Instead, I rolled down the windows and let the cool air blow through me.

On making the tea anyway.

Since I've been old enough to remember, being alive didn't feel safe. I wonder if my mother, who was forced to give up her first baby, passed her fear and anxiety on to me in the womb. 

It is my learned understanding of the world that things can go incredibly wrong without my seeing it coming. People can get violent or cruel or terrifying or all of the above. The way I learned to manage this chaos and unpredictability, this volatility of other humans, was to be ever more aware of my surroundings, of the people around me, their moods, their likes, their dislikes. I became an expert at hiding, at watching, at anticipating. 

I became an expert at knowing that I didn't know when or where something bad was going to happen, or even what it would be, but that it would happen, later today, tomorrow, the next day. Every day was a new expanse of terrifying unknowability. A constant tensing of the body, ready for the blow, ready to retreat, ready to protect the vital organs in an attempt to survive.

As an adult, with an understanding of why I feel about the world the way I do, it's a choice I make, every day, to get out of bed, to make the tea, to sit and be awake and aware that another day is going to happen and that there will be things in that day for which I cannot be prepared. This leaves me feeling off kilter, like most days are a slow climb uphill. It's in the late afternoon that I begin to relax, when business shuts down, when it's less likely that someone will call or text or email with something I didn't expect, only then do I let down my guard a little. 

This is the work of the hypervigilant and I am currently seeking new employment.

At the end of January, I was in a small car accident. I was physically uninjured, but emotionally and mentally I have been feeling the impact ever since. 

The day after the accident, as I talked to the insurance adjusters - both mine and those of the other driver's insurance company – I felt more and more unhinged, more terrified, more sure that I wasn't being heard right, that I wasn't explaining myself well, that they were going to think it was my fault. I was overcome with not knowing what I was supposed to do in this situation. 

Three days later, I was driving down the coast of California, from Half Moon Bay south, south, south. This drive, this coast, is where I find my peace, where I come back, fully, to myself. As I drove, my husband called and as he asked about my conversation with the insurance people, I started to cry. And the more he tried to calm me down, the more I panicked. He kept saying soothing things and I was drowning. 

I pulled off the highway, parked on the curb. There was a woman gardening across the street in her front yard. The sky was the bright white-blue of a sunny day by the ocean. And I was screaming, my lungs burning, my throat aching, yelling to my husband that, "I didn't fucking know. I didn't know what to do, I didn't know what to say and I said the wrong thing and they think it's my fault and I didn't fucking know I didn't fucking know I didn't fucking know." Snot running down my face, hammering the steering wheel with my palms. I wanted to grab that wheel and yank it off the column, I wanted to drive into the ocean, I wanted someone to pierce my heart and end this flood of rage and helpless terror. 

Instead, I put the car in drive and rolled down the street so the lady wouldn't call the police. Instead, I rolled down the windows and let the cool air blow through me. Instead, I drove to the sand and put my feet in the water, an act of absolution. Instead, I cursed my father for teaching me to be afraid. Instead, I drove down the coast and watched the road and the cliffs and the ocean. Instead, I ate my sandwich. 

I have come to understand that the accident was my way into decades of helpless rage and self-violence in the name of protection. These past months I've spent hours that have added up to days, unpacking my dependence on being vigilant, on being aware. On being wary and afraid of believing there is more good than bad. Days spent coming to the understanding that I cannot any longer survive by being this way. That I must forge a different path in my heart and my brain to walking in this world.  

Yesterday morning, I overheard my husband talking to the insurance company. The accident is being recorded as my fault. The other driver is now saying he was injured and seeking compensation. I am back to that moment in the car, terrified I've ruined our lives, in a very real and not hyperbolic sense. That we will be plunged into debt from which we will never recover, that I have done the worst thing possible – I have let us both down, because I didn't know. 

This is the thing I live with, this inability to separate true calamity from normal shitty things that happen in a life. The inability to see that I cannot prevent everything, that by being vigilant, I cannot control everything. That everything is not my fault.

I sat in the bathroom this morning, huddled on the floor in the corner where the counter meets the wall. Not able to do all or any of the things. Not willing to face another day where the email, the text, the phone call could be someone ending my life as I know it. My sweet husband squatted in front of me, trying to talk me back to neutral. Then he left to make me tea and once I was alone with myself, in that dark space of not being able to go forward one more step, I could feel the little girl me, so scared, so alone. I let her wail and scream and be afraid and then I comforted her and told her how brave she was, how brave she'd always been, and that she didn't so much need to be brave anymore, as she needed to rest. To put down her fists and her terror and just rest.

That wounded child in us is trying to tell us something, always, and I have found great power and release in just listening, in comforting, in allowing her to be heard and seen fully by me, in being allowed to be a part of me that isn't necessarily going to be fixed or healed or integrated, because she doesn't need that. 

What she needs, and therefore what I need, is to see all these parts of me, to allow them to be, fully. 

What we all really need is to be with ourselves in the mess, the grief, the rage. This is the healing we're searching for. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to fix or change, just the sacred moment of nurturing and mothering the pieces of ourselves that need it, so that we can get up, drink the tea, open the email, watch the cardinal land on the feeder, and know that another day can pass, the wildflowers can grow, the birds can eat seeds, the email can bring good or bad news and we will be okay.

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