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The fear of the flight was the manifestation of the mental impact of my injury.
Cochi was not something I feared as I knew that where I was going to a fixed place and there was not much involved in terms of needing to be mobile. Singapore was easy because I know Singapore and have friends I could call upon. Singapore is an easy place to move around with cheap and reliable taxis.
Koh Lanta is a different beast. I had never been here before and the whole scenario was an huge unknown. Yes I had seen pictures of the accommodation and the co-working space but beyond that it was a huge emptiness which my imagination was filling in. So I went to google street-view to at least have a sense of what my environment would be like, what the walk to the co-working space looked like, where the closest shops and restaurants were. I tried to fill in any gaps and gave up on embracing chaos — its not what I need now. I got a walking-hiking pole, compression socks, and a host of things to help with the anxieties and stresses.
And it was all very helpful — but I was still focused on the physical impact of the injury. I knew in the back of my head that there was more but did not want to deal with it. So I ignored it.
I ignored it and it grew into a fear — which manifested in the fear of the flight to Krabi. The fear began to subside as I went through the check-in process and by the time I arrived at my accommodation, the fear had mellowed.
Understand that the fear is not gone, but the fear of the flight which was a manifestation of my anxieties and stresses of my physical mobility, is still lurking underneath. And I have to deal with that, but I learned something important.
I learnt that fear is not extrinsic – its a fear of the extrinsic – and the fear comes from the intrinsic. I learnt that within us sits the birth place of our fears. In order to deal with one’s fear, one first needs to understand that so that one can find that birthplace and begin to manage that fear.