My first anxiety attack

I have her bright blue eyes.  It was surreal that day, like looking into my own eyes.  This would be a pivotal moment in my life. In this way we were the same; she had succeeded in making me as ignorant as she was.  She had completed the circle of abuse by fully passing it on to me.  This moment marked the passing of the torch. She was relieving herself of her first victim in life.

The visiting room is the same as the rest of the jail, all bulletproof glass, steel, and cinder blocks painted pale beige.  No moveable furniture. Nothing comfortable. A row of booths, small bolted down metal stools with a short wall between them.  No privacy. A phone on both sides of the glass.  No physical contact is allowed.  I could see her through the glass as I waited for the door to click, clang, and buzz loudly so I could get through.   The woman who gave birth to me had come to see me for a visit; she was dressed in her newly acquired Correctional Officers uniform.  She was proud of her new job.

This bitch didn’t care about my safety at all.  Surprised? The real question is why was I surprised? It's never good to be seen conversing with a cop.  Never. How could she have been involved with the justice system for so long and not even have enough sense regarding my personal safety to take that uniform off before visiting me.  She wanted the other guards to see her new attire. There were at least ten other inmates in that visiting room, and there I was, the only one talking to a cop.   

Considering how she raised me it wouldn’t be crazy to say on a deep level she simply wished I didn’t exist.  On a deep level she probably wanted me to die.  It made her feel better to make sure I knew what a problem in her life I was.  It kept her from taking responsibility for her own actions.

You see, she had recently worked at the jail I was being held in, but now was a guard at a real deal penitentiary.  It was a promotion for her.  She liked to brag about the benefits that the state government provides for state employees.  She was super proud. She didn't even have a high school diploma, but she got herself good health insurance.

This was her first visit to see me.  We had talked on the phone, so she knew I was being held in a cell block with the most dangerous criminals in the jail, several murderers, two rapists, and hand full of other violent offenders as they liked to call us.  She had probably been talking to one of her fuck buddies at the jail still.  Maybe that is why she kept her uniform on. 

Maybe her unconscious just wanted to be rid of me for good.  It's dangerous business being labeled a snitch, which is exactly what happens if one converses openly with cops.  It was weird to me because I was happy to be able to see someone I knew even though I was not so happy it was the person who put me there, but at that time I would take what I could get.  Isn't the monkey suit a funny thing? You know it is bad when you are happy to see someone has ruined your life. They call this Stockholm Syndrome.

It was only natural that she had a troubled look in her eyes, she was obviously stressed that her oldest son was in jail, and it was a serious crime too. I knew though that the worry in her eyes was not for me, but for her own self.  She never worried about me.  She only ever worried about herself.  This woman was, and still is, the text book definition of a narcissist. Her worry was about what others would think of her because now they knew she had raised an animal instead of young man.  She was scared that word would get out what a horrible person she was.  It is the reason to this day she is still the same ignorant person; she cannot face her own self in the mirror so she just continues to lie to herself and blame others.

Staring into her bright blue eyes we picked up the phones and began an awkward conversation. Too much time has passed from then to now, so I cannot remember the small talk, but I remember how it ended. We were discussing the charges being brought against me, lawyer stuff, bond that no one was going to post, what kind of time I was looking at, that kind of thing. As we talked she informed me that she thought I deserved to be in prison, almost as if she were happy I was going to prison. She basically told me that I deserved to be locked up and that she was not upset that I was going away. 

Even though she didn't say it to my face she was only actually embarrassed. I already knew at that time the sentence I would receive would be no less than 10 years because that is the minimum sentence for a class A felony. At that time they were considering giving me a 35 year sentence, or at least that was their scare tactic. And according to those in the know at the time, even with the minimum 10 year sentence, most do no less than four to five years. I knew I was not going to be outside of a fence topped with razor wire for a long time.

This was only a thought though. The reality of it was no where near settling into my mind. 

As she explained to me that I deserved to be caged like an animal my mind was spinning out of control.  I felt the snap inside. Something broke. It was all crashing down around me.  The reality that was my life could no longer be shoved aside by my conscious mind.  Deep down I was terrified.  I was lost.  My life as I knew it was completely over, and the one person in the world who was supposed to love me no matter what just condemned me to prison right to my face.  

