Disaster

So, I went on my vacation.  Pulled up my big girl panties, made my motel reservations, packed my gear, gassed up the car, and headed east.  All stoked up for a real adventure.  Not mad at anyone, or resentful, or sad, or desperate.  Trying to bask in the warm glow of joy and peace.

Three hours into my solitary adventure, piloting the van across the flat, featureless high desert of central Oregon, I looked out the windows...and had a Grand Mal anxiety attack.  Out of the blue, for no reason I have since been able to come up with. 

I have been having these attacks since just after I was married.  They seem to have something to do with my stepping out of my comfort zone and embarking upon something completely new and foreign.  Marriage was, apparently, one of those things.  Evidently, so was driving away from my solitary, protected little life in the valley, and up onto the vast, flat-from-horizon-to-horizon, plain of the high desert. 

During these attacks, I temporarily lose myself.  I suddenly feel as if I've been dropped into a completely different universe...I come dangerously close to losing my concept of who I am or what my life is...as if I've been living an alternate existence, and my actual reality is trying to break through into the one I'm in. I can't look in a mirror during these spells, because I have this sense of not recognizing myself.  It's like I'm falling, but not into a hole.  More like into a boundless space where I will just...spread out in the air and disappear.  It scares the crap out of me, every time. 

Over the years, I've learned to physically turn away from these attacks, connect with something familiar within my line of sight, grab onto it and turn my back on the feeling of...not knowing who I am.  It works.  But driving across the bright, empty plain, away from everything familiar, I couldn't find enough of anything to grab onto to keep from falling.  I very nearly lost myself.  It scared the shit out of me.  I was rattled and shaken for two days afterward. 

It was just too hard to get myself back to a place where I could enjoy the adventure, after that.  Even though the feeling and immediate fear finally abated, I was scared to death it would happen again...because it had come at me from out of the blue the first time.  So I just couldn't explore the open, boundless beauty of the high desert alone. 

After three days, I canceled the rest of my trip and headed back to the valley, familiarity, and safety.

I feel like such a failure.

I've always known that fear and anxiety are my constant companions; and, in fact, they have been rearing their ugly heads with greater frequency as I get older. 

In a way, I guess I believed that heading out on an adventure motivated by joy and surrounded by peace, I would also be charting a course away from fear and anxiety. 

They sure proved me wrong.

Apparently, strong negative emotions are the best way for me to conquer fear and anxiety, and accomplish anything at all.  Anger, sadness, loneliness, frustration...these are the clubs I use to beat back the fear so I can move in any direction at all. 

Which is why this has been the story of my life.

Who knew?