It seems an age since I've actually had anything ready to post but believe me when I say it isn't from a lack of ideas. Life has been somewhat busy recently and much as I have been writing none of it has really made the grade and I'm not even sure that this one is up to it. I am not sure if the tenses are quite correct but I'm going with it for now and may edit it later. As you might note most of what I write comes from my experiences although totally fictional and this one is no different. As with many people who experience mental distress there are good days and bad ones and what you do to get by is often not quite what others might choose. This is a little story about how it can feel to have found something that works that appears to only be done in movies or by children.
What is normal for me?
It is a pleasant Sunday afternoon around my friends, playing with her two children, but oh my, there comes a point when they’ve had enough. The youngest is only two and like all two year olds is somewhat demonstrative with her emotions. I wouldn’t say she was a drama queen with attitude but there are times when I look at her and wonder what is going on in her head.
I can see the stomping down of her feet, just so, and the increased tension in her arms and then her body. Her face changes subtly, her eyes narrow slightly and then she throws up her arms, screams and screws up her face as the tears flow freely and in variably after what seems like only a few seconds she slumps to the floor or into a chair and great wracking sobs shake her frame. Her arms become lose and flail as the howling bubbles up from her belly in fits and starts that judder out through her mouth. Touch her and she might just throw an arm your way but it is a sight to see. The temper tantrums of the young are amazing and as she succumbs I am transfixed with fear as I watch her abandon herself to everything that she feels without a care for what might happen to her while she is like this. To be so oblivious to your surroundings, so in the thrall of what is going on for you is incomprehensible for me, but then she is not an adult and now as the howling begins her mother moves forward to intervene. I am rooted to my seat so scared of what this little flailing monster is going through to move. I am not a parent and quite frankly am very pleased about that the tumult of life with a child seems too far removed from my quiet life for me to contemplate. The raucous goings on scare me, root me to the spot and generally make me want to run and hide rather than go to the screaming mass that is the child and although my friends tell me you get used to it and learn to deal with it I sincerely doubt that I would. I feel it is much more likely that I would want to join in.
As I watch my friend pick up the dead weight of crying child I wonder if this tantrum is really about. It was as sudden as a guest of wind and as all encompassing as epileptic fit and now it is beginning to pass I do not understand how. Little Charlotte is starting to respond to her mum and very quickly she’s wiping her eyes, dusting off her clothes and is back smiling like nothing happened. Another toy is found and she’s back to playing in the garden without a care in the world. But what really happened and is it really alright?
‘She’s fine.’
Yeah sure she is. Me on the other hand not so much.
‘She’s fine really...it’s quite normal.’
I raise my eyebrows. I really wish people wouldn’t say things like that. Quite normal what the hell does that mean.
She turns around and looks at Charlotte.
She’s playing quite happily, bit smile on her face. She looks fine, quite happy even but still my gut is taught and the adrenalin is only just subsiding. Is she really alright? I look at my friend who after a quick glance in Charlottes direction is pouring tea and offering biscuits and cakes to the other mums who are here with their children. How can they be so calm.
‘It passes you know’
Huh!
‘The terrible twos, they pass.’ The lady points to Charlotte. ‘The temper tantrums, the expansive outbursts, they all pass as they get older. They settle down.’
I smile and nod.
‘You don’t have kids do you?’
Like she really needs to ask. ‘No’
‘You get used to it, they just want to feel you’re around and everything’s going to be okay and then they’re fine again. You just reassure them a bit and distract them and then their back to normal again.’
I sigh as I recall how fast Charlotte recovered. ‘Yes I see that. It’s just so...’ so what, noisy, expansive, demonstrative, physical. So what, so damned scared to watch and feel like the end of the world is coming for her.
She pats my arm a few times. ‘You’ll see, they grow out of it real quick. In a few years you won’t even remember she was like this.’
I smile and look at Charlotte, playing with her friends like nothing happened and I know she’s right. Well mostly I feel she’s right but still there’s a little deep dark part of me that’s scared that she won’t. Scared that this is how she will be for the rest of her life. It’s obviously not a fear that is shared by the parents in the room and one you would think I would be able to dispel really easily as the world is full of people who don’t react like that to the world. Well you might think that but I know different.
