The Fear Reflex

I'm about 2 weeks away from the end of my stay here in Japan. Honestly, I have to say, there have mostly been no grand adventures, no gigantic occurrences, no life epiphanies other than that I enjoy living with my boyfriend and don't want to stop doing that. Part of my travel plan involves visiting my good friend Becca when I leave here. Becca currently lives in Swaziland. This trip will be my second to a developing country.

I am incredibly excited. I cannot wait to see a place completely and totally unlike any place I've ever been, and 3 weeks is long enough to get an understanding of the place without being too long. And best of all, I get to hang out with Becca, who is certifiably the most awesome person ever. However, I find myself emotionally in the same place about a week after I realized I would not be able to get a visa to visit India, when I was living in Bangladesh.

As I mentioned before, my trip to Bangladesh was certainly eventful, and not always in a good way. I was laid over in the New Delhi airport, prevented from leaving customs, slept (and panicked and cried) while hugging my backpack in a chair in a lounge while a guard with an AK-47 sat in a folding chair nearby. When I reached Dhaka I had no luggage other than my backpack, and it wouldn't show up for another month. I was so terrified that I didn't leave my hotel room for several days. And although I generally gradually overcame this fear, I never stopped being afraid in Bangladesh. It makes me tired to think of going back, mostly because I view it as a personal failure that I often can't shake this fear. I am, by definition, a coward.

And unfortunately, I have come to realize that international travel to anywhere but Europe or Japan makes me the same kind of tired and scared. Booking tickets to Johannesburg was oddly frightening, as was booking tickets back home. Part of me is shouting very loudly that I can't afford to do this since I Have No Job and I am not likely to get one soon. Part of me is telling me to sack up and just do it because I will love it and how can I expect to work in international public health if I am afraid of international travel? And part of me is just tired and terrified and would like to hide someplace safe until the scary things go away.

I'm not sure what I hoped to accomplish with this post. I guess I was thinking that if there are any other people who feel the same way that it would be helpful to hear. But I was also hoping that by the time I was done writing, I would feel differently. Maybe I will never stop being scared. It is one of my most common emotions. (When I was six, my parents took me to Disney World. I cried and had nightmares the entire time about the "monsters", i.e. the people in costume.) In that case maybe I should start doing more drugs or just start skydiving and hope exposure therapy makes me less scared of things that aren't supposed to be scary to begin with. If anyone has any advice to offer on this point, I'd be grateful.