It occurred to me on the flight back from Cupertino that I had been growing more and more afraid long before I ever had my first panic attack.
I've always had problems with anxiety. I remember in 5th grade, I had to ask my teacher for permission to do something. I didn't like my teacher; she didn't like me. Interacting with her was never pleasant. She was in the back of the classroom speaking to some students when I approached her. As I asked for permission to do whatever it was I needed (don't remember), I realized I was reflexively wiping my palms up and down the thighs of my wide-wale corduroy pants. She said to me, her tone judgmental and cruel, "Good lord, Erika, I don't think I've ever met a child as nervous as you."
Humiliated in front of my classmates, I squeaked, "I'm not nervous!"
At the time, I really didn't think I was. I didn't feel particularly nervous. My heart wasn't pounding; I wasn't very afraid. But, looking back on my childhood in those days, I realize I was nervous ALL the time. It was normal for me to be nervous. Nervous was SOP. I never was NOT nervous; even calmly doing my homework I was tense, keyed up, hyper-vigilant. It took me hours to fall asleep. The smallest sound would wake me. I would stare into the dark, imagining monsters, imagining ghosts, until I finally fell back to sleep, only to have dreams of being tormented by my classmates. Sometimes, I wonder how I ever managed to retain anything I learned as so much of my energy was invested in being perpetually ready to flee.
No surprise, it was environment which created this nervous child. My mother feared the world. She'd already lived a life of near servitude, the youngest of eight - if I remember correctly. She took care of her older sisters' children and spent the occasional afternoon hiding in the closet from her drunken father. She never learned to drive - she panicked on a Pennsylvania hill while trying to learn to drive a standard. Unable to negotiate clutch and gas, she stalled out the car, jumped from it and ran. In nursing school, she quit after having to dissect a still-living frog. The sight of its beating heart so mortified her that she dropped out. While the rest of her brothers and sisters went out into the world, got jobs or married and started families, she stayed at home with her elderly mother. Shortly before my mother died, she revealed to me that her mom was addicted to some kind of stimulant pill, but she'd done nothing to stop the addiction. Not surprising. My mother allowed the winds of life to buffet her, unable find shelter from the gusts. She spent her youth working at a bank and caring for her mother.
When my mom was 36, her mother died. I think this left her adrift. Her only anchor to family and love was gone. This was the early 70s, so remember, having kids over career was still quite important. Mom had told me the biological clock was ticking hardcore. She met my dad and did what many children of violent alcoholics do - she started a relationship with him.
My dad was a violent, emotionally manipulative, selfish, alcoholic bastard. His father was a Polish doctor who was generous to a fault. His mother was a Scottish farm girl who thought she'd made it big when she married a doctor. Her life was one of "high society": fur coats, crystal champagne glasses, soirees, and Vodka screwdrivers until she couldn't see straight. Grandpa put up with it while she spent his money on diamonds and fancy furniture. Her two sons, Gordon (my dad) and Gregory, were seeing a psychiatrist by the time they were 12. This was about 1950, so imagine the enormity of that - today, it's easy to go see a shrink. Back in those days... different story.
Dad liked to tell stories about how he carried a bullwhip to high school. Whether the truth or not, he had an impressive repetiore of tales involving violent encounters with schoolmates, all of which he said he'd won. My personal feeling is his ass was kicked more times than not, until he figured out the bullwhip. I'm not sure if the one that hung on the wall of our living room was the same from his high school days, but I know it was real (he'd spent an afternoon in the front yard showing me how loud a sound it would make). He ran with a biker gang and harbored a guy on the run from a rival gang in our apartment when I was just a baby. My mother, shrinking and afraid, and only more and more convinced that the world was a terrible place, did nothing. The man eventually left, and my mother told me he'd been killed by the rival gang a few days later. Nice that my dad had our safety at the forefront of his mind.
You don't grow up in this kind of environment unscathed. My father beat my mother. I saw little of that but the tension and hatred between them was always palpable. Think about the worst time between you and your parents when you were a kid. Maybe you'd come home drunk, or got caught stealing, or wrecked the family car. Maybe the infraction was much less - maybe it was a bad report card or a note from the school for getting into a fight during recess. Remember how horrible you felt, how frightened or filled with dread you were? Now, take that and make about 300 days of the year feel that way, to some extent. That was my childhood.
I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm exploring how we become the adults we are. I spent most of my childhood, up until about 16 years of age, believing that I could be killed or punished with unimaginable severity by the adults around me. To my knowledge, I was not beaten as a child. I was spanked twice, publicly, and remember the intense humiliation of both times. I never acted up again. I wanted to please the adults around me, I wanted them to stay calm, I wanted them to smile and be happy. Anger was like the end of the world. Anger directed at me WAS the end of the world.