 I so desperately needed someone to help me in life.  I'm forty two now, and I still feel this way. As I looked into my own blue eyes I lost it all.  My hands began shaking.  They wouldn't stop.  I couldn’t cry right then.  I couldn’t give her the satisfaction..  I couldn't show fear.  The visit came to an end and the jailer escorted me back to the cell block.

By the time I got to the cell block my hands were visibly shaking.  I simply couldn't make it stop.  I couldn't think.  It was like a lucid dream.  I was watching from outside myself.  My will over my body was gone. My facade was cracking.  Correction.  My facade was broken.  The sobbing was coming and there wasn't anything I could have done to stop it.  I've never seen my hands shake like that.  I didn't know my hands even could shake like that.  I had lost control of my body.  I learned months later that this is called an anxiety attack in the psychological world. 

There I was in jail, barely 17, fully aware that in a best case scenario I was not going to get out for at least four years, quite possibly it would be six to eight. While all my peers were going away to college I was on my way to prison listening to the one who had raised me to be a criminal, to be an animal, tell me that I deserved to be there. This was more than my psyche could handle. How could I not hate her with all my being?  How could I not be bitter?  She had made me into a monster and at the same time condemned me for being so.

My emotions were running so wild that my body could not contain them properly.  I do not know how to explain the experience; at the time I was simply in shock, a literal shock. My mind had always tried to suppress such things, to not feel those feelings, to rid them from my memory. Only pussies have feelings don't you know? These experiences are extremely painful; I am a human being after all.

How do you explain being abandoned by your mother? How do you put words to the helplessness and loneliness of such an experience? Especially after everything that had happened to me leading up to this event.  I needed someone to save me desperately, but in reality it was only going to get worse; no one was going to rescue me. 

I must have really been shaken up because even the guards could tell something was wrong with me.   Maybe they listened in on the visit.  They allowed me to go into my cell which is not normally permitted at that time of day. Usually inmates are made to stay out in the cell block during the day and only allowed in their cells at night, but they could tell I was not well, so let me go to my cell.

Those walky talky speakers are imbedded into the wall of each cell in case of emergency.  I think they were listening to me while I was in my cell alone.  I could not contain the sobbing.  I think one of the jailers tried talking to me for a bit, but they are not equipped to deal with such things. I refused to talk to anyone else.  It was bad enough I had just been seen talking to a cop in the visiting room.  

My life depended on not appearing weak.  I could not stop crying, and it was not normal crying either.  I could not stop my hands from violently shaking. Most of my body was shaking, but in my hands it was crazy. I had lost control of my body and mind, and what remained of my consciousness was only the ability to watch as if from outside myself.  I was alive, yet it was a dream.  I did not know what was happening to me.  Perhaps temporarily a part of me died that day.  If that is true it would be a long time before I got it back. 

Experiences in my life seventeen years later caused this past trauma to resurface. Perhaps it was always there below my consciousness waiting to get out.  These more recent events put me in a miraculously similar situation. I obviously changed, no longer that same person I was then. The way I lived my life was completely different.  I had put in many years of dedicated hard work to get over the mountain that is my past, leading up to this dramatically similar situation. My mind was much sounder and it was able to realize the truth unlike the seventeen year old me. I should say, it was capable of handling a little more of the truth.

Obviously, certain aspects of my emotions never matured along with my mind, certain emotional parts of myself have always been stuck in that day, unable to surface, unable to be healed. It hurt me too much.  A weak mind cannot handle such pain.  How could I have been any weaker? I couldn't even control my own hands. In the face of such pain I broke.  I believe that is why I spent my entire twenties trying to fill that hole; I simply couldn't face it. My own mother doesn't even give a shit about me.

Talking doesn't work, thinking about it doesn’t work, and going to a therapist doesn't work either, not for me anyways. I tried everything and nothing worked.  Even writing out my story in this way does not really release the trauma.  It's on another level. 