The fear comes from deep down, a place that I have sequestered away from the world, a place I only go when I am alone. The place that knows when things get bad I do exactly what Charlotte does and just like her after I have flailed and cried and collapsed into a heap I can pick myself up and get on with life. I’m nearly thirty and I am ashamed that my emotional handling amounts to a two year olds tantrum but in all my years I have found no better way to cope with what I feel than to let it out in such a physical and noisy manner.
What I feel wells up and takes a hold of my heart rate, my breathing, my temperature, it is heavy on my chest and leaden in my body. It raises the hairs on my scalp and my arms and causes pain in my limbs. It gives me great racking sobs that feel like I am physically pushing it out when I breathe, it makes me sick. The world goes dark around my fear and lowers my blood pressure so that I am faint. I gasp for breath and sink to the floor but it is not panic it is just how I feel and I feel like this all the time. When I am upset it is so physical I am not aware of anything other than what is going on in my mind and body and it is why I push it away. It is so encompassing that I am vulnerable to the world and the people in it. So I hide it, I keep it safe until I am safe to be that vulnerable because much as it is normal for a two year old at twenty seven I feel the world with judge. I world will crucify me and lock me up in a mental ward but it is just how I feel. It is how I have always felt, so strongly, so acutely, so physically that it takes up my consciousness and I know no other way but I fear the world and its ideas of normal. I fear its ideas of how I should be and the intolerance of my differences but what am I to do. I have always been like this, I just learnt to hide it and despite the problems it causes me I do a damn good job but I feel alone.
I feel so different to the rest of the world, to everyone who is in it. Oh and don’t get me wrong there are people who have similar problems to me but somehow it really doesn’t feel all that great to know that someone else has the same diagnosis as me because what does that really mean. I cannot be myself and let my emotions out as I need and really when the entire medical profession is exerting so much time and effort into making me like everyone else it just doesn’t feel so good. I am not a criminal, I am not addicted to anything, and I am not even that dysfunctional in the world. I have small job and some friends. I take responsibility and have my own home but still it feels bad because unlike the rest of the world I am not like them. But what is so damned different about me? Nothing, I just feel a lot.
What is normal for me?
It is a pleasant Sunday afternoon around my friends, playing with her two children, but oh my, there comes a point when they’ve had enough. The youngest is only two and like all two year olds is somewhat demonstrative with her emotions. I wouldn’t say she was a drama queen with attitude but there are times when I look at her and wonder what is going on in her head.
I can see the stomping down of her feet, just so, and the increased tension in her arms and then her body. Her face changes subtly, her eyes narrow slightly and then she throws up her arms, screams and screws up her face as the tears flow freely and in variably after what seems like only a few seconds she slumps to the floor or into a chair and great wracking sobs shake her frame. Her arms become lose and flail as the howling bubbles up from her belly in fits and starts that judder out through her mouth. Touch her and she might just throw an arm your way but it is a sight to see. The temper tantrums of the young are amazing and as she succumbs I am transfixed with fear as I watch her abandon herself to everything that she feels without a care for what might happen to her while she is like this. To be so oblivious to your surroundings, so in the thrall of what is going on for you is incomprehensible for me, but then she is not an adult and now as the howling begins her mother moves forward to intervene. I am rooted to my seat so scared of what this little flailing monster is going through to move. I am not a parent and quite frankly am very pleased about that the tumult of life with a child seems too far removed from my quiet life for me to contemplate. The raucous goings on scare me, root me to the spot and generally make me want to run and hide rather than go to the screaming mass that is the child and although my friends tell me you get used to it and learn to deal with it I sincerely doubt that I would. I feel it is much more likely that I would want to join in.
As I watch my friend pick up the dead weight of crying child I wonder if this tantrum is really about. It was as sudden as a guest of wind and as all encompassing as epileptic fit and now it is beginning to pass I do not understand how. Little Charlotte is starting to respond to her mum and very quickly she’s wiping her eyes, dusting off her clothes and is back smiling like nothing happened. Another toy is found and she’s back to playing in the garden without a care in the world. But what really happened and is it really alright?
