Last week I wrote about anxiety and lack there of. I have learned, and some may call this morbid, that I can not count on one thing or another with myself to last too long in that department.  The challenge with PTSD is it never goes away and has this intimate dance alongside of anxiety. I recently read the title of an article called “high functioning anxiety.”  My response was a hmfph, I got me some of that. I don’t stop. Well, that is not true.  I have taught myself to.  It is of course “scheduled” down time, god forbid I just allow it, right?! One of the ways I “deal with/manage/live with” the running movie reel in my head is to do and distract. When the PTSD and anxiety is particularly bad, you can count on me to ramp things up on my to do list. It is no different than when a child is continuously going for the electrical outlet and you keep giving them a different toy to distract. I have mostly learned to manage myself in different situations.  Sometimes I avoid things that I know will be challenging, but as I have said in the past, I am stubborn as hell.  This stubbornness I have learned to gently embrace, because it has kept me alive.

What I am not used to is managing things with people who do not know me very well, aka the title, dating. I had an instance on New Year’s that welcomed me to this new phenomenon. Again, I am stubborn, and keep doing things that have the potential to put me into a fetal position wherever I may land. Anxiety in its glory is crippling. It can show up in different strengths and variations. When you are having a full on panic attack (which by the way is defined as a sudden feeling of acute and disabling anxiety), you want to die, because it can feel like you are. It is a feeling of complete helplessness and lack of control.  You can have a rapid, pounding heartbeat, dizziness, shortness of breath, shaking, temperature and or sweating dysregulation, intense fear, and this feeling of non-reality, a detachment like from it. Again, that is a panic attack, but like I said, there are varying degrees of it.  I remember a couple of years ago, I was driving Raffi and I somewhere, and I had a lot of the symptoms above alongside chest pain (that can also be a symptom).  The chest pain wrapped from my left chest to my left shoulder blade.  You see, I am an acupuncturist, we have to take a lot of medical courses in our training.  If a patient walked in with that symptom, I would be calling 911. I called my sister. Told her most likely this was a panic attack, no, I do not know the why, but in case I do drop dead of a heart attack, we will then know it wasn’t a panic attack.  It was. Many an emergency room have people coming and going thinking they are having a heart attack but instead it is a panic attack. This sounds like fun?  Sarcasm is deeply implied. Severe anxiety causes people to lose jobs, quit school, get divorced, and not want to leave the house to name a few things. There are times I don’t want to leave the house, it is rare though, mostly because Raffi needs me, my patients need me, and I mostly can push through, as uncomfortable as it is. But there have been times where that crippling effect has happened, and it scares the crap out of me. I have had friends and loved ones witness this, and luckily they know me, my history, and know to just be the ground that I need as I feel like I am falling apart. Sometimes there is a “trigger” (PTSD), sometimes it happens when I am exhausted, over-stimulated, in a crowd, hungry.  Sometimes I just don’t know. I feel like I am lucky, it is not my whole existence. I know there are some people this is awake to asleep.

