Last week in my Power Broker analysis entry, I failed to list two key references during my blurb on the book’s Jewish author (Robert Caro) and Jewish subject (Robert Moses). 1. Caro included a quote from Fiddler on the Roof while talking about Moses’s gutting of poor, Jewish (at the time) Bronx neighborhood East Tremont to build the Cross-Bronx Expressway. 2. I forgot to make a pun relating to Robert Moses and Bible Moses, so imagine anything fun related to Let my people go! Let my people drive? Let my Worlds Fair debauchery go? I don’t know. I’m sorry.

Now that we’ve returned to present-day, I write to you from beautiful Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where I’m spending a few days to tend to business and hole up in my mom’s apartment. All good things I’ll tell you all about next week. I flew in last night during a harrowing storm that I must complain about. I was going to tell two other stories, too, but my breadth of complaining is wide and ever-expanding.

I must reiterate the worst compliment a person can receive, and one I’ve received frequently throughout my life: You don’t care what other people think of you! What is that supposed to mean? I think I care the same amount as everyone else (a lot) but am too far up my own butt to know what gossip-worthy things I’m inviting.

I knew this even as a child and tried to hide the parts of myself I knew were strange and sensitive as some way to offset the oddities I couldn’t control or recognize. I remember having girls over for sleepovers in my youth and hiding as many indications of geekiness I could — Legos, certain video games, and massive, physical video game guidebooks (I had an especially dense one for Pokemon Platinum that I poured over) — after being accustomed to all sorts of room-snoopy behaviors from peers that would find diaries or nerd tokens. Were you one of the kids that snooped through your friends’ rooms? If so, repent!

I’d hide whatever I could because I knew there was so much I already could not. I was unfailingly honest, so as long as I could prevent a question from being asked, I wouldn’t have to answer it. I know how sensitive and scared I can be, so I might as well leave little opportunity for ridicule — or at least beat you to the punch. I could not figure out how to make and especially keep friends for the majority of K-12, beginning a lifelong process of figuring out how to understand girls.

An insufferable example from my childhood started in one of the back seats of my mom’s minivan. I forget where we were going. It was probably second grade, I think for a Girl Scout Brownie-affiliated outing far enough away from home. The rest of my passengers were my friends at the time who would eventually be popular soccer girls that, at the time, I was starting to feel different from but wanted them to keep liking me.

We were on a bumpy road, and I have a sensitive stomach, something I like to think most people have. I was starting to feel gross and told my mom in the driver’s seat Mom, I feel nauseous. To me, this statement nothing groundbreaking, just an expression of discomfort and nothing else. To my fellow passengers, this was a disaster declaration. Screams and hollers abound. These girls thought I was a volcano about to erupt with vomit instead of lava. I kept trying to convince them otherwise because that was the truth; I was just feeling crappy. They did not listen to me and kept on the subject for a while, also insisting that nausea always equals puke. I felt crazy even though I knew the definition of nausea more than them.

I felt embarrassed for the rest of the ride and didn’t like being treated with caution tape as some sort of sissy. There are so many sissy things about me. If something as pervasive and mild as nausea is enough to deem me such, then that’s just the tip of the iceberg of cowardice and humiliation.

Obviously this was a nothing moment that would be unmemorable to anyone else, but I think about this car ride every now and again when I feel small, especially in a group. Am I being a diva or a rational person? How will my advocacy affect my cohort? Is the feeling’s severity worth bringing forward?

Most times I’m nauseous I don’t think it will evolve further into puke or get scarier, but fear is part of any ailment. It doesn’t have to be a What if this is going to kill me? fear, but even the smallest irritations have a scary element to them just because they’re messing up your equilibrium. I think a lot of the fear comes from a lack of control.

I love being grounded and desperately crave control (or even control in relinquishing control — ew!), which I feel much more comfortable asserting as an adult. After years of trying and hating, I finally steer clear from skating, roller coasters, and other physical adrenaline-activating activities. I hate falling; I detest stomach drops. I’m genuinely happy to sit on the sidelines. The only adrenaline I like is emotional or mental, a stimulating conversation, eyeroll a deadline?

The only time I face my fear is through flight.

The first time I felt especially bad turbulence was landing in Hawaii on a family trip before high school. I felt so nauseous, the kind that made me think I would throw up, but was confused to look around and see no one (not even my physically wimpy family) reacting the same way.

This didn’t make me fear flying, just that specific flight. I’ve had my fair share of turbulence since then and have reacted, as I think, normally. My most memorable turbulence was on an early morning flight from Paris to London while studying abroad on a day where the rest of the flights would be rightfully canceled. I watched the plane wing bend from my window and heard a woman almost comically wail Ay, dios mío! at every turn.

Whatever turbulence I endure, I weather it, but I’ve been finding that harder lately. I almost see it as an equivalent to how some people grow up and are suddenly afraid of cities or public transportation even after years of enjoying them, people leaving New York after enough scary subway stories they’ve either experienced or read.

