Six hundred and twenty one degrees. The heat singes your eyelashes as you pump air into the charcoal, long past red and glowing yellow with tinges of white. You don’t have a thermometer, nor do you need one. When the solid chunks begin to soften, you are in the hundreds. When they droop, you’re close, and you pump faster and more furiously. Since you are just a kid, and this is your backyard, you’ve got no money or real equipment. You have to be one with the flame to produce and sustain a fire that hot. You feel the heat through the gloves. The white-hot fuel radiates a fury you’ve never seen before.
And then there is a voice. Take off the gloves. Reach in and pick up one of the coals. Grasp a glowing glob, let your fingers completely enclose it within your palm. Lift up the fire and show a stunned world.
But you freeze. Because while you are insane, you are not stupid, and that fire is the hottest damn thing you have ever seen. Standing close is crazy enough, but reaching in would permanently disfigure.
Go ahead, it won’t hurt. Just close your eyes. Reach in and gather the blazing material with your bare skin.
Are you out of your goddamn mind? No one can survive that.
There. There’s the caldron of molten lead. Pick it up. Your hand moves, then freezes, then moves then freezes as the voices fight for control.
And this is what it is like to be insane. It’s not really insanity. The DSM defines it as a mental disorder. Whatever the name, it leaves you not knowing what is real and what is not.
There are those whose demons tell them that hot objects are cool. They are schizophrenic.
Then there are demons tell you that cool objects are hot. The fire was decades ago; the embers long dead. But the demons never forget. They warn you of dangers where none lay. The adrenalin is real. As is the panic. But the fire only exists within your mind, hidden from society, cloaked from those who wonder why you tarry.
There are those whose glory is witnessed by the world. Televisions capture moments of triumph. But sometimes bravery is found in picking up cool pans while your mind scream from the anticipated pain. But words are meaningless to those who do not see the flames.
It is a journey. Some days are easy. Some days, like yesterday, are not.
Today is better. The snow is melting, and spring will come. The sunlight will last a little longer each day. The birds will sing and one does find hope.
Thank you for describing this so perfectly. We must remember to acknowledge our own silent, hidden bravery at times like these, and know that there are others who understand the strength it takes to conquer that terror. I’m rooting for you.
Thanks for allowing us a look into (I presume) your mind. I heard a similar sentiment expressed once, I think by C.S. Lewis: someone who is phobic of cats, but steels themself to walk past a house cat to assist a crying child is displaying every bit as much courage as one who braves bullets to do the same.
It’s a very strange feeling to know one thing logically, but have your mind absolutely insist on the opposite. Not fun to deal with.
You see, this is what I did not know. For the mind cannot be wrong, can can’t it? If you feel danger, then there is a reason, right? You are in danger. Your heart’s pounding, your vision narrows, and your body tenses in preparation to fight or flight. Your chest muscles tighten, fists form. There is a danger here. This is danger. There must be, or why are your senses screaming for attention?
“I think, therefore I am.” Who am I, but my mind? We first learn to sit, then crawl, then walk. Yet without words, your mind records, minute by minute, second by second what is safe, what is fun and what is bad. And what is really bad. But what you cannot understand is that you are wrong and your mind is lying to you. It’s not really it’s fault. The human psychic developed to withstand a certain amount of stress, and in some situations, the defenses are overwhelmed and you go crazy. Not “crazy” crazy, although that happens to some, but sort of crazy. Hypervigilant, your mind sees danger in the wind.
Around eight to 12 months of age, when an infant is suddenly dropped, or tilted sharply to the floor, she will instinctively spread her arms and legs in preparation for a landing. Called the parachute reaction, the young developing mind of a baby understands the loss of support and instinctively prepares for landing. When fathers toss toddlers up in the air, the young child learns to associate the loss of gravity with fun. Some people grow up to enjoy that sensation, and others will not ride on a roller coaster if their live depends on it.
The same physical sensation causes various emotional reactions which lead to different actions. And for some, there is a short circuit and too many sensations produce real reactions of danger.
Fortunately, this is much better understood now, and there are treatments which help. At the same time, the best treatments in the world can only supplement the willingness to learn to trust – or to fake a trust in – logic and reason over the very, very real knowledge based on your very existence and formed in the most primitive, reptilian part of your mind. To walk through real sheets of fire and face down menacing men with knives. To reach into flames and pick up white hot coals.
But there are few heroes, and the process is sloppy. Progress happens and unhappens. A step forward and two back. At least now I know that I don’t know. That the only world I ever knew was an illusion, and that reality lies elsewhere.
And I take some small comfort that the cycle of abuse is as dead as that bastard who terrorized those he was charged to protect. If I can do anything, be it that the next generation will not know such evil.
I remember another thing you wrote once before, about your son’s heart. So different. It seems like in a way, one path lead to you to another, different path?
In both cases, you convey so much with your words. Thank you for sharing.
