Catastrophizing Catastrophe

I’m just coming up for air after writing Reclamation of Control but have this draw…
This irresistible pull…
to go deeper into fear.

That is what it was really about in the end. I was apparently just getting warmed up – walking the trail that led to the mountain.

Fear is just a word we use to describe a feeling, but it has a specific kind of texture to it.
It feels hollow.
Uncertain.
Unchartered.
Vulnerable.

It feels like compression – deep in the pit of my stomach.

At its worst it feels like the moment where everything that you thought you knew about the world gets erased from the map that you are diligently drawing of reality…
Or from the one that was handed to you.

Where all of your carefully curated expectations now feel like a fantasy – Unattainable.
Life suddenly feels untenable.
Certainty – gone.
Existence – catastrophically unsafe.

Yet, this very mechanism could be the reason that I am here today writing about it.
If fear did not exist, the pursuit of survival would not either.
Some may refer to it as instinct – and I would agree… mostly.
There is a point where it feels like there is a line that gets crossed, maybe where consciousness comes into play, that transforms it. It is not simply a reaction to avoid a situation that is happening right now –
It becomes a whole new section of awareness that goes deeper.
Further into the recesses of the mind.

Because I understand that if it happened once, it could easily happen again.
And if I am ready, I might be able to stop it.

This is the trap. Past hurt is now informing future fear.
And the pattern begins to form.

Hunted animals get spooked. They run.
Shortly thereafter, feeding again on whatever fits their fancy.
They are always listening, smelling, watching.
And at the first sign of danger, they run to the next spot and continue on about their day.
Even if that meant leaving everyone else behind – including offspring.
From the outside it appears there are no attachments.
They are not gripping the story, they are just in it.

By living this way, they seem to stay in a consistent cycle.
Not moving forward as a species.
Not moving backwards.
Just existing.

While admirable, humans just don’t seem wired this way.
There is self-awareness.
Conscience.
Deep seated emotions, feelings, and indisputable logic that nag at the mind to do something about it.

What the animal moves on from in minutes, the human spends a lifetime guarding against.
And somehow, we think we are the smart ones.

Maybe we just haven’t learned how to use the tools correctly.

When I stroll back over my life I try to recall times when I first really felt these emotions. Unfortunately, I can’t remember being a baby, but that probably wouldn’t help. Babies move through emotions like waves in the ocean, without the cognitive ability to do much with it.
Although, I still wonder if information is being stored somatically.
Slowly building a library, that the mind will return to read.

As I move through the early years of development memories arrive.
I was fairly fearless as a kid. Exploring the new world, hanging out with friends, whittling, school. Kid things.
I’m sure there were moments of fear in here, but nothing really sticks out.

When I hit age 7 fear came crashing through my front door.
I had a favorite tree that I climbed most days of the week. It was a fir tree about 13 feet tall down by the edge of the road. I’d climb it to sit for a bit and would descend back down and play.

Until that one day.

All of the kids on my street were hanging out near my favorite tree. My cousin, who was years older, ran towards and up it. Excited to share the experience I headed that way.
We crossed paths – him jogging back and me towards.
I had tunnel vision. My hearing dulled. I was going up my favorite tree with all of my closest friends around. This was perfect.
I leapt off the stone wall at the base of the tree and quickly shimmied up the branches, arriving at my spot near the top and gently rested on the branch that had become my perch.

Within seconds I noticed something different this time.
The top was bending. It felt different.
I could feel myself swaying backwards against mild tension…
and then that tension released.

And I blacked out.

When I regained consciousness, I was laying on the ground with my feet up on the tree.
Life was blurry and I was having a hard time regaining focus.
My mother was beside me, asking me what day it was – I had no idea.
She told me it was the day she went shopping.
As I answered the lights went back out.

When I finally woke up in the hospital, I had tubes in every hole that a tube could fit.
And a really bad headache.
I couldn’t talk because of all of the tubes and the mask they had over my face, so I asked for paper and a pencil.

On it I was trying to write where is my sister?
I couldn’t write in a line – I had to keep turning the paper and wrote in a circle.

The good news is that I am writing this today, and that was over 40 years ago.
I left this life for a bit, but came back.

The skin never broke, but I came back with scars invisible to the eye.

Something I trusted to hold me. Support me. That brought me to great heights.
It broke. And I fell.
It nearly cost me everything.
A forced surrender.

My time, in front of all my friends ended in a devastating blow.
A fall like no other.
Not just from grace. From life.
A public descent.

All of those witnesses now had the residue pierce every part of their being.
From their own perspective. Their own innocence. Their own wounds.
Because of something that I did.
That they would now need to face – sooner or later.

The pressure that rippled through my family’s life was undeniable.
My mother rode in the ambulance as I barely clung to life. Talking to people that were not there. My body seizing from the trauma.
My father arrived at the hospital to be told they were trying to bring me back.
Countless doctors’ appointments.
Seizure watch. Medications.
Restrictions.
Everything I did needed special care. Special attention.
Because there was fear that I may not recover from another blow to the head.
I just wanted to be a kid. But everyone, including me, was afraid.

