I'm not afraid of monsters
Welp, last week’s trauma blog seems to have hit home for a lot of folks so I think we’ll sit in this trauma space for a moment. Besides, let’s be real, it’s not like our brains are giving us much of a choice anyway.
As I’ve been trying to face my own trauma, I am beginning to understand that, at times, my anxiety is simply its symptom. Not all the time, thank you genetics, but certainly some of the time. There are two times in particular that my anxiety flares that I can now correlate directly to my trauma.
The first I feel when I am away from home and I perceive that something is taking too long. Be it waiting in a checkout line, or for the pharmacist to fill a prescription, or even just casually conversing at a social gathering. I’m not sure how to describe it other than an extreme fight or flight response - it is an intense feeling that takes over my entire mind and body that tells me I need to go home. Typically once I am moving in the direction of home the feeling subsides and I forget about it entirely.
Today, though, I made myself remember. When I had made it safely to the grocery store parking lot and my heart rate had eased, I tried to figure out what had triggered the attack. Yes, the line was long, but I had been up next when the pressure began to build. Also, there was nothing I needed to rush home for.
And then I remembered.
I had just finished a workout class and I let myself be talked into going to a matinee movie with friends. We had recently made the excruciating decision to begin hospice services for Adelaide and I was emotionally drained and in need of a temporary distraction. We knew we were going to lose her but thought we had months still. Adelaide had been stable that morning and our home nurse was with her - she was in incredibly capable hands. On the way home from the movie I got a call from Adelaide’s nurse that her breathing had plummeted. Only days before I had signed the ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ form - she couldn’t resuscitate her without my permission. After that, I didn’t leave Adelaide’s side for the next four weeks until she left mine forever.
Soooo… maybe there is a reason that what appears to be impatience on steroids is actually my trauma playing out in a stress response. Knowing that the attacks have a deep rooted, albeit currently irrational, trigger will hopefully help me ease them in the future.
The second trauma response cosplaying as anxiety also unveils itself in social situations, which led me to believe that I had some sort of extrovert’s social anxiety. It started when Adelaide was alive and someone might ask my children’s ages or basically, any scenario where Adelaide’s illnesses would come up and I would have to explain…well, her. Then, after she died it was the ‘how many children do you have’ questions which would also illicit my awkward response.
This trauma isn’t the date-that’s-forever-etched-in-your-brain kind of trauma, it’s the repetitive kind of trauma that wears at you like a hammer on a nail, until the nail is so deeply embedded that the hammer just starts to wear away at the wood around the nail. Forever driving it deeper with each strike.
The thing is, I have always loved to talk about Adelaide. I was never ashamed that we traded inchstones for milestones and talking about her passing only means that I also get to talk about her brilliant life. So, why were these questions about her so painful to answer? The former performer that I am, would rehearse my responses to these problematic questions in the mirror. Trying to perfect my answers in hopes of avoiding the let-me-go-crawl-in-a-dark-hole feeling.
No amount of rehearsal helped.
“But that movie looks scary!” Jackson and I were negotiating a movie selection. I swear, the final test for any international negotiator should be arbitrating a family movie-night.
“You have watched far scarier movies, and besides you know those monsters could never be real.” Nothing like peer pressure from your mother.
“It’s not the monsters I’m scared of, it’s the people’s reactions to them.”
Well, shit.
Once I got over the fact that my son is clearly an emotional savant, I applied his acute understanding of his fear to my own.
It wasn’t talking about Adelaide’s epilepsy, or hospitalizations or even her death that was causing my anxiety - it was people’s reactions to hearing it - or sometimes just the anticipation of their reaction. Would they say something upsetting to me? Would they feel unnecessarily guilty for bringing her up? Would I need to console them?
I cannot control how someone responds to learning about Adelaide. All I can control is how I let their response effect me. I can let well-intentioned but ignorant comments roll off, I can let them know that I enjoy talking about her or I can even change the subject or walk away. So many options that ARE within my control and that has been empowering enough to ease the vise-like grip anxiety can have on my social interactions.
Like grief, I’m not sure that trauma ever fully goes away. I think we just learn to live with it, develop a healthier relationship with it and, hopefully, move forward with it. It also doesn’t hurt to have an emotionally brilliant nine year-old cuddling up next to you to help light the way.
