It seemed to me like organized chaos. My wife was one of the "helper moms" for a pack of little girls and was there already. I sat down and took over feeding the baby and tried to keep track of my other son. A bunch of stranger girls took the stage and were doing their choreography. It was four sets or so until my daughter had her time on stage. I tried to relax. But something wasn't right; I could feel it.
When you have an experience of acute anxiety and the corresponding physiological reaction--shortness of breath, muscle tenseness, panic, and a feeling of the world closing in on you--it leaves a psychic impression, I think, one that lodges itself in your subconscious as a kind of minor trauma that your body and mind can recall. I recognized the beginnings of it, because it wasn't the first time.
A few years ago we were visiting my brother and sister in law for Fourth of July in State College. As we crested the hill to meet them at Beaver Stadium and I saw the massive wave of cars and crowds, I tensed up, and words started coming out of my mouth that weren't making sense, kind of like turrets. I knew if I drove into the sea of cars into the parking lot, we would be stuck and not be able to get out, and that was an irrational nightmare for me. I had to pull over and do a U-turn straight back to our hotel and apologize later for leaving them without an explanation besides, "I'm sorry...it was too much." I was mortified and embarrassed, since I seemed to be the only one with this problem. I went to the hotel and didn't say a word and went straight to bed.
My family understood, because they know me. I don't like crowds--I loath the Big Apple, I don't go to concerts or festivals, and even large family gatherings, graduations, banquets, and weddings are sources of stress because of this involuntary reaction. I suppose it is a kind of claustrophobia that feels like you are being electrocuted with low-voltage wires.
But that was a few years ago, and I had kind of forgotten about it, though I still am aware of the triggers. I didn't expect to experience the same thing tonight at the dance demonstration. A psychologist friend of mine told me once, "Rob, your brain doesn't work like other people's brains." I started to tense up. There was too much going on around me--crowds of parents, little girls in tiaras everywhere, trying to keep track of my own kids, stimulation everywhere I turned. I had left my anxiety medicine at home--I hadn't needed it in so long.
This afternoon at work, right before leaving for the recital, I was giving a campus tour to a young man with autism and his parents. Like me (in some ways), his brain didn't seem to work like other people's brains. Over the course of the tour he would notice inconsequential things and bring up the most random questions (like the flow of traffic at certain intersections and if the shuttle bus came at certain intervals) and act inappropriately at other times. His parents were very sweet and you could tell they loved him and were tired in their 70's. In all honesty, I was tired myself and a little short on patience and understanding and was glad when the uncomfortable tour was over. I felt guilty--I got the feeling he did not have many friends as a result of his autism--a long loneliness. I've gone through it with my friends at my lowest times--you can taste the alienating character in depression and anxiety, because no one seems to have the right words to say, and it's self-isolating. You want to be loved, but make it hard. This is the fallen human condition, in many ways--desiring love and sabotaging it so it can't be given a chance. You know patience wears thin, and people can only do so much. It's just a matter of time, really.
Back to the recital. My muscles were clenching, and my hands were trembling. There was too much going on, much too much, and I was breathing heavy. I hated my wife for making me come. I managed to catch my little girl's first act and was a proud of dad, but the feeling degenerated quickly into panic--I had to get out, and had four more sets after intermission until she was on again. It was like trying to breath through a straw. I had no idea where my son was, though he was just walking around with his cousins. Everything was amplified in flight or fight response and I knew the turrets speech would come soon enough if I didn't address the situation. Anxiety, like many other mental disorders, is a hard thing for people who don't experience it to understand. My wife encouraged me, with great understanding, to just leave with the baby, that it was no big deal.
I didn't know what else to do, I felt like I was about to be buried alive. I paced back and forth from the auditorium to the lobby and back again three or four times, and then took the baby and left, telling my wife I would see her at home. She understood, no blame at all. But as I left the parking lot pushing the stroller to my car, salt burned my eyes. I could taste the shame--my mind had gotten the best of me, much to my embarrassment. "Your brain doesn't work like other people's, Rob." I missed the last part of the recital. My daughter was fine with it, she was very laissez-faire about her performance. But I knew my anxiety had gotten the best of my this time with this defection of duty. I hated every minute of being there, and I was free now, but steeped in shame for not being able to handle what normal people handle without even thinking about it.
I made it home 45 minutes later, fed and changed the baby, and just kind of stared out the window for a while. The hardest thing is the triggers, the things I know that set me off, are ridiculous: parking garages, crowds, too much stimulation, the fear of losing my children in public on my watch, sporting events or concerts. I was out of the danger zone back at home, but what does that mean for me as a man when called to face those things in the future, when it's time to step up and enter into the fray?
"Always real, and never true," the artist Antonin Artaud wrote to describe depression, which could just as easily be used to describe the experience of anxiety and panic attacks. It lives in the mind wearing a ridiculous oversized coat. It is embarrassing and cuts checks in the currency of shame. It threatens friendships, because people don't know how to respond, because, hey, parking garages and baseball games and crowded beaches are things to be enjoyed, not terrified of. It's not normal (that ubiquitous word that is the bane of anyone suffering from mental disorders).
We all have our crosses, the things that make us sweet blood under duress. I have hithchiked across continents by myself, made friends with ex-cons straight out of prison and stayed with their families, bungy jumped off the highest vertical drop in the world form a gondolar suspended over a canyon in New Zealand, and biked over and down the Rocky Mountains cross-country, descending for forty minutes at forty miles an hour on a bicycle without thinking twice about it.
But I'm scared to death of the most innocuous things at the same time, like a crowed dance recital, or the Lincoln Tunnel, or the beach on Memorial Day weekend. It makes no sense. I missed my little girls' second act because I couldn't keep it together. I know she understands, but I'm still ashamed. The tranquilizer I took when I got home is starting to take effect, and I'm getting sleepy and my central nervous system is slowing down. I'm feeling calmer now that I am removed from the situation. I will make some tea and settle down for the night.
Just when you think you're living a normal life, every now and then you get the rug pulled from under you. A good place to be for finding God and remembering the words of St Pio: Pray, Hope, and Don't Worry."
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