I often dream about tornadoes, where by often I mean a couple of times a month. I’ve never seen a tornado in person, nor do I think about them often in my waking life, but I am scared of them, so maybe when my brain reaches for “scary thing” to insert in a dream, the dice tend to come up tornado. (Also, airplanes. But not death or cockroaches.)

Usually I see them from afar, but last night’s dream-nado got really, frighteningly close, to the point that I got myself, my dad, and my dog (the main characters up to this point) into the bathtub and covered us up with a mattress. That’s still the protocol, right? I don’t know how people are supposed to have time to haul mattresses into their bathrooms – real time doesn’t stretch like dream time does.

Anyway, the story ended happily with the house still standing and my discovery that the tornado was nothing more than a fabric and wire contraption being hauled around on the back of a truck. Then the bad guys (who had made the tornado to scare me) went to jail, and I learned how to climb trees using three glowing rings invented by a friend of a friend. But I digress.

Dream-nado: totally fake. Dream-airplanes-falling-out-of-the-sky: still real. This is an improvement.

I board the first of four flights tomorrow afternoon. It’s not a big plane, but at least it’s a short-ish flight and I’ll have a window seat (in the exit row, no less). The weather looks pretty promising, too, which is always nice.

I’ve managed to stay distracted over the last week—sitting for four finals will do that. But now finals are done, and I’m left working on my totally uninspired Space Law paper and, of course, thinking about airplanes.

My entire body is a ball of tension that starts with a knot in my stomach and branches out to every muscle. And of course thinking about feeling sick only makes it worse. The best solution I’ve found—and I know it sounds stupid—is to smile. I look at Samson, think the words “my dog is cute,” and force a smile. And it works! For a moment, I relax a little.

If only I could bring Sammy with me for cuteness support. Maybe I’ll load some pictures of him onto my phone, so I can be the weirdo apparently praying to my dog as the plane lifts off.

So that settles it—only funny podcasts for the plane ride. My current favorites are Jordan, Jesse, Go! and Stop Podcasting Yourself. I would bring some You Look Nice Today, but I’ve listened to every episode of that show so many times that I can almost recite them.

Wish me luck! Once I get through the first flight, the rest should be easier.

Over the last few months I’ve stepped my Lexapro dosage down to 5 mg per day, which is less than the 10-mg test dose doctors first prescribe to make sure you don’t have a bad reaction.

I think, though, that I’m going to have to ratchet it back up to at least ten. I’ve been getting dizzy spells about every other day in the last week or two, and I feel like I’m extremely sensitive to anxiety triggers. Right now, for instance, I’m in Space Law listening to a presentation about all the disasters that have occurred on space missions. It’s interesting, to be sure, but I feel like I’m about to pass out. I know I won’t actually faint, but, as always, it’s unnerving.

As far as I can tell, this regression is mostly due to my having to get on four planes about a month from now. I’m flying to Nashville to see my brother graduate, then to Canada with John for vacation. Consciously I feel semi-okay with the plane thing, enough that I’m pretty sure I can go through with it, but apparently my subconscious has other ideas.

I hope that upping my meds will make me feel okay again. Once I get through the first two flights (on small-ish planes) I know I’ll be okay for the second two. Between now and then, though, I might be pretty miserable.

If anybody knows of any good resources that can help me to do some cognitive-behavioral-therapy-type stuff on myself, please share. Maybe I’ll go hang out at the airport a couple times, watch the planes take off. Rationally I understand that planes are extremely safe, but there’s something physical that goes on in my brain that triggers an anxiety reaction when I even half-think about a plane. Arrrrrrrgh.