Saturday, April 6, 2013

Fear and Not Loathing

Panic is back.
Goddammit is how I honestly feel about it, but I try not to speak like that.  I battled it for years and years and for a while I thought I was out of the proverbial woods...only to  find myself in the dense understory of it once again.
This much I've learned: extreme emotion, of any variety, pleasant or otherwise, translates in my mind somehow as panic.  Had a wonderful meeting with family and friends?  Somehow on the way home, the mind races instead to holy shit sixty five miles an hour is way too fast for a person to be travelling!  That bridge probably can't even hold us, and if I try to drive over it I'm sure to have an immediate and terminal heart attack and die at the wheel, sending the car careening through the barrier and plunging to the depths below!  I'M RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERY SOUL IN THIS THING AND I DON'T THINK I CAN CONTROL IT ANYMORE...I CAN'T EVEN BREATHE!

Yeah.  Not such a great way to experience life, let alone a simple drive home.  

I'm a pragmatist and more and more an utter realist, somewhat to my own chagrin, and I've been wondering how much that effects the disorder (condition?).  I've read plenty on it, it's link to depression and diet, and in the past I've seen healers of dozens of stripes: psychiatrists, psychologists, hypnotists, acupuncturists, Kabbalistic energy healers, shamans, scores of New-Age type folks in between...a panoply, let's agree on that.  I've been told that the 'why' is second place prize material; the 'what' is the golden ring and it's implementation (treatment, actually) paramount.  
And so it's been of sheer intrigue that I learn that it is apparently genetic as well, and this empirically found at that.  My natural father, it seems, has long suffered from debilitating anxiety and panic, to the point that he's unable to drive a car outside of his city.  I had the pleasure (not so sure that's an apt descriptor, really, but let's go with it) of speaking at length with him about it last week and discovered that his descriptions of triggers and experiences mimic mine to the minutest detail, his words spilling out as though he was able to quite literally speak my mind, my exact thoughts.  
It might have been unsettling to the point of discomfort had I not long ago identified at least a part of myself as a 'seeker', and therefore of the ilk that can oddly (in a macabre sense, perhaps) appreciate puzzle pieces, even if just perceived as such (ha!).  I listened intently, studying his body language and facial expressions, watching for some gateway to a deeper meaning, a window to my own fractured psyche.  And true to form, something quite remarkable did occur.
On the way home I was crippled by panic to a degree I hadn't felt in decades.  

So that experiment went south on me.  Now I'm home and in my familiar surroundings, the waves of everyday anxiety quietly roiling beneath the covers of my mind, but with the strange uneasiness that I'm no nearer (and in fact perhaps further) from anything like an answer to my nervous questions.  Of course, as my wife will tell you, as with anything I address, that old pat answer pops up: the theological implications are staggering!  Yup, it's back to the diaphanous realm of faith I suppose.  
I feel like, maybe just for me, if I had a stronger faith that I was cared for and looked after, that some God wanted, really wanted for me to go on, to live freely and joyously, that I'd feel that much better.  Mortality has maybe everything to do with this, and I'm feeling acutely mortal.  I have my family, my children, my marvelous and beautiful babies...I have more than I had ever imagined for my life.  I'm scared to death of even missing moments with them, of not being present for some poignant flash of time.  And this fear, this being scared to death (catchy vernacular, that) has me frightened to the point of believing that the end is just around the corner at any given moment. That..is...insane.  I can't think of any other way to put it.  The inability to continue living out of the fear of death.  We all die, and of course how many Rinpoches need to remind me of the necessity of acknowledging the value of 'dying well', having a relationship with the inevitable?  Cripes, intellectually I get it...I freakin' get it!  But there's a disconnect with waking reality somewhere, and I can't help but feel deeply that it has to do with faith, my faith, for me.  (I'm certain there are atheists that don't know panic and have wonderful lives; I've already crossed the threshold into the miasma of uncertainty...)  

And so I suppose the next quest begins, a deeper journey into faith.  About three weeks ago the adage rang clearly in my mind: when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  I await the teacher, and wander for now with a mind and heart open to receive the message that will carry me through this forest.  What a gift to my family, and what a gift to my children in the future.  The gift of watching my body language and facial expressions for some peace, some modicum of safety, and receiving it in full.  
Full enough to drive home with the windows down, the radio playing, and smiles on everyone's faces.  

May the God of your understanding shine upon you, friend, and ensconce you in all the love and power of One that made the universe...and you.  'Cause the world just wouldn't be the same otherwise.