I Know How You Feel

My friend Linda once told me a story about learning to recognize the feeling of air on her skin again.

Linda was a teen when she got married. Her husband was older than she was - old enough that today, eyebrows would raise and judgments would be made. They were blissfully happy for approximately half a century; then he got sick. She rarely left his side during his final illness, and had no idea what to do after his death.

I met her after his death. She was 67, working and happy, but still feeling incomplete. She had, according to her own assessment, only been functional again for a year or so.

She was living with her daughter, and working in the garden. One summer day, she felt something that stopped her in her tracks. She stood in the vegetable bed, confused, unsure of whether she'd heard something, been touched, smelled smoke - all she knew was that it had reached out and grabbed her attention. Then it happened again. "It was the wind," she said, "the wind on my back, between my shoulder blades. I was wearing a tank top, and I'd been sweating, and I was feeling the wind across my skin. I realized that I had literally not felt anything for years."

I understood.

A couple of years earlier, I too had not been feeling much of anything. Well, that's not entirely accurate. Mentally, I felt both numb and like an exposed, raw nerve, all the time. Ordinary feelings and experiences were muted, like trying to pick up tiny beads while wearing thick gloves. It felt like they might be there, but I was never really sure. On the other hand, every experience felt like sandpaper over sunburned skin. Sometimes, something would cut through like a knife, with sharp, stabbing pain. Most of the chatter inside my head was single note screaming.

When I was pregnant with my youngest child, I had something truly terrible happen to me. It was one of those things that will forever divide your life into Before the Incident and After the Incident. I tend to be dismissive of people who see everyday irritation, inconvenience or disappointment as trauma, so I don't exaggerate ordinary hurts. I had already experienced Stuff That Will Turn Your Hair White in my life, but this threw me. It not only threw me, it trampled me underfoot.

I rarely reference The Event. Most people, even my friends and family, don't know that it happened. I have spoken about it with my husband, my clergyman, and the professional counselor that my husband (gently) insisted that I see. I will, very occasionally, reference the effect that it had, but the event itself is not open to discussion. Ever. This decision is not open to debate. Ever. I reference it here only to keep things in logical order; the effect had a cause.

Everybody has core needs - to be loved, to be understood, to be useful, for example. I need to feel safe. Almost everything in my life is geared toward making sure that I, and my loved ones, are safe. Naturally, anything that feels unsafe pushes my buttons. Experiencing something that made me feel profoundly unsafe in every way was a seismic event. Life crashed down around my ears, and the shock waves rumbled far into the distance. It was impossible for me to feel safe anywhere, while doing anything.

I had always believed that most people are inherently good, and that most people will do the right thing most of the time. I know, I know, it sounds staggeringly naive, but it was one of my bedrock beliefs. Losing that belief made me question everything I knew, or thought I knew. Unable to sort out whether people in general could be trusted, and how to make that determination, I chose the Fox Mulder route - trust no one.

It was beyond painful. Going out in public was awful. I'd look around at any group of people and think, if a disaster hit right now - fire, shooting, anything - all these people would happily trample or sacrifice me and my family to save themselves. I've always found large groups to be alienating, and this just made it worse.

Staying home felt safer than leaving it, but I found that I could no longer read, watch TV or listen to music. ("Well, that makes sense," my husband said. "Music is designed to evoke an emotional response, and you're fighting emotion right now.") Any outside input at all, no matter the source, was likely to rip open mental wounds that I was trying desperately to stitch closed. Even fluffy sitcoms would have references, or visuals, that brought up excruciatingly painful memories - or predictions, or philosophies, or a hundred other things.

Leaving home was like mountain climbing - I had to prepare, and it took great stamina to complete. More than once, grocery shopping reduced me to tears, and I had to flee the store. The first two times I tried to watch a movie were abject failures. Midway through, I dissolved into a puddle of pain and tears.

I stepped down as leader of my daughters' Girl Scout troops, and I stopped volunteering for community theater groups. I stopped taking photos; on holidays and birthdays I'd shove the camera into my husband's hands and say something like, "Make sure to get one with the cake in it." I continued attending church for two reasons: I couldn't tell my kids it was important if I didn't go, and if I entirely dropped out, church members would try to find out why, and I wasn't about to discuss it. Luckily, the pregnancy, and later, having a newborn, made excuses easy. "I'm just so tired" - which was true. "I'm spread a little too thin" - which was an understatement. "I need to be home with my family" - totally understandable. With four kids, it was easy to say to everyone, "Nope, sorry, I have no time to spare." It made sense. I've never been good about phone calls, but for a solid year I don't think I made a single one. Since it wasn't too out of character, it slid under people's radar, and that's how I wanted it.

Everyone needs something different when they're experiencing stress. Many people need reassurance, or consoling, or distracting. What I want most when I experience any kind of distress is for things to feel normal again, so what I want most from others is that they behave as if everything is normal. Giving me a hug, or saying, "I'm here for you" generally makes things worse. I am OK with an oblique reference as long as it's followed by completely normal behavior. Asking, "Are you OK?" is fine, as long as you will then accept my assurance that I am, or will be, and immediate move on.

As an example of what works best: I've spent most of my adult life being a stay at home mom and working for myself, taking photographs. Once, though, I worked for a small, local company part time. (It was actually part of my plan to force myself out of my home and into interaction with other humans. I met some pretty cool ones there.) One day, I got called into the boss's office, and left about 30 minutes later in tears. Not sniffling, but bawling.

My co-workers didn't know how to react. They had no idea what had happened. For all they knew, I'd just been caught stealing from the company, and the police were on their way. (Actually, it was a personal issue, and the boss reacted very well to what I had to say.) They were unsure of what to say or do, so they ignored me, which is exactly what I needed.

