Understanding

Have you ever tried to explain something to someone that was very difficult?  We can gather clues to what someone is talking about through context and cognitive thinking.  I think that’s the way to put it.  Blue is the color of the sky, right?  What if I’d never seen the sky?  What is blue?  It’s the color of water.  My glass of water isn’t colored.  It’s the color of a certain flower.  Does that flower grow here and is it in bloom?

What’s my point?  It’s that if you don’t have a reference to something then you may not know how to understand someones explanation.  This can apply to anything really and in my case it’s GAD (General Anxiety Disorder).

Have you ever gotten a cold?  Who hasn’t?  Did it work when you told it to go away?  Point.  We can’t tell some things to go away or to stop.  All we can do is learn to handle things as best we can.

There are certain average triggers for me, one being the dentist.  Another would be flying and perhaps getting on a large boat.  Then there are triggers that I can’t see.  When I think back now I’ve really had this my whole life.  It’s much more pronounced now though.

I rode a ride at Six Flags when I was seven years old and 30 minutes later I passed out.  Can you imagine being a child and everything is fine, then your suddenly falling and the world goes black?  The last image I saw is burned into my mind: the train was coming around as I stood in line for a ride and I saw someone walking down a grassy bank.  The last sound I heard was my mom’s voice.  It sounded like I was in a tunnel.

When I came to I was being dragged into the exiting line for Thunder River.   When I tell people it was the Dehlonaga Mine Train ride that it happened on, they laugh.  If you ever blackout will you be laughing?

I didn’t ask for that to happen to me.  I didn’t expect it to happen.  I wish it never had.  It did and there’s nothing I can do about it.  All I can do now is learn to live with it.  It’s something that no one around me, save, my wife and mother, can remotely understand.  When I see someone panic, I do understand.  It could be about anything and I understand because once your mind is set into motion it’s so hard to stop.  It’s like driving a fully loaded Mack truck down an incline and thinking the brakes will work once you realize you’re headed for a sharp turn.  It’s too late and you’re now committed to the plunge.

So if someone ever tries to explain it, then imagine something like you’ve never experienced.  I suppose the best analogy is to think of something that scares you to death.  Now, take that feeling and live it at any given random point in time.  You never know when and you never know where.  It’s like something jumps out of time and grabs you.

While my case is actually fairly mild, to some it’s crippling.  It’s sad that an otherwise perfectly healthy human being can suffer at the mercy of his or her own mind.  The world goes on as we all do, down the path we’ve yet to completely choose.

If there is a ray of hope I can inject, it’s that these dips into psycholimbo do subside and clear up.  Much like a summertime thunderstorm does once the sun sets.  That helps me to get by.  While I’m surrounded by people I love, these are battles only I can fight.

I see that same spirit in my oldest son’s eyes.  That spirit that is fiery and unstable that leads to an unyeilding imagination.  It’s both a blessing and a burden.  I only hope he has a better handle on it than I do.  But if he doesn’t and I say “I understand” then I can honestly say I really do.