I know. Such an exciting post title. I'm sure you're all squirming in your seats. But trust me, it's not half as titillating as when I tell you about how I got pulled over. Again.
But back to this story.
Over Christmas I went to visit my dad and his wife in southern California. I stayed with them, and brought Charlie Brown, Amelia and Toulouse. We all road in the car together for many hours. Everybody avoiding pooping or peeing on each other, which was excellent, however, Charlie howled for the first four hours of the six hour drive and only stopped when I covered him entirely with a baby blanket, wrapped my arm around him, and patted his butt continuously. Did I mention this was AFTER I gave him Xanax? (Prescribed by his vet for the drive.)
yes, that is the dog sitting on my lap, HOWLING as we drive down the highway.
Anyway, we made it to LA. Charlie and Toulouse had a good time using the entire house to play chase in, which is much bigger than our tiny house at home, and Amelia made use of the double closet, which was empty so she could hide in it from both of those lunatics.
Pbbt.
At some point during the trip, my dad, Andrea and I went out to our favorite restaurant, the Blue Agave. It's a southwestern restaurant in Yorba Linda and I've been going there since I was 10 or 11 years old. It's my absolute favorite. I was excited to go.
On the way there, I sort of belatedly realized... I didn't think I had actually been in a sit down restaurant since before Matt.
Oh...
I wasn't entirely sure, so I figured, well, it would be fine. Plus I was excited and this was a place I had been going for years. I knew exactly what to expect. I even knew all of the servers because they were all the same people who had waited on us, seriously, for over a decade. A waitress [also] named Andrea is our favorite. (My mother's name is Andrea too. And it's my middle name. And my sister's middle name. And my other sister's middle name. COUGH.)
We were a few blocks from the restaurant when my dad's Andrea took a call from her oldest son Joe saying he wanted to join us. I first felt uncomfortable in her just getting a call from him. Christmas last year my dad tried to arrange for me to stay at the house alone and have Joe come over and hang out for a couple hours while he and Andrea went to a dance lesson. I went in hysterics and my dad walked out of the room and shut the bedroom door, unsure what to do with me. He's a nice guy, but I don't know him at all, I have mass anxiety around men, and he's very touchy. He gives hugs. He sits close, he's very friendly and outgoing. All things that are WAY outside my comfort zone right now. I've only met him 2 or 3 times in the last 5 years Andrea has been in the picture and they act like we're all best buds. And then they tell me these stories about him getting drunk and walking on his girlfriend's car and getting arrested and having restraining orders...
So, I'm tense. Then she say's he's coming too. I try to breathe. It will be fine. I just need to think about how to make sure he sits by them and not me at the table. It will be fine as long as he doesn't sit by me. I take slow, deep breaths in the car and think about how I can possibly DIVE into the booth once we get in the restaurant. We always sit in the same area, so, I just prep myself: I can DO this.
But I'm tense.
We get in and my dad makes a beeline past the hostess station to the crowded and noisy bar. I ask him where he's going and he says we can wait in here. My anxiety level goes up another 10 notches. It's crowded, it's loud, and the space is really tight. People are drinking. The only place to sit are at high tables on high chairs. Very uncomfortable and very crowded. People bump into me. I try really hard to not "wipe off" their touches on my sweater. But okay, we're
just going to wait in here. My dad and Andrea sit down on either side of me, so I feel a little protected since they "surround" me.
We talk a little, and Andrea talks to Joe again. Somebody says something about eating in the bar.
"HUH?" I say.
My dad informs me we are eating in the bar now.
In the almost 18 years we've been coming here, I've never even BEEN in the bar, let alone eaten in it. Why in the heck would we eat in here? I don't drink, Andrea can't drink (she had an organ transplant) why would we eat in the bar?! I tell him I'd really rather eat in the restaurant. Why would anyone want to eat in here? It's crowded, it's loud. Let's go in the restaurant. My anxiety doubles again. I can feel myself break out in a sweat and I start to get a little shaky. This is not the plan. This is not what I was anticipating. I look around at the room full of men staring at the TV screens and my skin starts to crawl. My dad is not responding to my questions and requests. Then he does the worst thing.
He got up.
He got up from that protective seat next to me, so I was in between him and Andrea, and moved next to Andrea, leaving one empty seat next to me. So when Joe would arrive, he would be sitting next to me, because now we were eating in the bar.
I started to shake. I'm sweating, I'm shaking, my eyes are welling up with tears and I'm trying REALLY hard to keep my breathing under control.
What's going to be worse? Sitting next to touchy- overly-friendly Joe? Or telling these two, who totally do not understand your PTSD at all, that you need them to move back into the seating arrangement they were just in because you can't sit next to her kid?
The chip I had had halfway up to my mouth before my dad moved is on the table now, being smashed into teeny tiny pieces as I try to cope with my almost-exploding anxiety. I can't eat it. I can't sit there. I don't know what to do. Nobody is noticing how incredibly uncomfortable I am.
I decide to speak up and say, "I need you to move back to where you were sitting."
"What?"
Absolutely shaking, I say, "I'm sorry," (crying) "It has nothing to do with Joe, but I can't sit next to men. I can't. I am afraid to. I can't do it. I need you to sit where you were before. I can't do this. It is really scary and upsetting to me." (Or something like that.)
My dad gets this really irritated, almost angry look on his face and almost starts to roll his eyes at me. Then Andrea turns to me and says, "It's JUST Joe!" with this patronizing tone.