Let’s get back to New Years. I had the privilege to see Brandi Carlisle in concert with the person I am seeing. It was a double bonus for me, she is one of my favorite artists, and I got to ring in the new years with someone special, which is the first time since Jess and Bells died (aside from my friends the past two years, which counts, but this is different). I have talked with him when we have gone and been places that I think may trigger me, tried to explain, but unless you are experiencing it, it is one of those things that is hard to describe the intensity and reality. The concert was in a place in Portland called the Crystal Ballroom, we got in fast thanks to him, and headed toward the front, I nestled us on the side, not deep in the crowd (as safe as I could make myself in a crowd that big).  I could feel my heart beating a bit faster, and of course tried to ignore it. As people started really piling in, I felt trapped, yet refused to move as we were toward the front, with a great view point. The opening act came on, and it was so loud, the people around me were talking even louder (it seemed), I felt my world crashing in as that increasing heart beat then doubled. I took the anxiety medicine I always carry with me hoping for a fast response. He of course looked at me with concern, and I just said this is super intense for me. The thing with anxiety is when you are having it severely, you can’t tell someone what to do or how to fix it, because you are doing everything in your power not to end up in that fetal position on the floor. And often, you can’t “fix” it. It sometimes passes, and sometimes you need to remove yourself from the situation. I don’t take that medication very often, and luckily it works. You just get into a place where the surrounding intensity doesn’t matter anymore. But it takes a bit of time to kick in. I look at this from both points of view, as I often do with most everything. For me, I am having an anxiety attack, feel helpless, and just need to try my best to breathe until the meds kick in, and not embarrassingly end up on the floor crying. I cannot even imagine what it may be like for someone unfamiliar with dealing with someone like that, how helpless it must be for them. He suggested we leave, I said no fucking way. I was trying to communicate what my body was experiencing, what I was feeling. There was a pause, him not knowing what to do, me in a state of just being able to get out of my mouth that it would pass. I felt like he was annoyed, I can pretty much guarantee he was not.  It is just the way I inferred it. I am a fixer. It makes me good at my job. When someone tells me that they have a problem, I go into that mode. I get it, if you see someone who is having a reaction to being somewhere, the logical solution is to get them out of there.  I think there was a moment or two where we both stiffened in reaction to this. He asked me if I was ok.  I said I was getting there. There are lists you can look up of things not to say to people who are having an anxiety attack, I will not bore you with it. I have to be honest, I was annoyed. I was annoyed that he would suggest we just leave (which I get after the fact, but I am talking about in that moment).  I was annoyed mostly with myself, because I hate feeling helpless, I hate how this tries to dictate what I can and can’t do, I hate how it makes me feel. And then I feel guilt, because I feel bad for the people I am with.  I used to be a person that took a long time to recover from things, Jesse and Bella dying fixed that mostly.  I process much faster now. It is just not worth holding onto insignificant things. After a few breaths, the meds kicking in, and a gathering of thoughts, I shared. Those who know me, I share. A lot. If I am quiet too long, my friends text and say, hey, are you ok? I made a pact after they died, not to hole up within myself and let the grief/depression/anxiety/PTSD take me down, because I know it will. I know if I keep all the feelings I feel inside, they will consume me faster than a fire that has been burning for hours does with a new log. I shared with him that I was having an anxiety attack, that I was trying to communicate with him how it was affecting me, that I just needed him to hear that, not fix it, that if I needed to leave, I would have said so. Also, that I refuse to stop living life and doing things I want because of this. I also shared, and thank you Brene Brown, that I was being completely vulnerable by sharing any of it and how scary that was for me. Let me repeat that dear readers. It is scary for most people to be honest, say your truth, and be vulnerable. It is so scary for someone, and I only have my point of reference, who has severe PTSD and anxiety to show someone that side and try to walk them through it. I am always waiting for the person to run. Say, this is not worth it, it is too much. I cannot even put into words the fear around it. That goes from meeting someone and trying to figure out how to tell them what happened (and them having that reaction) to the everyday stuff that I deal with. I generally don’t tell new people the extent of what is happening in my brain or body because of it. But I am trying to change that for a number of reasons. One, how can they get to know me, like really know, me unless I do, it is sorta dishonest if I don’t.  How can they learn to support me if I just keep it bottled inside?  And most importantly, that is not honoring myself or my process. Obviously I am not going to go walking through the streets and say, hey, that loud truck just completely freaked me out and sent me into a flight or fight thing in my body.  But I can tell the person walking next to me who cares about me.

The rest of the evening was amazing. She is something to see if you get a chance. There is a song called Evangeline that she sings about her daughter.  When I saw her in Bend this past August, I cried all the way through thinking of my sweet Bells, this was no different. He pulled me close, held me. That. I cannot even say what that meant.  For reals. Then, when midnight came, there were balloons released. I had seen them earlier and said cool. Well, it was cool until they started randomly popping. I don’t do fourth of July. And apparently I don’t do balloons popping. It sounds like gun shots. It does things to my imagination and brain on unconscious and conscious levels. It’s not good. Luckily, the meds were still on board. So instead of the full blown thing that would have happened, it was just jarring.  And I just jumped each time. Which was a lot. Again, no words spoken between us, I don’t know the extent of what he knows about the details of what happened or what goes through my brain. But he held my hand tight. Which was all I needed.

I am in un-chartered territory and learning daily. It is not that I have not dated since Jess and Bells died, but this may be the first time I am letting someone in more than I have in the past. I am dancing with the fear around it, acknowledging it, and working on walking through it, leaving it behind, knowing full well that it will fight to stay in the forefront. I am working on the balance of natural discovery between two people, and not ignoring that I have had this severe trauma that affects me on a daily basis. I love experiencing new things and places, and love it even more when I get to share it with others. The reason I started dating, was I missed that special someone to share stuff with.  I am continuing to do all the things to help counterbalance the reactions my mind and body have to this trauma. I have to. I have to for my daughter, and I need to for me. Amongst all the stupid shitty and terrible things happening in the world, there is beauty, there is wonder, and there are amazing people and places to experience. And, there is the potential to do this with someone. And, I may completely freak out for a variety of reasons. And, I still must do it, because I want to live.

At the Brandi Carlisle concert, when the balloons dropped at midnight