My mother was terrified I would be hurt or killed if I strayed too far from the house, especially if I was near a road. We lived in the country; traffic was light. We had no sidewalks but the road was plenty wide. Kids rode their bikes everywhere. She made sure I understood her terror for me whenever I took off on my bike to ride one mile to my nearest friend's house. "Be careful!" she'd admonish. "You know how dangerous it is to ride on the street!" I understand my mother's fear - she was terrified she'd lose me and then she'd have nothing. She had no job, no friends, no hobbies. She had allowed my father to completely isolate her out on our piece of property. Her days were long, boring, numbing. She had her cigarettes and her bible. I was gone at school from 7am to 3:15pm, my father was "at work" (the man never worked an honest day until about 1986) from 9am to 11pm. She was utterly alone. What a dreadfully sad existence.
After 18 years of that, she'd managed to convince me that the world was a pretty freakin' dangerous place. I didn't even realize what she'd done. All I knew was going somewhere new, if I was not with people I implicity trusted to protect me, was intensely frightening. The idea of getting lost was paralyzing. Forget the fact that if you got lost you could ask for directions or retrace your path until you found where you started, or the last familiar spot - if I "got lost", it was like death was imminent. Jesus. Running out of gas struck terror into my heart. When I was three, my mom and dad and I were coming back from visiting my grandparents. On the highway, the car started to buck and cough. Strapped into my car seat, I felt my mother's terror fill the car like a noxious cloud of Xyklon-B. I believe she started to scream. Of course, hearing my mother scream made me shriek with terror. I remember feeling like we would be stranded out on the road forever and we would die there. I WAS THREE AND I REMEMBER THIS LIKE IT WAS YESTERDAY. My dad, cruel bastard he was, crowed, "Uh oh! We're running out of gas!" In truth, he was the one making the car buck and shake, playing with us, terrorizing his wife and child.
To this day, I am afraid to run out of gas. I'm not at the pump every two days, but I know EXACTLY how many miles I can get out of a full tank of gas in either of my cars, weighted by street or highway driving, broken down by mileage per quarter tank. I cannot stand it when I am driving with someone I don't trust and I can't see the gas gauge. I HAVE to see that gauge, so I know we're not going to run out of gas and be stranded, forever, to die. Irrational, I know, but this vigilance is part of me like my heartbeat and my blood pressure.
So let's reacquire where we started: my realization that I'd been growing more and more afraid long before the first panic attack.
As an adult, I'd like to think my battle with irrational anxiety has been relatively successful. I developed fear of driving after an utterly retarded low speed parking lot accident in 1994 and my then-husband enabled my fear for 5 years. I did not drive a car unless it was absolutely necessary, and then only with abject terror. The night before I'd have to drive, I'd be up into the wee hours, dreading. We lived in densely-populated eastern Massachusetts, where driving was challenging even to the fearless. My husband insisted on driving standards at that time because they were cheaper. An automatic I could have handled. Even now, after going to counseling, I still avoid standards. I could drive one in an emergency, but only then. But... I still conquered the driving fear.
I was terrified of traveling alone. I'd never done it. Remember, the world is a bad place, full of bad people who will hurt you! My mother's lessons rang hard and loud in my mind. But yet... I conquered that. I remember my triumph the first time I had to travel to another city alone. I even had to fly on the plane alone. Yes, I cried to myself in fear when the plane banked hard over the brownstones of Boston (christ I really did think we were crashing) but I did it.
I conquered the fear of leaving behind the familiar. When I realized my marriage was failed, I somehow knew I had to leave my entire old life behind, like the spent skin of a snake. The marriage, the house full of more possessions than two families combined, my boring yet stable job, my routine - everything had to go. Moving to Texas was terrifying. Jeff was with me, but still I was scared shitless. I'd traveled within the States a little, but the world was still a scary place. Texas was wild, unknown. There was no reliable job in Texas, no comforting possessions, no house. Nothing I thought I needed, except this man I loved. I MUST CHANGE, I remember thinking. Thus, the snake shed her skin, and for a while, it was okay.
I was still anxious. I was still afraid. I had a hard time learning Austin. Remember - if you get lost, you will die. But I survived and eventually started to thrive. With each fear I conquered, I felt stronger, more capable. There were small victories and big victories. After a while, you start thinking you're completely fixed, all better. You relax, you start to really live. You feel like you've beaten it, and you celebrate.
And then there was the bad takeoff from Narita airport in 2005.