I totally get this battle. I have panic disorder, which arose four years ago. It’s truly a terrifying affliction and I know I’ve written about it elsewhere on the SDMB not too long ago. My body is telling me I’m in danger: as with you, my heart pounds and races and flutters; adrenaline buzzes throughout my arms and legs, and really my whole body is vibrating like there’s an electric current going through me. My hands and jaw are numb and tingly. I imagine it’s exactly as I’d feel if I were standing in the middle of a highway with cars speeding toward me, or if I were being pushed off the edge of a cliff or held at gunpoint.
I want to run somewhere to escape but there’s nowhere to run to, so instead I lie in bed, rigid as a fireplace poker, feeling as if a single touch will shatter me like the most fragile piece of glass. I breathe deeply. I take my Xanax like a good girl and hope that eventually this will go away. I listen to my heart beating in my ears (thanks to tinnitus I’m always aware of my heart because the noises in my ears pulse with each heart beat) and watch mesmerized by the second-hand of my clock, counting the beats to see how fast my heart is racing. 80 bpm. 95bpm. 100 bpm. 120 bpm. Call 911, this is it, this is the big one, Elizabeth! as Fred Sanford would say..
But a good portion of my mind is at war with those instincts. You’ve had these exact symptoms dozens of times before, I try to tell myself, though I still desperately wonder if *this *episode is the one that’s the real heart attack or stroke or anyeurism or whatever hell thing is happening to me. So do I get in a cab to go to a hospital this time? Do I even have time for that, should I call 911? I remind myself that I’ve made the ER trek five times before (January was the first time I actually called 911) and wasted the EMTs’ time and doctors’ and nurses’ too. They’ll run an EKG and test my blood pressure, both of which will of course be high but otherwise show nothing, and they’ll draw blood and give me oxygen (which I admit I’ve grown to love–pure oxygen is awesome) and after about seven hours of listening to other people who are seriously ill hack up lungs or moan in pain, I’ll get the all-clear sign, an Ativan or Valium prescription, and a taxi ride home full of both relief and embarrassment. I’ve had a cardiologist check me out, I’ve done stress tests and sonograms and EKGs and my heart’s fine. But when the panic starts, I don’t care about that. Each time the terror is just as real as if it had never happened before.
Just tonight I had another episode. Doing nothing, but my heart suddenly started racing to 100bpm and I felt my face and hands burning. Lasted for about two hours. (Those guides that claim panic attacks last 10 minutes can go straight to hell. Ten minutes?! God, that would be heaven.) I start in with my usual attempts at being rational, though now I have to contend with the alternate voice: Andrew Breitbart, Davy Jones, both just died, both seemed to have been in better shape than me. This is it, go to the hospital, my heart’s going to explode! Two hours of breathing and my Xanax/Klonopin/Elavil cocktail and watching old episodes of Upstairs Downstairs to distract me, and my heart’s back down to a more dealable 92… still higher than normal but the difference between 92 and 100 is very noticeable.
The worst thing is the unpredictability of it all. These attacks come out of nowhere. There’s usually no reason for them. So now I’m living a life of dread, waiting for the next one. I avoid everything. Exercise scares me because the rising heart rate makes me think of my panic attacks. (Very self-defeating since exercise and being in better shape would probably make me feel less vulnerable.)
My sister is sometimes over when these attacks occur. We’re watching TV when she might notice I’m closing my eyes and breathing deeply. “You okay?” she’ll ask, and I’ll at first tell her a terse “I’m fine,” because I don’t want to acknowledge what’s going on, I just want a normal night. Soon I’m asking her to leave because I just want to lie down and be alone. She tries to hug me but I shake her off because I feel claustrophobic and I feel as if even being touched will hurt me. She keeps asking me why I’m scared and I can’t explain. There is no explanation. I want to yell, I’m fucking going crazy, that’s the explanation. People still think it’s just a matter of will power. They don’t know. They don’t know.
I have a clean bill of health from my cardiologist yet I still walk around with a bottle of aspirin in my pocketbook, because it comforts me. Of course, I also keep a bottle of Xanax in there too. Only taken as needed – as in, when I’m actually starting an attack (not just when I’m a little anxious) – but God, it’s good to know it’s there. I don’t think I’d feel able to leave my apartment if I didn’t have some safety net like that. I know how bizarre that sounds, having medications I don’t even use regularly as some kind of totem I carry along wtih me. But my life has turned bizarre over the past four years.
And that’s the thing. I’ve suffered with depression all my life, but never felt insane. This is different. My mind and body are shouting disparate messages at me and I don’t know which ones to listen to. Never before have I been so understanding of why people would want to kill themselves. I wouldn’t do it purposely, but I can all-too-easily picture feeling a panic attack coming on and me looking at my Klonopin and Xanax meds and downing far too many just to stop the agony. To find some rest.
Frankly I’d be delighted just to have depression again. Those were the good old days.
As bad as this is, I know that panic disorder is still a walk through the park compared to schizophrenia. I have two cousins with paranoid schizophrenia (mental illness gallops through my family, alas) and though as they’ve hit their fifties they seem to be finding more relief, their lives have been fraught with suicide attempts and terrifying (and threatening) behavior and exile and homelessness and even jail time.
Thanks for the OP, TokyoPlayer. It was brave of you to post all that.