Throughout my life, I had been terrified of airplanes and flying. Which was unfortunate given that my family loves to travel nad due to this we would go on one to two yearly trips to different places around the world. And every couple of months, a few days before the trips I would get nervous and I would genuinely stress out about the fact that I would have to fly again. Of Course, every time I would get into a plane, I would find myself very tense, my mind rushing and imagining, everything that could go wrong within these “metal death traps”. I would try to distract myself with music or by reading or anything to keep my mind off of the anticipation. But, without fail, when the engine of the plane would begin revving and the plane would pick up speed, I would tense up and close my eyes hoping that the time would pass quickly. It wasn't.

Luckily, a point came in my life that I was forced to face this fear. I was sitting down in my plane seat, in the economy section. My Family had luckily gotten the  middle four seats, so we were able to sit together. As always I went through my routine of trying to distract myself. This time I was listening to music. As I sat there listening to some random rap song, I felt the familiar revving of the plane’s engine, and I felt my body being pushed back into my chair as the plane gathered its speed, signaling that we were taking off. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the lyrics of the song. I focused on the song so intently, that I began to doze off. What felt like seconds later, but was about 20 minutes later, I was suddenly woken up by a loud explosion sound. I felt, felt my body go weightless and felt my stomach in my throat, as I realized that we were falling. This only lasted, a few seconds, but by the time the plane leveled off, it just mayhem. People crying and screaming, the flight attendants running up and down the aisles. At this moment all I could bring myself to do was sit and pray. Which was ironic given that I have never been a true believer. But I found myself sitting there asking a higher power to take my family and I safe to the ground, while people around me were terrified and the wing of the plane of on fire. This was out of our hands and, sadly sit there was the only thing that any of us could do.

About thirty minutes after the incident took place the plane had begun the descent into the nearest airport around us. People had quieted down, but the tension within the plane was extreme. The only, person in the plane that was relaxed, was my baby brother who by some miracle had managed to fall asleep in my mother's arms. “Ignorance truly is bliss”, I thought, As I wished I could do the same thing and just sleep through all of this.
When we began to land, it was the fastest and most forceful landing that I had ever felt.

The moment that the plane stopped moving on the ground, the plane was showered in water by two fire trucks that had been station on the runway to await out landing. The sound of the engines was drowned out by the sudden cheers of joy and cries of relief from every passenger and attendant in the plane. All of the passengers were taken to a room where we waited for out new flight plans to be determined. While we waited, in that room, I saw a little boy look up to his mom and say to her, “ God gave us another chance at life”. This is a line that has stuck with me since. I don't know why it is the plane malfunctioned, or what could have been done to avoid it. But what i do know is that for some strange reason, I was never again afraid of flying. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?