And I was gone. GONE. I flipped my drink off the table, I think I almost knocked the entire TABLE off, and started to hyperventilate so loud everybody at least on that side of the room turned to stare. I half fell, half ran off my bar stool to get out of the room. It was like trying to run after being spun a 1,000 times while playing pin the tail on the donkey; I was so dizzy. Panting like I was screaming, crying like I was screaming, I made it to the bathroom only because it was so close and I knew exactly where it was from going to the restaurant for so many years. The noises I made in there were SCARY. The hyperventilating- it was just, it was SCARY. I couldn't breathe, I felt like I was dying.
As soon as I got in the stall a woman who must have been in there started asking me if I was okay, and I just could not answer because i physically could not speak. I didn't have a word in my head. I couldn't have told you my name at that point I was so far gone. I stood in that stall for at least thirty minutes with my head between my knees trying to bring myself back down. It was incredibly humiliating, and one of the worst panic attacks that I have had since the very beginning. And the only one I have ever really had in public where I couldn't get away. Worst of all, Andrea kept coming in and trying to talk to me through the door and insisting I answer her, claiming she "didn't know if it was me" and it would be "so embarrassing" if it wasn't me, on and on. Like I could really talk when I couldn't even breathe. I was crying so hard I wasn't even producing tears. I had no control over myself at all. And when I would regain some control, another wave would start up again, and then I would just be "gone" again. It was awful. Just thinking about how awful it was makes me upset NOW, more than two months later!
Eventually on one of Andrea's numerous trips in and out of the bathroom I calmed enough to unlock the stall and let her in, apologize and emphasize it had NOTHING to do with Joe personally. NOTHING. She kept asking if I wanted her to call him and tell him not to come or should we leave and how mad my Dad was I had run into the women's restroom so he couldn't follow me. I told her Joe could come, we didn't have to leave, I just couldn't sit next to him, but she told him not to come anyway and we went back to the bar after a very long while. They had set up an entirely different table because of the mess I had made knocking over the other table and drinks and stuff and I saw people stare when I came back in. My dad asked it I was alright, and then wanted to know what was wrong, and then went on to say that I didn't tell him what was wrong, or talk to him openly about this stuff, and i had given him no indication there was a problem. I start feeling anxious again....I can feel my face heat up blushing, palms sweat and I try to breathe. I'm already so hyped up...
I try very calmly to explain to my dad about my triggers and what happened and what let up to my running out. Almost immediately he starts interrupting making jokes. After the third or fourth interruption and wise crack, I interrupt HIM.
I told him that this is why I don't talk to him as openly as I do Mom. He doesn't make it easy for him to talk to. He just asked me to talk to him openly and he won't even ALLOW me to. I just need him to sit there and listen and he won't stop interrupting. I'm so upset and he's making jokes. It's disrespectful. I tell him it makes it hard to be open and that with Mom, this never even would have happened because she is so in tune to my issues that she never would have changed seats to begin with. She never would have put me in that position. She asks me how I'm doing beyond a once every six months, "So is therapy helping? Okay, uh... good."
My dad says that, well, the whole thing makes him uncomfortable and making jokes is his way to ease his discomfort. I tell him that's all fine and good, but if he's going to do that, then I can't be open because he's not LETTING me.
It was awkward.
We made it through the meal and I managed to eat something, but all I really wanted to do was leave. And by leave, I mean run back to the house, grab all of my crap and go back home, to MY home. It was awful. AWFUL.
Luckily the dog did much better on the drive home.
:(
Talking about it in therapy afterwards, and with my mom, I talked A LOT about how much Andrea really hit the final nail there. The patronizing tone, the "It's JUST Joe." All these subliminal messages:
"You're making a big deal out of nothing.
This isn't a big deal.
Don't be a drama queen.
Your issues don't matter.
This isn't important.
You're just trying to ruin the evening.
You're trying to make this about you.
You're being dramatic.
That's stupid.
You're silly.
This is dumb.
You're ridiculous.
This doesn't matter.
This isn't a big deal!!"
On and on. It was a HUGE deal and it took a HUGE amount of courage for me to say anything to them about 1.) why are we sitting in the bar, and 2.) I need you to change seats and the belittling sounding comment... It was so incredibly difficult for me to speak up and the total lack of recognition of a problem and the realization that there was NO SUPPORT there put me over the edge. I was at a 12 on a 1-10 scale already and that heaping extra cup of "It's JUST Joe!" in that tone... Put me to a 20... when the max number was a 10.
I was hysterical.
My mom said that maybe it was good. She said that I look and sound so normal so much of the time that maybe them seeing something like that was good in that it served as a reminder that I am not okay. I am sick. That maybe it would be a wake up call to them. ... Maybe.
It was definitely a wake up call to me. I realized that I really do live in a "safety bubble" of, I guess what you could call "approved activities" that I feel okay and comfortable doing, and doing something so far out of the box really was something I was not comfortable with and I paid for it. But as long as I operate within my "safety bubble" I can look and act like a normal person. but if you take me out... I'm like a fish out of water and I can't breathe. (Literally even.)
PS: I know my header has suddenly become out of focus/pixelated in the last couple of months and I have no idea why. I can just re-upload it, but I need to find the original and I'm not sure what computer it's on. It's driving me crazy too. :(
share this post »