage of my life and generally not welcoming vacation, I looked forward to a long weekend with my family in a different city. Since starting this blog I’ve begun noticing the kinds of things about my own awareness that air travel, and situations of being crammed unforgivingly with other people, brings about.

And I wasn’t disappointed. Sitting in an economy class airline cabin brings cerain tensions and anxieties to the fore. Although air travel is a generally safe, if boring and inconvenient experience, there is always that certain doubt about a crowd of strangers next to you that is not reassuring. People are not wild baboons and only want to get to where they’re going as soon and as conveniently as possible, but you can’t necessarily count on them acting fully within your predictions either.

That’s what introduces a certain, if low level wildcard to the experience. In my case, my oversensitivity is whirling and churning in overdrive, giving me a headache after an hour or two. There’s so much to process and understand about the situation I’m in and the people around me, and yet the easiest option is to keep my head down and minimize eye contact with everyone.

By the end of my travels, the experience made me realize just how little I had evolved over the decades. Emotionally, and on a cognitive level, I’m still a 12 or 13 year old who has been thrown into an unforgiving situation by an indifferent authority. My entire life and all my energy and intellectual effort have been spent on trying to escape this reality, to deny myself, and that is why I’m so fucked up today. My recent experience of going to an airport, checking in and going through security, and feeling all those eyes on me, matches exactly my experiences over a four-year period of my life that was hellish and lonely.

When I say that the experience of airline travel feels like (or simulates) a terrible, prior period of my life that has shaped my personality forever and basically bent me, making me crooked for life, what I mean is that (if I allow it), the feelings and thoughts that bubble to the top of my conscience match exactly those I had felt during that prior time. Once you enter the airline system for processing, you cannot choose to quit without losing your ticket and possibly a lot of money. You obediently move where uniformed people tell you to go. Although the system seems indifferent on the surface, things can suddenly go wrong. A person (whether wearing a uniform or not) can bark at you or threaten you. People struggle to keep their personal dignity through the whole experience but in fact they willingly forfeit it the moment they enter the airport. In such situations, as in middle school, people’s physical size and ability to intimidate others becomes an advantage for personal survival (despite all the rules set up to assure everyone’s rights).

Trapped and punished

Peversely, I appreciate this situation now as it allows me insights I don’t get in my daily routine. As the hours went by during my travel, I descended back into the dark times of my childhood. I felt my own reactions to inhabiting a hostile world, and having to assure my own survival when no one cared. Just how hostile was that world? As I sat in my airline seat during the flight, perhaps focusing on some object straight ahead, I became peripherally aware of people occasionally glancing in my direction. Were they looking at me, or just in my direction? This is unverified, as I seldom look back for fear of what I would find - a hostile look of judgement. This is what I confront in my daily life; the assumption that everyone in the space around me is taking notice and judging me for the worse.

But how do they know me to even form a judgement in the first place? It’s something in the way I look, perhaps in the way I dress, or the silly expression of my face. I never forgot a story my father used to tell me. He said that if you have a bunch of chicks together in a henhouse, and you pour some ketchup on one, the others will understand their compatriot is now wounded and will peck it death. He liked to repeat this story, whether it was prompted by anything external or not (e.g., in response to my being bullied in school). His expression was always bemused as he related it. Once I asked him if he was the one who poured the ketchup on the innocent chick but he denied this and said someone once told him about it.

This story stuck with me and I still remember it. The chick, which was arbitrarily marked for punishment or death, was a normal, healthy specimen like its brothers and sisters. There is no reason why someone (maybe God) decided to pour the ketchup or fake blood to mark it - other than cruel amusement. And that’s the way life is. If you are outwardly bent or crooked, the crowd will seize on this and peck your eyes out.

The moral of the tale

Growing up, this story helped me to understand that I must never show weakness in any situation. It’s easy to now appreciate how and why I turned to avoidance, since being the fundamentally weak or vulnerable person I am meant it was impossible to be bulletproof in all situations. The tale of the chicks strangely explained why I was being bullied in school - it was merely because of my vulnerability (e.g., hanging out by myself, not being part of any peer group, etc.). My answer at the time was to become invulnerable by attending military school and learning life’s lessons in a structured, tough environment.

All this leads me to ask what is my true self, and whether human nature can be flawed in some way, inviting punishment from society just by “being.” Notice I didn’t say “doing,” for although I generally experience high levels of guilt for all negative things within me and without, it is hard to explain my feelings of persecution when taking a stroll outside my home and perceiving people looking at me. First, I assume they are judging me critically, but for what exactly? I can never concretely tie my persecution with a specific action. It must surely be something about the way I am or look, something relating to my true self (whatever that is), that attracts the perceived hostile regard of others.

In earlier entries I spoke of the feelings of shame of my childhood, and how my parents humiliated me often when describing me in negative terms to friends, family, and strangers. But to describe this shamed “self,” it is useful for me to break it down into two parts:

• shell. I am encased in a shell reflecting a certain ethnicity and socio-economic background. This is what strangers primarily perceive when I’m out and about. It’s my shell that attracted my wife to me, as well as any friends I have (at least initially). My shell not only reflects my age and station in life; it’s also associated with my denial of my issues and problems, or, in other words, it’s a convient barrier to hide behind when needing to survive in social situations.

• core. This encapsulates the feelings and perceptions of my existance. When I’m sitting in an airline cabin and feel hostile looks from others, my core reacts with fear and revulsion. I guess you might call it my personality, and it’s a real mess, believe me. I’m only now beginning to pick it apart in my mid-forties. I may never live to resolve the mess, but it holds the key to everything.

If only I could have come to this understanding during my years of therapy… perhaps it’s better late than never.