No Voice

One of my scariest nightmares when I was growing up involved me being unable to scream or move. I must have been seven or eight years old. I still sported the bowl cut that my mother was so fond of and which gave me so much grief when I was sporting it.

 I was at some sporting event. Alone. And some bad man was trying to kidnap me. I was in the part of the stadium where one can buy drinks and snacks for the game. There was plenty of people walking around me as I stood in, what seems to me, the cavernous space. All I could see was the evil man and I knew that I could not stop him. My heart was racing in a clear sign of the fight or flight response. I tried to move, but it was as if my feet were glued to the concrete floor. I tried screaming hoping that someone would hear me and stop to save me. I jerked awake. I don't know how the story ends. I do know that I was always afraid of being ripped away from my parents and carried away into the unknown by some stranger as exemplified in this dream that I can still vividly picture.

Recently, though, I know that I hate the idea of not being heard and think that the dream also may have been my subconscious trying to clue me into that fact.

These days I don't have nightmares of this caliber anymore. But, I do know that it is frustrating to not be able to voice a fear or anything that emits stress in one's life or when someone does want to help you but can't seem to grasp the situation from your point of view. When they perceive a problem that doesn't bother you it almost makes the situation worse because it is almost like they don't take heed of what your saying because it lacks import. Disconnect in conversation can really mess up the perspectives of both interlocutors and  nullify anything said in the conversation, making it pointless. I need to just keep reminding myself that I do have a voice I just need to know how to use it so that someone will listen.

Catharsis

I feel lost.

I started watching Friday Night Lights, the series not the movie, on netflix tonight. As I sat not really paying attention to the background noise while I surfed the internet the thought occurred to me that from a young age I strived for things that no longer matter. I guess they never did. Winning in sports, accomplishing different art projects or overcoming a difficult piece of music on an instrument. I put so much importance on being what I considered to be "perfect." It is funny because a lot of what influenced me was a school friend of mine who was always one step ahead. Life goes on and she is still in front of me and I seem to be slipping farther and farther behind. I'm just another run of the mill college graduate, with mediocre grades, listing on the sea of life without navigational charts to help plot a course. Hopefully, I won't run into Charybdis or Scylla in the disorienting storm in which I find myself.

All of my friends from high school and from college are doing interesting things now.  Many of them are doing said things because they don't have any other options or because of pure luck and are still haunted in the quiet hours of the evening with fears of imminent failure and the certainty that they will have to make another life changing decision in the near future, but I digress. They are doing important things. Things that I wish I could be doing. And yet pulling the trigger seems so difficult for me. Committing is terrifying.

I have lived my life in fear. It stops me in my tracts and, like the still vivid nightmares of my childhood, danger comes rushing towards me and I can't get out of the way and I can't even yell for help. I am helplessly stranded. I guess it can be classified as the fear of the unknown probably mixed with the fear that I won't be able to cope.

True, the concentration of my fear has changed over the years. When I was little it was the fear of being kidnapped or being attacked in my home. I no longer need to turn off the lights at night and army crawl across the floor of my parent's kitchen to get to my room in such a way that a passerby will not detect my movements. Now the fear is almost more stupefying.

It no longer evokes a physical reaction except for the rapid heartbeat and a feeling of slight constriction in my chest more akin to worry than to the fight or flight response of old. Now it comes to me in the silent hours of the night when all are asleep except the foxes that patrol the neighborhood, the friendly hoot owls standing sentinel over their domains and possibly the rats that have taken up residence in the lush countryside of Ranch Acres.

I haven't achieved anything. I am not helping people. I made a promise to myself during my first bout of depression that I would have a job where I could make people smile, whether that be as a talented performer (I think that most people would rather choke than watch me perform at this point), or as a physician or something completely different, I was going to do my part to not let someone experience the void with which depression enveloped me and finally settled into the pit of my stomach making me breath out vapors of despair. That was incredibly indulgent, but, I'm running with it. So keep up.

 I am a hostess. Hardly doing anything worthwhile except as a place holder. People don't come in the restaurant and smile when they see me. More likely, they come in and are unhappy that their table isn't ready or because someone messed up their reservation. I spend my working nights kowtowing to the snobby elite of Tulsa County trying to inflate their egos to maximum capacity. Not too gratifying of a job. However, occasionally, perfectly wonderful people come into the restaurant and are cheerful and patient and I want to help them have a good experience, but they generally come in smiling. No need of me at all.

Now is the time for me to search out new opportunities that may help me in my plight to find something that I think is meaningful, in reality finding the best way for Whitney to make people smile. However, I seem to differ on how to go about this from my closest advisors, ie my parents. I still think traveling and gaining life experience will make me a better person. They caution that it might just make me an undesirable hire in the long run--a privileged rich kid that has gotten too much from mom and dad. Well, let's face it. I am extremely privileged. Not as much as many of my classmates both from high school and college. But, they do help me by providing my basic necessities and more as I bum around town slowly losing my way and even losing my will to experiment with new circumstances that may open up new venues for me. I guess I just want permission from them to take the long way in finding my place in society. I want time. For now I will just chomp at the bit without knowing where I am going or how exactly I will get there. I just wish that feelings of hopelessness wouldn't steal upon me in the middle of the night when  I don't even want to disturb the nocturnal creatures outside on their individual missions of survival. I want to be a child of the wild blue yonder floating about in an ethereal haze until reality settles on me in an exceedingly positive light. Unfortunately, reality seems to be a bit more heavy handed.


Thank you. That was cathartic.