‘She’s fine.’
Yeah sure she is. Me on the other hand not so much.
‘She’s fine really...it’s quite normal.’
I raise my eyebrows. I really wish people wouldn’t say things like that. Quite normal what the hell does that mean.
She turns around and looks at Charlotte.
She’s playing quite happily, bit smile on her face. She looks fine, quite happy even but still my gut is taught and the adrenalin is only just subsiding. Is she really alright? I look at my friend who after a quick glance in Charlottes direction is pouring tea and offering biscuits and cakes to the other mums who are here with their children. How can they be so calm.
‘It passes you know’
Huh!
‘The terrible twos, they pass.’ The lady points to Charlotte. ‘The temper tantrums, the expansive outbursts, they all pass as they get older. They settle down.’
I smile and nod.
‘You don’t have kids do you?’
Like she really needs to ask. ‘No’
‘You get used to it, they just want to feel you’re around and everything’s going to be okay and then they’re fine again. You just reassure them a bit and distract them and then their back to normal again.’
I sigh as I recall how fast Charlotte recovered. ‘Yes I see that. It’s just so...’ so what, noisy, expansive, demonstrative, physical. So what, so damned scared to watch and feel like the end of the world is coming for her.
She pats my arm a few times. ‘You’ll see, they grow out of it real quick. In a few years you won’t even remember she was like this.’
I smile and look at Charlotte, playing with her friends like nothing happened and I know she’s right. Well mostly I feel she’s right but still there’s a little deep dark part of me that’s scared that she won’t. Scared that this is how she will be for the rest of her life. It’s obviously not a fear that is shared by the parents in the room and one you would think I would be able to dispel really easily as the world is full of people who don’t react like that to the world. Well you might think that but I know different.
The fear comes from deep down, a place that I have sequestered away from the world, a place I only go when I am alone. The place that knows when things get bad I do exactly what Charlotte does and just like her after I have flailed and cried and collapsed into a heap I can pick myself up and get on with life. I’m nearly thirty and I am ashamed that my emotional handling amounts to a two year olds tantrum but in all my years I have found no better way to cope with what I feel than to let it out in such a physical and noisy manner.
What I feel wells up and takes a hold of my heart rate, my breathing, my temperature, it is heavy on my chest and leaden in my body. It raises the hairs on my scalp and my arms and causes pain in my limbs. It gives me great racking sobs that feel like I am physically pushing it out when I breathe, it makes me sick. The world goes dark around my fear and lowers my blood pressure so that I am faint. I gasp for breath and sink to the floor but it is not panic it is just how I feel and I feel like this all the time. When I am upset it is so physical I am not aware of anything other than what is going on in my mind and body and it is why I push it away. It is so encompassing that I am vulnerable to the world and the people in it. So I hide it, I keep it safe until I am safe to be that vulnerable because much as it is normal for a two year old at twenty seven I feel the world with judge. I world will crucify me and lock me up in a mental ward but it is just how I feel. It is how I have always felt, so strongly, so acutely, so physically that it takes up my consciousness and I know no other way but I fear the world and its ideas of normal. I fear its ideas of how I should be and the intolerance of my differences but what am I to do. I have always been like this, I just learnt to hide it and despite the problems it causes me I do a damn good job but I feel alone.
I feel so different to the rest of the world, to everyone who is in it. Oh and don’t get me wrong there are people who have similar problems to me but somehow it really doesn’t feel all that great to know that someone else has the same diagnosis as me because what does that really mean. I cannot be myself and let my emotions out as I need and really when the entire medical profession is exerting so much time and effort into making me like everyone else it just doesn’t feel so good. I am not a criminal, I am not addicted to anything, and I am not even that dysfunctional in the world. I have small job and some friends. I take responsibility and have my own home but still it feels bad because unlike the rest of the world I am not like them. But what is so damned different about me? Nothing, I just feel a lot.
