In the movie the Titanic usually people cry. If you don’t already know (though I’m sure you do) the ship sinks, lots of people die and it’s sad. I wasn’t allowed to watch the movie until I was 10 and with my anxiety, I probably should have waited even longer, but since my parents are completely oblivious to any of those problems, I was allowed to watch it at 10.
I sat down with a bowl of popcorn and a side of patience as I prepared to watch a movie so long that it needed 2 vhs tapes! I’m pretty sure I thought the beginning was boring. I didn’t quite understand it yet. But as the ship started to sink and my mom popped in the second tape I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat, watching the ship go down and people jump off into the frigid waters. My anxiety had me interested. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
It was terrifying, all those people dying out there with no hope of rescue. It tapped into my most basic fears, fears that unknown to my oblivious parents were ruling my life. Yet I couldn’t look away. I was engrossed in the fear. I didn’t like it and it was terrifying, but I had to learn more. That’s how my anxiety triggers work to this day. I’m terrified of them, yet beyond fascinated by them. My mind brings them up sinisterly, making me fascinated in the very things that horrify me.
As the ship went down my stomach did flip flops, but I didn’t cry. My mom was crying, tissue in hand wiping away her tears, but I knew what was coming. I had known the ship was going to sink, that’s what it was all about. Sure it was sad, but my eyes were dry.
It came though, the part I just couldn’t and to this day cannot handle. Hopeless music plays in the background as the camera shows women lying in bed with her two young children singing them to sleep. That did it for me. I started shaking, going into what I now know was a panic attack. Probably my very first one.
My mind was completely absorbed by that scene for days. I was a different child, victim of my mind. I felt like I couldn’t focus on anything else and even went through scenarios in my head in which I was trapped somewhere and my parents would want to give up. I would never give up I would tell myself, I would keep fighting.
Sure I didn’t cry when the ship was sinking when all those people were on the deck dying, but what pushed me over the edge, what make me flip was that mother. Sitting there, singing her kids a lullaby and not trying to escape.
My mom tried to explain it to me, “she didn’t want them to see the chaos” she would say, “she did the right thing”. Nothing could make me understand, and to this day I don’t get how that mother could sit there and do nothing.
And that’s part of why I’m having such a hard time right now. I’m a very action oriented person. If I was on a sinking ship even if I knew I was going to die, I would die fighting to get off it. If you’re going to die anyways, why not die trying. That’s what I’ve always said. So I’m frustrated because right now everyone is just sitting here and telling me to give Ryan time, but that’s so hard for me!
I feel like my ship is sinking and I’m just sitting here, being sung to sleep by a lullaby of hope. I’m trying desperately to soften a blow and I’m not sure when or if it will come. I’m sitting here knowing that the love of my life is thinking about it, but might decide not to come back and it’s so hard to do nothing. I lay in bed at night trying to fall asleep until I finally give into my mind, letting hope sing me to sleep.
I keep hearing songs about people saying they wish they would have made someone stay, and I feel like I’m not even trying. If this were up to me, I would be over there at his apartment trying my hardest to talk this through with him. Or I would be sitting outside his window singing songs begging him to come back.
It’s just so hard and everyone’s telling me he needs time to think. I told him to let me know if he wants to talk and to let me know when he comes to a decision and he said he would…but sitting here doing nothing…it’s not who I am.
flowerchild22 