You in Danger, Girl
I know I say this a lot, but this post was especially difficult to put together. I had to confront some tough stuff... and for that reason I think it may be difficult to read. I hope you'll stick with it.
I've been debating whether or not to write about what happened in Brussels for a while because speaking from personal experience, I find it REALLY irritating when someone links themselves to a tragedy they did not endure firsthand. The fact is I wasn't in Brussels. I have no idea what those poor people went through, how they felt in those moments, or how they must be feeling now. I want to make it very clear that I don't claim to. Instead I want to talk about what goes on in my brain when something horrible like that happens, how it impacts my thoughts and my behavior. I want to preface the next few paragraphs by telling you that I know this kind of thinking is not rational or productive, but it's my reality... so GET ON BOARD.
In order to understand where I'm coming from, you need to know that a little over 5 years ago a gas line in my neighborhood exploded; my house started to erupt with my family still in it, and we literally ran for our lives. I realize that last sentence reads a little crudely, but without getting into the gory details, that's what happened. When so much you love is destroyed and death seems imminent (even if just for a few minutes), something happens to your brain. I call it my "Final Destination Complex," but it's actually PTSD. I wish I had the poetry of language to describe it in a better way, but essentially I walk around with a sense of impending doom lurking in the back of my mind. Sometimes it looms large, sometimes it's barely noticeable... but it's there. I've written quite a bit about my internal monologue and while I wish very much that the natural voice inside my head was Tim Roth telling me to "be cool, Honey Bunny" or a young Vince Vaughn saying I'm "SO money, and I don't even know it" ... it's not. Those are places I force my mind to go so that I can calm down. No, no, my inner monologue can be most likened to Whoopi Goldberg as Oda Mae Brown in the movie Ghost. She says "Colleen, you in danger, girl," and she says it all the f***in time.
If you know me personally, you know that this doesn't keep me from leaving the house or from seeing my friends, but it does keep me from things. Like have you invited me to do a winter sport in the last 5 years? I can guarantee I didn't go. This is because I tried skiing once in high school. It went horribly, and now I'm convinced that if I hit the slopes again I will be tempting fate; I’ll end up like Sonny Bono. That sounds dark. Let’s take it a step further. If I'm listening to music on an airplane and we experience violent turbulence, I will switch the song to make sure I’m pleased with what’s playing. I do this because I’m positive I am about to die, and I refuse to go down in flames with Toto’s “Hold The Line” being piped into my ears. (I deserve a much more poetic end than that… like a Peter Gabriel song or something.) And finally... When that New Yorker article about the Cascadia subduction zone and the “earthquake [that] will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest” was all over social media, I couldn’t fall asleep for weeks... literal WEEKS. I would just lay in bed, shed a few tears, and wait for it. I think for a lot of people, damage and devastation of that magnitude can be very abstract. It’s difficult to picture what that kind of destruction would even look like. But it doesn’t take much for me to conjure up images of broken streets, twisted homes, people screaming and crying. I have that shit ready to go; it’s coming up hot and fresh straight from my memory bank.
Staggeringly accurate photo of the inside of my brain.
As you can imagine, this makes living in the moment nearly impossible. I would be a f***ing terrible buddhist. I’m always planning my next move, worrying about whatever is hurling towards me, and attempting to mitigate any and all risk. I do this even when I’m looking forward to something. Here's a recent example: almost the entire time I’ve been in Europe, I’ve been planning a trip to Los Angeles. My friend Erin and I have grand plans to reunite on the dance floor at a Prince & Michael Jackson inspired evening. I’ve been a woman possessed. I’ve been dreaming up outfits, style-stalking the LA based women I admire most, and wondering if there’s a world where I can pull off a red moto jacket and a single white glove. I’ve been all over Instagram - mapping out restaurants, coffee shops, concept stores, and I've been keeping an exhaustive list of the things I want to do while I’m there: breakfast at Winsome, see a UCB show, Infinity Room at the Broad, lunch at Terrine, find Ben Schwartz, seduce Ben Schwartz, marry Ben Schwartz... The list goes on. You get it. I’m a planner with a thing for Jean Ralphio. Whatever.
Here’s the thing: looking ahead is all well and good, but I’m in EUROPE. I’m living something I planned right now. I’m in it. I know that I'm always ten steps ahead of myself and worrying about what's next, so I’ve made a conscious effort to be present and appreciative of this experience I created. It’s consistently been a bit of a challenge for me, but in the few weeks following the events in Brussels, it became nearly impossible.
. . .
As Alli and I stood in the lobby of our Amsterdam Hotel waiting for a taxi, I watched the TV screens next to the front desk. It was CNN and they were continuing their coverage of the bombings. Two suspects were still at large. TERRIFIC. Our cab arrived and we made our way to the train station. I think I kept it together on the surface (Alli, you can correct me if I'm wrong), but internally I was a wreck. Every wild-haired old man on the platform wearing a lumpy sweatshirt suddenly looked like the unabomber.