About an hour later, with my tissue box nearing empty and me feeling almost OK again, three or four co-workers were standing nearby discussing something. I've forgotten what. One of them may have said something about the break room being out of snacks, because what I felt compelled to say, in my best British accent, was, "And they ate Robin's minstrels. And there was much rejoicing."

Their heads all swiveled toward me, and they gave me the deer-in-the-headlights stare. One then managed to squeak, "What?" It was clear that they still didn't know what to say, or if they should speak to me at all. Plus, I hadn't so much as looked up for an hour.

I said, louder and very distinctly, "And they ate Robin's minstrels. And there was much rejoicing." They still looked slightly blank, so I said, "Oh, come on. Are none of you Monty Python fans?"

The ice broke. "Oh! Holy Grail! I love that movie!" More quotes were shared, people laughed, some of those in the neighboring desks joined in. Things were back to normal. I was happy, they were happy, and there was no need to ask if I was OK. Perfect.

My husband is more of a conventional human. When he is stressed, he wants to be surrounded by people who tell him that he's wonderful and loved, and that other people are jerks. He wants to have places to go, and things to do, that keep him from thinking too much. It makes no sense to him that I need the universe to collapse down to a space barely bigger than the inside of my head. He constantly tried to cheer me up by doing things that would cheer him up if he was down. Makes sense, right? I mean, the Golden Rule and all.

"Why don't you call So-and-so?" he'd say. "Go out to lunch." I tried to explain - the mere thought had me in tears of exhaustion. I had just enough energy to function, and none to spare. He also could not understand my insistence on avoiding mention of The Event. "Can't you just say that you're upset, and not say why?" he'd ask. NO. First, that's not how interaction works. Second, if I didn't want to discuss it, it was beyond rude to bring it up. Also, I cannot stand it when people say, "I don't want to talk about it" when what they mean is, "Please show me that you're interested. I'd love to tell you, but only if I'm sure of how you'll respond." It's manipulative twaddle. I would probably become violent if someone tried to cajole it out of me.

"Don't you think you'd feel better if you talked to your friends?" he wanted to know.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because they'll tell me that they love me, and I'm wonderful, and it's not my fault, and it's not the end of the world, and millions of people have lived through it before, and I will too, and things will get better eventually, and I already know all of that. Why would I take the time and energy to go over something that I already know?" It just seemed like a huge waste of time and energy, and I had no energy to spare.

Even when I did talk to someone, I often seemed to baffle them. My counselor said during one visit, with genuine concern, "Do you ever think, 'Why me?'"

My response was immediate. "Never. I mean, people have had horrible things happen to them - people have been sent to concentration camps. Why would I think that I, personally, am immune to the human condition?" He stared at me for a moment, then scribbled madly in his notebook. Apparently that was not the expected response.

I don't understand people who think that nothing bad will ever happen to them. I mean, has that ever been the experience of a single person who's ever lived? Then why do you think it will be your experience?

(I also never understood people who'd say things like, "When my mother/father died, it just shook my faith to the core." I understand a tiny bit if your parent was murdered, or if they had a lingering illness, and you're not sure why people have to endure that, but the simple fact of their death? Shouldn't that be a given? If every person who ever lived has also died, chances are that everyone you know will die one day. How can that take you by surprise?

I lost my dad at 22, so I'd experienced losing a parent before most of my peers. "Wait until your mom dies," they'd say. My mom died only a few months ago, and I miss her more than I can say, but I knew that she'd leave one day. It was expected. My faith was unaffected.)

Gloom and doom people, the "everything bad always happens to me" people, also puzzle and annoy me. Usually, they're still walking, talking, sighted - the people with real hardships tend to be far more cheerful. There is no possible way that "everything bad always happens" to you, so don't even try to convince me that it does. Stuff happens, yeah - to you and to everybody else. It's always something. Great stuff happens to you, too, so pay attention to that. If you woke up today, be thankful.

Some days you're the bug, and some days you're the windshield. That's normal.

One friend of mine was around me enough during this time to notice that something was wrong, but she also knew me well enough to know that if I wanted to talk about it, I would, so she didn't ask any questions or try too hard to be helpful. I appreciated it. One day I said to her, "You know, if I was ever to start trusting people again, I think I'd start with your husband." He's a great guy, who also never tried too hard, but I knew he'd jump if I did ask for help.

She smiled. "Yeah. He's pretty great." It was a compliment, to both of them, and she accepted it. It was nice.

I remember the exact moment, and place, I had my Linda-and-the-wind experience.

There's a local park where we spend a lot of time. We photograph it, and people in it, in the spring when everything's blooming, and in the fall when the foliage changes color. We spend a lot of family nights there, walking the trails, having popsicles and looking for baby bunnies.

We were there on another family night, and my kids were playing nearby, watching another family fly kites. I looked over at a particular spot, and noticed immediately how I'd frame a photo. I wished I'd brought the camera. The thought stopped me cold - taking photos has been second nature since I was eight years old, but I hadn't actually thought about taking one for over two years.

I became excited, because I wanted to take a photo. Then I became even more excited, because, holy cow, I was excited! That was new and different and unexpected!

We came back a few days later with the camera. The photos aren't amazing because of their content, which is nice but ordinary, but they are deeply amazing because I took them, on my own, just because I wanted to. Such a little thing, and so monumental.

When Linda told me her story about the wind, I nodded enthusiastically. "I know how that feels!" I told her - and I did.

Sometimes that may be why things happen to you - so that some day, you can look another person in the eye and say, "I know how you feel" - and you will know.

Such a little thing, and so monumental.