Stories recalling the incident still ripple. They typically begin as a heroic return – the kid that died once, but returned to live again –
before descending into relived fear and trauma.

Guilt. Shame. Embarrassment. Shock. Terror. Constant worry.

Mine or theirs.
Fear. All of it.

I question my judgment.
My safety.
My success.
My every movement – as perceived by others.

Certainty, as I knew it, was gone.
Eager to fill the void was something entirely new.
Self-preservation. For my sake, and everyone else’s.

And even as I write this, I see my own residue coming through. Deep in likely the most catastrophic memory I have, I move outside my own experience to try and understand others’.
Making myself smaller by making everyone else’s experience larger.
Am I avoiding it? Is it easier to focus on what others feel than what I feel?

Or do I feel safer by trying to manage their state as a backdoor to managing my own?
If the problem is outside, is it easier to solve?
Or does that just remove responsibility for the outcome?

I can feel the dam forming.
I sit here on the riverbank, watching the water pass.
It is peaceful. Beautiful.
The rippling water carries a hypnotic sound that brings me to another place.
The smell is fresh. Clean. Moist.

But it starts to rain, and the water level is rising.
I’ve seen this before. The banks flood and I am exposed.

I know that if I build the dam high enough and control the flow…
I’ll be safe, and the water will stop rising.

This isn’t the first river I’ve dammed.
There are many.

The banks that I return to are stable. The flow is controlled.
Above the dam is a different story.
The water has crested the banks. Submerged the trees.
They’ve all rotted away.
The animals were pushed out of their homes to unfamiliar territory.
The landscape up there has completely changed.
but as long as I stay here on the bank, below the dam…
I’m safe.

All of these dams require maintenance.
They erode.
The water keeps testing them, finding every crack.
Every crevice.
It erodes the banks above doing what water does…
Following the path of least resistance.
Consistently. Persistently.
Slowly wearing away the remaining areas of resistance.
Revealing itself in the weakest places, at the most inconvenient times.

I need to keep tending. Plugging holes. Filling the cracks.
Reinforcing the dam. Making it higher.
Controlling the flow.

The pressure of the sheer volume above is constant energy under compression.
Locked inside the story – desperate to change it.

But water will be water.

Instead of moving with the current…
I’ve been fighting it.

I lost the first dam in my late twenties.
My perfectly curated life, built beneath the biggest dam went with it.
I hid behind everything I could to protect the boy that fell.

Self-doubt
Hypervigilance
Image management
Fear of failure

Control.

And I built everything carefully so that he was safe.

I tried so hard.
But still failed.

When that dam broke the water blew so hard through my life, control wasn’t even an option anymore.
Fear was all I knew. It was everywhere, oozing from everything…
And I was helplessly thrashing around like a fish out of water.

Luckily, water does what water does.
Sometimes it is a raging rapid.
Sometimes it is a still pond.
It just depends which section you are in, and if you stay with it long enough, calm will arrive.
As it slowed, I got caught in an eddy. Off to the side, but still in the current.
I can feel the water move past, but there is a sense of balance.

I see now why I built the dam. Logically, it made sense.
I also see that there is more to the story that I am avoiding.
But what is it? Why is it eluding me?

I was tactfully going around something that was asking me to go through.

I spent twenty years of my life working so hard to make sure this day didn’t come again,
But it did anyway.

As I look back on it, now twenty more years later, I am not surprised.
It seems much of my life has been managed around the belief that my existence created a problem for everyone else.
It has returned even in this writing.
Over.
And.
Over.

The people pleaser.
The martyr.
I’m too much.
I’m not enough.

Guilt.
Shame.

Fuck. Where do I even start…

And I have yet to even touch on how this has all shaped me as a parent.
Children that I want to protect and experiences I want to be protected from.

This writing shit is no joke. I’m finding answers that I’ve been searching for my whole life.
But they aren’t devastating like I’d thought they’d be.
There seems to always have been a part of me that knew. Sitting on the dam, looking down at me in the valley and also quietly watching the pressure build from behind.
Knowing that the time would come when around no longer worked, and it was time to go through.

I see it now.
It isn’t pretty. Isn’t curated. But isn’t broken.

It’s whatever I want it to be.
In the throws of fear I did the best I could, and it got me this far.
It led me to this place.

Would I choose it again? I’m not even sure if I’m prepared to answer that question.
If I could go back and do it all again, would I change anything?
I’m not sure I would.

For now, I’m no longer sitting on the bank fearing the flood.
I’m going to do my best to not build more dams and…
Stay in the water.
Feel the flow.
Letting it take me wherever it leads with the soft strength of a hand on the rudder –
guiding, not gripping.

I know the next dam isn’t too far down river.

But whatever comes next now has some room to breathe.

Through all of this, I can’t help but wonder:

Maybe the adaptations that we call fear are just trying desperately to get us back to love – but instead are pushing us away from it.