Finding myself in a similar experience, an almost identical real life experience, does however allow one to rub salt on the wound. Keeps it from getting more infected. It practically forces it on you.  I have several friends with similar pasts and they confirm this type of growth experience too. They too wish to expand their awareness and grow as a human being; they too wish to be healed of their emotionally traumatic pasts. They, like me, have found the universe bringing to them events so similar to the ones that stunted their emotions that it allows them to get it out so to speak.  If it is faced courageously it brings about healing.  Like me, having a much more matured mind in the present enabled them to heal that part of themselves that had become stuck due to trauma.  It allows us to get out those negative emotional experiences that we were not mature enough in the past to handle properly.

Like I said, I'm forty two now sitting in a public library editing this again. Matter of fact, I'm in the same spot now as then, waiting for someone to come help me out.  Wishing I could call my mother.

Back then I simply could not wrap my conscious mind around what was going on, but my unconscious mind and body knew exactly what was going on, and my body/mind simply could not contain the energy.  I was not only trapped in jail, I was also trapped in my own body, my own mind, with nowhere to go.   It was suppress it or die.  I had to temporarily leave my body behind or perish psychically. 

Later in life though it became a matter of undoing the suppression or fail at my goals in life.  That simply was not, and is not, an option.  Trapped in my unconscious was this terrible event and only by a similar one in the present was I able to release it from within.  At least I thought I had released it. Here now, editing this again, at forty two, I feel like I am in the same exact spot, just no surrogate mother figure this time.

It does not seem like a good thing to outsiders to intentionally own up to such pain. Most people will tell you to avoid pain, but to be healed, to have a more healthy reaction, required a similar experience which was no less painful than the original. Almost everyone always advises to avoid painful experiences, but how else can one grow?  A lot of people always acts like I am doing something wrong because I run head long into painful experiences.  No one grows while in comfort.  No one grows believing lies.  Having never healed that moment in myself I would only be lying if I said I was a healthy person. 

As I am now I perpetually seek out self-improvement. I pray for it every day and sometimes that means suffering what would seem negative consequences.  My new mother figure was actively criticizing me for my actions.  Don't do this, don't do that, they would say.  Telling me to avoid the suffering.  I found myself at the whim of another woman, exactly as I was back then.  Who can know what the universe will bring our way?  I was praying to be healed and whole, and that is exactly what I got, which meant shedding a mother figure and coming to terms with the fact that I will never have a mother. 

I probably still yearn for a mother. I've always wanted a mother. Why can't I stop wishing for a mother? This happened so long ago.

Those criticizing me were not praying for themselves in such a way, which is precisely why they did not understand.  Weighing this out on the scales though, I will take it, the suffering and the criticism. If taking all that pain and releasing it means I get to live the life I dream of I will suffer it gladly.  I will take the healing of my past in the face of incarceration, even if it means being incarcerated. When I pray, I pray for whatever it takes, at any cost, in order to be healed, in order to be free.

Looking back I can see it obviously, but looking forward one can never know what will happen next.  At the very best it is a guess. It's so easy to come up with a story for why things happened. Can you imagine the chain of events that was required to get me back to this point seventeen years later?  Acquiring a mother figure, being in love with a girl, and then getting into a situation where a felony charge was being brought against me, only to be abandoned by said love and mother figure.  I hadn’t even really broken the law.  I really hadn't harmed anyone at all.  I simply stood up for myself, which was exactly what I was supposed to do.  That was what the seventeen year old me should have done.  It was all for the cause.  I went through those experiences only to be betrayed and abandoned all over again, but this time I stood up for myself. I could not have planned such a thing consciously even if I wanted to.  I could not even of imagined such a thing with so many minute details and multiple chains of events. 

The synchronicity of those events is mind boggling.  The complexity of all the individuals involved and the timing of it all is a miracle in its own right. Makes it extremely difficult to discredit some type of higher power and even more difficult to remove the idea from one’s mind that there is no such thing as good or evil. With all of that pain how can it not be seen negatively in some way?  Spiritual life is not easy.   Perhaps I will tell the story of that wanna-be mother figure later.  Now that it is all over she doesn't seem that significant any longer.  I was merely attempting to fill a hole that is not fillable by anyone but myself. If only I knew how to fill it.

True freedom requires fearlessness and a great deal of suffering. One also often finds themselves quite alone during these trials, which is exactly how it should be. Maybe it's because no one wants this to be true that they avoid it like the plague, but I assure you it is true.

I see no end in sight.