So, yes. Beth's. That's about it. I've done my share of falling.
I know what it's like to fall in love, what it's like to stumble, and what it's like to fall off of someone's pedestal.
I also know what it's like to fall 10,000 feet in an airplane.
For me, it started the moment I saw the first man dying, blood spouting from his mouth, his nose, his eyes. My stomach dropped and my eyes couldn't shut no matter how much I wanted them to, and it was just like a horror novel.
Fucking unreal.
I'd never seen anything like that before and I heard my own voice say oh my God, we need a doctor right before I turned my head and noticed the same fucking thing happening to the guy across the aisle, the same blood tearing down his face, the same vacant eyes, and I finally realized, feeling like the floor had dropped from under me, that the screaming, that outburst of hysterics in the cabin that had made itself static in the back of my mind, wasn't just for the one man.
Or even for two men.
It was for all of the men on the plane.
And I felt like I was falling.
Don't panic! Just try to stay calm! was the best advice I've probably ever given and the least likely to be taken.
I could barely listen to it myself.
Wayne, my purser, cracking jokes just minutes before was crumpled in the aisle, and rendered stupid by shock, I didn't expect my pilot and co-pilot to be dead when I went to bang on the door to the cockpit.
It felt like I was falling.
And the instant I opened the door was the one moment when I could've cried.
Pilot dead, co-pilot dead. Half the plane dead.
And we really were falling.
Daughters of Eve, falling from grace.
(I always thought Eve got a bum rap.)
It wasn't the fucking Rapture, those men weren't chosen, and I meant every word I said to the woman in the tower who tried to help me land: if we were all damned and were all going to die, I'd have led my dozens of female passengers in kicking her ass when we all got hell.
I didn't know why I couldn't set the flaps. I didn't know the automatic landing system was activated. I didn't know what I was doing.
I didn't know.
But we were still (10,000 and dropping hard) falling.
"What do I do now?"
"Pray."
I didn't.
I didn't pray and I didn't cry, and there was this blink-and-you'll-miss-it thought of How could this have happened? Why are they dying? Do I really want to survive this?
I did. And when I thought I was going to die I finally closed my eyes, clenching them shut, only to open them again, wide, at the whip of impact and the crunch of metal and the burst of flame.
I'm not afraid of flying. Never have been, never will be. But it doesn't mean I'm not afraid of falling.
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I've done my share of falling.
I know what it's like to fall in love, what it's like to stumble, and what it's like to fall off of someone's pedestal.
I also know what it's like to fall 10,000 feet in an airplane.
For me, it started the moment I saw the first man dying, blood spouting from his mouth, his nose, his eyes. My stomach dropped and my eyes couldn't shut no matter how much I wanted them to, and it was just like a horror novel.
Fucking unreal.
I'd never seen anything like that before and I heard my own voice say oh my God, we need a doctor right before I turned my head and noticed the same fucking thing happening to the guy across the aisle, the same blood tearing down his face, the same vacant eyes, and I finally realized, feeling like the floor had dropped from under me, that the screaming, that outburst of hysterics in the cabin that had made itself static in the back of my mind, wasn't just for the one man.
Or even for two men.
It was for all of the men on the plane.
And I felt like I was falling.
Don't panic! Just try to stay calm! was the best advice I've probably ever given and the least likely to be taken.
I could barely listen to it myself.
Wayne, my purser, cracking jokes just minutes before was crumpled in the aisle, and rendered stupid by shock, I didn't expect my pilot and co-pilot to be dead when I went to bang on the door to the cockpit.
It felt like I was falling.
And the instant I opened the door was the one moment when I could've cried.
Pilot dead, co-pilot dead. Half the plane dead.
And we really were falling.
Daughters of Eve, falling from grace.
(I always thought Eve got a bum rap.)
It wasn't the fucking Rapture, those men weren't chosen, and I meant every word I said to the woman in the tower who tried to help me land: if we were all damned and were all going to die, I'd have led my dozens of female passengers in kicking her ass when we all got hell.
I didn't know why I couldn't set the flaps. I didn't know the automatic landing system was activated. I didn't know what I was doing.
I didn't know.
But we were still (10,000 and dropping hard) falling.
"What do I do now?"
"Pray."
I didn't.
I didn't pray and I didn't cry, and there was this blink-and-you'll-miss-it thought of How could this have happened? Why are they dying? Do I really want to survive this?
I did. And when I thought I was going to die I finally closed my eyes, clenching them shut, only to open them again, wide, at the whip of impact and the crunch of metal and the burst of flame.
I'm not afraid of flying. Never have been, never will be. But it doesn't mean I'm not afraid of falling.