Note 4

Maybe, we're afraid we won't be like Lazarus.

***

I was either five or six when it first started happening. I’d walk with my fellow tiny humans down a winding hallway–at that age the passageways seemed much larger than they actually were, much scarier. As we got closer and closer to our destination, the computer lab, I’d feel the slightest movement in my little chest; my heart was starting to beat a bit faster. We stopped right before entering the computer lab and my heartbeat went from fast to dastardly quick. When my teacher instructed me to, I hustled to my assigned computer, took a seat in the small chair made just for tiny humans, and stared at the screen. On it, a start button waited for me to push it, so I could enter the world of NWEA testing. As I sat staring at the iridescent screen, I felt my heartbeat near the place where my skin met the outside world...and that’s how it always began.

***

Eighteen years later, I’d have to come to terms with what it actually was.

Eighteen years prior, I was merely an overachiever wrapped up in a tiny human’s body. I was just gifted or talented or whatever else can hide deep hurt. And although it’s too late to go back to that computer lab where my tears stained so many keyboards–where intense panic attacks always preceded NWEA testing–I wish I could. I’d go back and shake my mother when she came to the lab from working as a paraprofessional in Mrs. (whomever’s) classroom to calm my tears down and tell her that I needed help, that I wasn’t trying to overachieve, that something in my brain wasn’t working right. I’d tell any and everyone that something was truly wrong. But stigmas make it hard. And misinformation and ignorance–not willful, rather a lack of knowledge based on circumstance–make silence more palatable. I’d go back to those moments–yes, there were many–and tell my mom that I had test anxiety. And when she’d inevitably pray for me and tell the church and my prayer warrior grandmothers to do the same, I’d share that I didn’t merely have test anxiety. I’d say that everything around me made me anxious; that irrational fears lived inside my head; that I feared the worst when the best was right in front of me. And if I’d felt safe enough, secure enough, I’d tell her that even though my anxiety seemed to just be something attached to my tiny human nature, seemed to act autonomously, that it was actually made worse by trauma. If I’d felt safe enough, I’d have told her as soon as it happened, as soon as they hurt me. I’d have told her fifteen to eighteen years ago–I’m not exactly sure when they happened. And if we lived in a more accessible world, one not purely driven on capital and religiosity, I wouldn’t have had to.

***

After I tore my ACL in the Winter of 2012, I entered into an extreme state of depression and anxiety. I missed days of school and barely got through the days I went. I taught myself Precalculus and AP U.S. History and took the multiple jokes that kids at school made about my ambivalent attendance. The jokes didn’t hurt as much as waking up everyday to the same feelings of emptiness, did. My mom and dad tried their best to understand, but fear and anger often clouded their best efforts to help; they didn’t know what was going on and neither did I. They assumed prayer and an occasional scolding would suffice. They assumed that I didn’t want to go to school, that the work was too hard. They assumed that I was being rebellious, that I was trying to be disrespectful. Ignorance–not willful, rather a lack of knowledge based on circumstance. Those memories still sting like the remnants of a mosquito's quest for blood from my brown skin...there’s still an occasional itch left from the place where they managed to leave some unintentional scars.

In college, the anxiety and depression only got worse. Coming out and growing up will do that to you. Giving up your athletic dreams for more realistic academic pursuits will do that to you. Graduating with Highest Distinction from one of the top public universities in the country after spending five grueling years in college will do that to you. Deciding to take a break from work and school by working only ten hours a week for a major company will do that to you. Scratch that, finally having the time to sit in the severity of your trauma will do that to you. And as you sit in it, two months feels like two years. Two moons, like a life you’ve lived twice over just to resurface in an arid place called the truth. Its terrain feels a little like the scaliness of a desert or a winding rapids that pulls you downstream before placing you gently next to a waterfall. Except this waterfall doesn’t neighbor a rainbow or whatever beautiful sighting they show you on travel YouTube channels. This waterfall doesn’t simply invite you in. It says, this ride is bumpy and volatile and just may hurt you. And it asks, are you ready to go on the most difficult sojourn of your life?

No.

***

I have severe anxiety. Many people in my family also suffer from anxiety–whether they’ve been formally diagnosed or not. As a young child, I suffered unspeakable trauma. Eighteen years later, I’m just beginning to deal with both. I’ve decided to follow the waterfall, to let it take me where it pleases. I hope it’ll be gentle, but for the last two months it hasn’t. And even with the anxiety medication that has calmed my lows and extended my highs over the last month or so, the remains of a traumatized, neurotic tiny human are still firmly rooted within my being. Everyday, I try to teach the tiny human in me that she’s safe, that what happened to her should have never occurred despite what they said after they were made aware (that it was merely fear wed with ignorance–not willful, rather a lack of knowledge based on circumstance), that her feelings deserve to be felt no matter who doesn’t believe them (who questions them at every turn), that none of this is her fault.

***

Closing an ancient wound requires insurmountable pain. Peace seems unnatural when you’ve been reared in dysfunction. But before you can heal, you have to locate the areas in which you’ve been hurt–and after that, feel the severity of the pain coming from those hidden places. You have to accept death in order to grow...to heal...to live.

The comfort we feel from existing within a dysfunctional space is merely our way of never feeling the depths of our pain.

***

Maybe, we’re afraid we can’t be like Lazarus.

Peace, love, and hair grease

–Dierra