I'd spent a combined seven weeks in Japan, Australia and Singapore between January and March 2005. I was profoundly exhausted and in a perpetual state of jet lag. This was the last trip home. Japan is a hard place for a nervous person to be. It's loud, it's big, it's full of people who look at you like you're a zoo exhibit that got loose. We'd had an earthquake a couple days before - 50 seconds of mortal fear and confusion. I wanted OUT of this fucking country, with its 40 dollar breakfasts, stuffy hotel rooms, rock hard beds and 15 hour work days. My relief upon boarding the plane was like a giant slinky unraveling in my heart. In what - 15 godforsaken hours? - I'll be home. Yes, I'll still be up every night at 4am, but I'll be home where I can hug my boyfriend and pet my cat and have a bowl of macaroni and cheese whenever I want.
The plane was a real big 767, I think, with the upstairs section. I was in downstairs business class, about halfway back. It was sunny; the light was streaming in through the windows making the interior stuffy. Come on, let's go! I remember thinking. Just get into the air and let's get this show on the road.
We start down the runway. It's bumpy and really loud. No big deal, but I wasn't liking all the noise. Noisy planes scare me. The plane finally got lift and went up, then started to shake violently. The engines got REALLY loud, really harsh and grinding. Conversation pretty much halted. I was already covered in cold sweat and breathing through my heart, which was up in my mouth and in the way of any air I needed to get into my lungs. You know it's an unusual takeoff when you see the other biz class travelers sit up in their seats and start looking around, eyes wide. Oh jesus no. We're not crashing. Not on the last flight back, the last business trip for how long? Maybe forever? Pleaaaaase....
Like in the earthquake, I don't really know how long the plane shook and ground and shrieked. It felt like forever. Eventually, it settled and everything was fine but that takeoff served to affix the fear of flying into my heart. Only my desperation to get home allowed me to get on the connecting flight in LAX. After that, the idea of flying was hard. Dry mouth, pounding heart, sweating palms. That had never happened before, but oh my, it was happening now.
More strengths started crumbling. I got real nervous about getting flat tires. Went out and got those portable compressors you power via your cigarette lighter. Problem solved. Then, I got real nervous about my bandmates abandoning me on accident. They drank; I didn't. Did I mention my father was a drunk? You don't need to be a rocket scientist to put two and two together: Erika does not trust people who drink, even if they are not drunk at the time. Playing out of town shows where we traveled together was nerve-wracking, but remember, I'm afraid to get lost, so I didn't want to drive myself. Caught between a rock and a hard place on that one! It was one thing after another - instead of victories, I was having failures, time and time again. Going new places by myself became hard, even just in town. What if I had to parallel park? I'd rather stay home, thanks. Jeff and I were planning an overseas wedding and honeymoon - that meant planes, many of them. I remember being profoundly terrified by the most beautiful takeoff, ever. We were connecting through Oslo to get to Stockholm. The pilot got the bird up off the ground without a single bump and almost no sound. We just sailed into the air like magic. From a physics standpoint, it was utterly beautiful flying - just weightless ascention without any noise - the engines were so quiet. I, of course, panicked utterly because it was different. Are the engines on? Why is it so quiet? Are we going up or falling down? This beautiful silent ascent... and I couldn't appreciate it.
Five months later, I broke my hip. The egg that was my "self", my anxious-yet-held-together-by-spit-and-sheer-will self, shattered. I was left holding the pieces in my hands, and for almost a year and a half now I've been struggling to put them back together.
Up until about two months ago, I'd been a real smorgasbord of fear - fear of disease, fear of dying, fear of sitting still, fear of going to sleep. I characterized myself to my counselor as "a shark that must keep moving or die." I was afraid of what my body could and might do to me if I let it be still. Last time I'd been still, I had a huge panic attack that the ER thought was a heart attack. I was living in this flesh that I could not predict or control. I was living in flesh I did not trust.
I knew I had to change. The snake must shed again. This time, all that was to be shed was in my head, my heart. It's much easier to leave all your possessions in Massachusetts with your ex-husband than to re-program the broken circuits in your brain, but it can be done. You chip away, you reprocess, you role play and you work. And slowly, the shards are reassembled, the soul healed. You feel better by inches. You celebrate every millimeter of progress.
On the flight back from Cupertino on Wednesday, we hit some heavy turbulence upon take off. Usually, that scares the shit out of me. I was traveling alone - my first alone trip since the my hip and the panic attacks, and I'd been anxious about it. The woman sitting next to me was chatting, and so looking at her, I could see the lights of San Jose through the window, shearing right and left as the plane bounced. My heart should have been going 150 BPM. My mouth should have been the Sahara. I should have been incapable of interaction. But, but, but! Something had finally healed, the egg was glued back together, Humpty Dumpty recovered. As the plane leveled out, I looked away from my chatty seat mate and felt peace wash over me. I felt free. I wanted to laugh and dance in the aisle and tell everyone on the plane about how good I felt. The giant fetter of body-fear was finally broken.
I'm sure I haven't fought my last battle with anxiety, but at least for now, I am, once again, the Conqueror.