I don’t do as much flying lately but usually do it on Spirit Airlines (it’s just so much cheaper), and my friend Gabby and I often kvetch about turbulence on their Newark-Pittsburgh route. I’ve found it less and less bearable, but we deal with it. I otherwise like flying and don’t usually fear my demise, but turbulence never fails to rattle me.

Last night was my first flight in this new administration where planes fall from the sky and crash into other ones. I’ve been trying to tell myself that a lot of these plane crash stories have been happening this whole time and are just circulated more now as people are more afraid, kind of like subway crime stories. Although they were small private planes, I covered plenty of one or two-person plane crashes during my New Hampshire news stint.

I still could not quell my fear. I also tried reminding myself that turbulence doesn’t kill people but remembered that that theory was slightly debunked recently.

I was originally flying Spirit until the flight got delayed until 1 a.m. I’m not going to Newark that late, sorry. Thankfully, they said I was eligible for a refund. I followed their instructions, tried not to wince at the automated message telling me they’d let me know if my refund request was successful, and rebooked on realer airline American.

LaGuardia is the superior airport in almost all ways and closer to my apartment, so I passed through the well-lit glow of a sparsely populated airport Sunday night for a flight that was also delayed, just not until 1:30 a.m.

The flight kept getting more delayed, and they shuffled us to a different gate only to bring us back to the original one. It was raining and windy outside. Once the previous plane landed, I heard a woman exiting tell her husband They should not be flying in those conditions. Throughout the day, American offered rebookings to other flights and at least $200 additionally if you obliged. I didn’t.

I always try to tell myself that I am an adult and actually am less cowardly than my younger self, but I guess you could say I haven’t healed my inner-child enough because she keeps reminding me that I am constantly afraid. My desire to wake up in my mom’s place and start work overpowered my desire to get on an early-morning flight. We boarded around 11 p.m., and the flight attendants looked slightly haggard. I sat next to a girl that looked a few years older than me and we had a lighthearted exchange about finally getting on the plane.

We take off. Bumpier than usual, but not too bad. However, the bumps don’t stop, and the flight attendants say they’re staying seated the entire flight because it will be another round of nonstop turbulence after multiple legs of it today.

There are levels to turbulence, of course. I start on my breathing exercises and hope they’ll get me through. I’m feeling slightly jostled but nothing to write a newsletter about until we hit a crazy enough drop to coax a verbal Oh fuck. out of me. I grip both armrests and once the first big jostle is over, I move my right hand over to grab the pouch on the seat in front of me.

The turbulence continues for almost the entirety of the flight with only a few intermittent moments of respite. I’m not sure what I suffered from more — the actual turbulence or the anxiety associated with it. I was so nauseous and wished I invested in some sort of overpriced plane nausea medication. I knew I would land safe, I guess, but I had a lot of trouble calming down.

What baffled me about the turbulence was how some people seemed completely unphased by it. I’d look up throughout the flight and see a girl with her light on reading a book the entire time, as if I could barely read the safety manual’s E-175 title as it bounced around. My seat partner also was unphased, which made my incessant gripping and occasional loud exhales slightly more embarrassing.

What makes someone immune to turbulence? Have they experienced enough alternative kinds of turbulence in their life that this feels like nothing? Do they not struggle with control and either feel like they have it on the plane, are okay enough to relinquish it, or don’t think about it either way? Is it genetic?

A simple Google search was unhelpful. If someone could direct me to a research paper about what makes someone more or less likely to struggle with plane turbulence, hit my line. Or at least tell me why I struggle more with turbulence than others. Am I weak? Do I just always feel like I have to acknowledge my ailments, even if it’s just within myself? Do I struggle that much with control? Maybe I’m just used to being cared for and listened to enough and have spoiled myself by feeling dumber pain like this!

I saw one guy near me holding onto the top of his window for a while, so I knew I wasn’t alone in my fear. After an hour of sustained anxiety and nausea, the clouds parted, I saw downtown Pittsburgh’s skyline looking extra beautiful, and I was back on the ground after one of my top 5 most nauseating flights. I barely listened to music as I walked out of the airport so I could eavesdrop on the multiple spring breakers coming home from their trips swapping stories of how they handled the turbulence (most of them as poorly as I did). One girl was the only one in her group to have freaked out like me while the rest felt nothing, and I (and my second-grade self) felt a kinship with her. I could not stop complaining to my mom once she picked me up and am also blaming it for bathroom struggles I’ve been having today.

Maybe my life is so charmed that God smites me through creating a turbulence diva. I like to think I’m good at dealing with turbulence otherwise, but I can’t help but be dramatic. I don’t like that it’s making me fear flight a bit more, though, but unlike city and subway-fearers, I feel safer when my journey has more DEI.