We boarded our train and I tried to calm myself. We were in 1st class and the attendants were handing out free desserts. I settled down and tried to read my book, Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl.” (It's the clear choice for someone attempting to relieve anxiety and self-soothe.) After about an hour, the train came to a stop at a small station just outside of the Netherlands. The conductor made an announcement in Dutch, German, and English. Something Alli and I both noticed about these announcements is that the English version is always noticeably shorter than the other languages. The English message over the intercom was quick and concise.
“There is difficulty in cars 11 and 12. The guests in these cars will evacuate and move to cars 4 and 10. Thank you.”
That same message in Dutch and German went on for at least an additional 30 seconds. Now I don’t understand either of these languages at all, but I imagine the Dutch and German messages went something like this:
“There is difficulty in cars 11 and 12… we’re not going to tell you what it is, but everyone will be evacuating and moving to cars 4 and 10. We’re going to sit at this tiny station for the next 45 minutes with no further explanation... But please know that the train attendants will be running frantically from car to car, and the police will be present. We're signing off now... maybe for FOREVER. Thank you and buh-bye.”
You in danger, girl. I had a panic attack. My heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest and I couldn't breathe. I wanted to lean over to Alli and say “ya know what? F*** this noise. I’m going home. I don’t want to die today.” Obviously that’s absurd, and there was no reason to be terrified. If it had been a legitimate emergency, I’m positive the situation would have been handled much differently. Looking back, I’m sure the real issue was something gross like the septic tank used by cars 11 and 12 malfunctioned. When I get far enough away from incidents like this one, I’m able to tell myself these things and calm down a little bit. But in the moment, when I'm in such an escalated mental state, it is SO difficult for me to bring myself back down to earth. I can't fully relax... and most of the time, I have no intention of doing so because being at peace kind of freaks me out.
. . .
I have a very clear memory from the day of the explosion. I was in the living room with my sister. We had just cleaned the whole house. I was sitting in our blue and white striped chair, and my cat Tony was asleep in my lap; we were putting on a movie so we could wind down a little bit before starting dinner. I remember being so content and relaxed. My sister and I had had such a good day together. I was really HAPPY and I remember being very aware of how good it felt. A few hours later everything was gone. The living room, the striped chair, my sweet Tony-No-Bologna… it was all ash. To be totally candid, I think those two moments in time are so intrinsically linked in my mind that I’m afraid to take a deep breath, relax, and let myself be completely at peace. I associate contentment with devastation; in my mind, one comes right before the other. If I am totally happy and at ease, it’s a sign that the other shoe is about to drop; everything is about to go horribly wrong.
F***... that's actually really brutal to see in writing.
This can make it super challenging for me to go out, embrace the day, and enjoy life when sitting in my apartment with a cup of tea and some Netflix doing NOTHING seems like the safest option, the option least likely to tempt fate. But here’s the thing - personal experience has taught me that staying home, putting on your pajamas and watching a Brad Pitt movie doesn’t necessarily make you safe. Suddenly, purple sweats will be the only pants you own, “Meet Joe Black” will be the last thing you watched (I wish that was a joke SO badly), and that will be all you have to show for your day. I know deep down that there is nothing to be gained from sitting at home in hiding, and that if something terrible happens, it’ll be much more satisfying to know that I was out bettering myself, feeding my soul, and wearing real pants... But it can be hard to keep that thought at the top of my mind when things like terrorist attacks are happening in the country next door. It makes the world seem so scary and it makes my fears seem rational.
. . .
I wish I had a way to tie up this post in a neat little bow and tell you that I've learned a lesson and I'm good now. I'm living in the moment and I'm a CHILL girl who can totally hang with winter sports... but that wouldn't be true. It's certainly who I aspire to be, and it's one the reasons this trip has been so important to me. After the fire, so many people said "well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger!" I wish that phrase rang true for me, I truly do. I wish a brush with death made me feel INVINCIBLE, but it doesn't. When my mind says "you in danger, girl," of course my automatic response isn't "well, fire couldn't defeat me and neither will THIS," because that's not how that moment in time played out. It's the most vulnerable I've ever been and I just happened to live to tell the tale.
This trip is totally different. This trip has become my way of showing myself that I can handle what life throws at me. I'm reminding myself that I can take risks and survive (and dare I say... thrive?). It's a conscious effort to put myself out there, to be vulnerable and see what happens. It's on my terms, and I'm hoping that next time my brain says "this is different, and it's scary, and you'll probably die," I'll be able to say "I went to Europe for 3 months by myself and I was fine. Calm the f*** down." This experience gives me the chance to create a personal best, a marker to show myself what I'm capable of. Is it skiing with friends or listening to a lesser known Toto hit during a bumpy airplane ride? No... but I'm sure I'll get there.