Good on paper. Lousy at life.
Crisis makes us strong and wildly inept.
I had a breakdown at Trader Joes.
Not this week, but once. OK, truth: I have had a good deal of breakdowns to various degrees at Trader Joes. Most particularly at the Brooklyn, Court Street Trader Joes, primarily mid-day, on a weekend, and I never, never give up my space in line.
The breakdown I am talking about here was some years ago after my assault. I am very certainly not saying “shortly after” my assault. It is assumed that “shortly after” means one might be freaking out in public “shortly after” an assault. And that is true: I did freak out “shortly after” my assault as well as many months and years after. A fact and too a digression – back to the story:
I am still in a neck brace with blackened bruises around my jaw and eyes, limping and, yet, wearing lipstick. Shuffling my feet down the cereal, canned food, rice, and oil aisle, adding items to my cart and looking, as you may guess, nearly insane. It would be kind if I could say why I spazzed, but I can’t. The walls of the world got tight and thick and what was ‘up’ was suddenly beneath, and my body was nearly falling and then it wasn’t, and I was back and crying and saying, ‘I am fine’. As is common knowledge that if one tries, as I was, to ‘calm down’ they are 100% guaranteed to become less calm then if they were to just let the feels fly. Mess. Mess for a reason, but there so is a black box in every train hell bent on wrecking.
My therapist – former, I should say – was surprised when I brought it up in session, bless her. She, in her earnest surprise, shared that I was ‘doing so well’ in my recovery. Oh, and so I was. I was an ace in group. Shit, I could have had my own fucking group. I appeared in court. I gave testimony. I did laundry. I washed my face and kept my stitches intact. The sight in my left eye was coming back at record speed and you could find me at Happy Hour on Wednesday with my pal and her girlfriend drinking cheap mixes of who-cares-what and smiling fuck-all to anyone who came in to drink at 4:30 PM in a miss-the-mark dive without a jukebox in pre-2010 Brooklyn.
The war-hero-ing was no bother at all. The trouble came in the banal. No neurologist, mind you, but I will say this from the armchair of personal experience, mine and observed: the freak out switch can get tweaked a good bit before it sticks. In a general sense, life has us clicking on and clicking off the light switch from normality to emergency as instance to do so crops up. Should one come upon a time that is particularly terrific and confronting, or heaven help you, several, then perhaps the needle kicks over so far, swiftly, and suddenly that there is necessity to stay so tweaked for a particularly sustained period – perhaps it sticks and so remains. For a bit, at least.
As a person whose dial is generally turned on “high”, as such, I have (not unproudly) developed a type of talent for managing worst-case day trips and bullshit turns of fate. The mundane, however, that is not so hot. Thus, the Trader Joes memory, and too, the stifling panic I feel each morning before heading to the office, or anywhere at all.
Please note the house, home, abode I love, as all good, domesticated adults, makes me feel if I stay there as if I am being choked. I LOVE my time at the office away from my partner, but also my bedroom, belongings, and the other so-called comforts I so again race to at the close of the day. That said, leaving freaks me out, nonetheless. Panic over my appearance, a thing I may have neglected to do or forgotten. Those few moments before my exit I race, RACE around the apartment. The mirror, the closet, the toilet, and fridge. These are the times I am most inclined to start a fight, break a valuable, break down, or tumble. Many times – as in ‘per week’ – I legit leave for my walk to work with tears rolling down my face. Hating my appearance, fearing my day ahead, in pain from a tension that only exists between my ears. Failure. I start each day as a failure. If you call me or text wishing me a good anything I curse you and hope for your death. LEAVE ME ALONE - I AM A DEMON.
Funny, because both I get to the office and nothing is wrong. There is no emergency and yet so if there was, I would be wonderful. Calm and cool, as the hail rocks the roof of happy expectations.
So yeah, me too. Me too, like you, those of you at least who are laughing and understanding that when “shit happens” it doesn’t become the challenge. Suddenly, the Tuesday everyone else is somehow able to roll through is your nightmare. The smile and “I’m fines” are lies on the same line as “law enforcement is a humanitarian effort”. This week, I have had more than a few conversations with clients about how problems, ending deadlines, possible terminations, and working beyond your means seem to be the only way things ‘happen’, and too, how contentment so becomes a death sentence of boredom. You may have had a bit of the back hand of life and so, as my therapist of so long ago stated, “done well” but that can be almost as dangerous as NOT. For the long term, that is.
Do, please feel a valuable and warranted sense of achievement, but know that you still are very much in need and benefit of care. Where and how you flip may not make ‘sense” to so many others less ‘lucky’. Good for them, novices as they are. Clean and cushioned and lying in naïve wait of a healthy serving of a bad day that keeps them from the understanding where you are. OK? There is NO SUCH THING as overreaction. We NEVER KNOW THE FULL STORY. So yeah, I am shaking and yes, the wound is unclear to the bystander.
If this is too you, wet socked and nearly pissing your skinny jeans, unsure how to complete the three-step process or overly explained protocol you very much can “understand” – I feel you and there are options. Coaching (of course I say that!) can help, but so can taking yourself away from others to do what “work” you need. Community can create unhelpful comparison, especially if we are feeling vulnerable. Should you not have a professional resource, ask a pedestrian one. Those who love you do so regardless of what they ‘understand’, and so will likely do their best to hand hold and cushion the unmanageable.
My husband is all too familiar with the scared dog rage mornings bring and never, never blessedly holds me accountable for being the asshole I am in those times. He does not ‘understand’ but, as with so many things we both do in our longstanding and well therapized relationship, rolls with it. The way he can assist is to not. That is not his instinct; I did the part you too might think to - I asked for that. As oddly as I feel about my emotional nuances, I know them. Judgement is no buddy. I say: “If you love me, stay away.” And “OK”: it is not burying a body, but it is a no less powerful way to look the other way and love me regardless.
Sense is not ours to make or others to seek. The call is to ‘call it’. It is hard and who cares two fucks about the why.
Last thing on this: don’t go alone into the cereal aisle, that shit is a death trap – take my word!
