We were sitting around a kitchen table, a bunch of editors in our monthly meeting, laptops open, cake plonked in the middle of the table. One of my co-workers had just returned from a trip overseas, and was recounting all the events, as we listened eagerly, while devouring slices of cake.
Editors are great storytellers. They know when to pause for dramatic effect, and how to hook you in from the beginning. Ella, one of my editors, started talking about the flight, and how anxious she was to take the 20-something hour journey. “Did you sleep?” I chimed in.
“Oh no, I had to fly the plane.”
It took me a moment to process, and after a few minutes {perhaps a few too many} I realised that she didn’t actually fly the plane.
A decade and bit later, I realised I’ve been flying the plane.
Every single day.
Every single year.
Not just on long haul trips to faraway places, but in everyday life. I’ve been there for every school pick-up and drop-off. I’ve helped navigate every journey they’ve taken. My most commonly used phrase for my kids, and generally everyone I come across is, “Are you OK?” or “You good?”
I’ve been flying the plane through life, and trying to take care of everyone else, and make sure everyone is just dandy. My days are spent trying to think two-steps ahead of everyone and consider what people in my circle may need, before they even realise it themselves, an exhausting hyper-awareness that should probably only be reserved for short periods.
It’s become such a natural state of being, that I didn’t even realise I was doing it. Or am doing it.
Some might think it sounds like I’m a helicopter mum, or control freak. I’d politely tell them that it’s an inbuilt trauma response of trying to take care of everyone and make sure everyone is safe, especially my kids, because at a point in my childhood I wasn’t, and it altered my life forever.
Earlier this year, in a therapy session, my therapist gently pointed out to me that I, in her own words, was flying the plane.
“You must be exhausted,” she suggested, “What if you stopped for a while?”
To be honest, I hadn’t considered it an option, but to be even more honest, I didn’t even realise I had been flying the plane until then.
I sat and pondered, and no doubt cried, because there hasn’t been a session where I haven’t. The seed was planted.
The next morning, I stepped out of the cockpit. Shane did the school drop-offs, something he’d done before of course, but something that I would jump aboard and do with him if he wasn’t working, so I could see the girls go off to school each day, safely.
With the new awareness, and the resulting long haul pilot fatigue, I started stepping away more. Sometimes inviting others to fly the plane, and other times putting the plane in auto-pilot and letting the plane fly itself. It involved a lot of trust, and blind hope, but also realising that my kids are getting older, and they can figure out their own stuff too, and it’s actually important for them to do so.
Undoing that trauma response isn’t easy, and it is my default position to be the organiser, the fixer, and the navigator, and people do get a bit perplexed when I take a bit of a back seat role {something I’m still not entirely comfortable with, but getting there}.
When you’re too busy flying, there’s no time for taking in the view, and enjoying the destination. Or in real speak, there’s a not a lot of time for taking care of me.
In 2023, I’m going to stop flying the plane. Well, {I say this much determination, and even more fear and hesitancy} as much as I possibly can.
