But I think I found the beauty.
I have always loved this painting by Edward Munch, and I wonder if he didn't also suffer with panic attacks, because this image so wonderfully captures the surreal nature of panic attacks. . . .but this painting isn't the beauty I'm talking about :)
I have posted previously about how I've been processing through this book on archetypal psychology, and how I've been studying one archetype a month. Well, this month's archetype is The Destroyer, and I swear. . . .when truth makes itself known, it can hit you like a ton of bricks. So last night, as I started to read about this archetype, I had to stop reading (literally) and walk around the room for a while, just to catch my breath.
The opening paragraph made reference to how we humans have so many different ways that we anesthetize ourselves to our experience. . . .like drugs, alcohol, food, shopping, and televison. . . .this list could have gone on and on. . . .but it was in the very next breath of the paragraph that the bricks began to fly. . .because the introduction goes on to say that "it often takes fear to wake us up."
It often takes fear to wake us up!
Before my panic attacks began, I was intrepid. A free-spirited, sort of a quirky person, not really caring very much about what other people thought of me, at least not enough to stop me from doing things that (quite honestly) I was poked fun of a lot while growing up. But when I started to have the panic attacks, thus began the slow erosion of everything that made me who I was. . . .to the diametric extreme of now being nearly fifty years old and not even recognizing the person I have become, so fearful and anxious about everything in my world have I become. . . .still struggling to make sense of how I came to be this anxious, panicky, fearful person in the first place.
But, it often takes fear to wake us up.
Twenty seven years ago, on the night of my twenty second birthday, I had my very first in a very long line of panic attacks after having a lovely steak dinner in the prime of my youth while I was living the dream of my free-spirited independent life. But I never made the connection between the panic attacks and what had happened just a few short weeks before. . . .so I've suffered, in isolation and deep personal confusion, for these past twenty seven years because I've never been able to understood the why of the panic attacks--and without the why, the source of the wound is never really healed. . . .only surface treated for signs and symptoms that never really go away. . . .signs and symptoms that only tuck themselves back behind the curtains of denial and self-delusion.
But last night, to read this simple handful of words, I finally saw the beauty in the panic, because if it often takes fear to wake us up, then the panic attacks weren't just random acts of biochemical violence, they were purposeful. . . .and intentional. . . .and filled with such beautiful spiritual depth and design that it was like falling in love with someone I have spent my whole life hating, but could no longer deny was my soul mate. . . and thus began the embracement of beauty within the most heinous of my personal truths. . . .
. . . .because it often takes fear to wake us up.
I find it more than even a little bit ironic that the panic attacks evolved into this chronic deprivation of sleep, because it all makes perfect sense, now. If the panic attacks themselves weren't enough to wake me up, then I wasn't going to be allowed to sleep, either. It's just all so beautifully clear! Even how the nightmares began with that powerful dream of finding myself in the clearing in the forest, with the four men in suits emerging out of the forest, knowing that I was about to die. . . .and calling out the name of a great spirit in heaven as a desperate cry for help before. . . .it's just all so perfectly clear, and absolutely beautiful in its perfection and design. I mean, how many times have I been awakened out of a sound sleep in a full on panic attack?
It really does take fear to wake us up.
So last night I found the beauty in the panic attacks, because they have been trying to wake me up for twenty seven years from the depth of a denial that has anesthetized me from an experience that I simply could not integrate into the story of my life. . . not on any level. And they've also been trying to wake me up from the lies I had to tell myself in order to continue walking with what was happening. . . .until, that is, until I could get to the other side.
Well, I'm on the other side, now. . . .on the other side and no longer lost within the denial. . . .on the other side and able to finally see these panic attacks for the truth of what they are. . . .for their beautiful purpose. . . .for their beautiful intention. . . for their beautiful function in my life. No longer are they the enemy. . . .that internal predator stalking me from within. . . .for they are the inner hero that has been fighting for twenty seven years to wake. . . .me. . . .up!
Yes, I think I really have found the beauty within the panic. . . .