chillin’ like a villain

I can’t remember where that phrase comes from, “chillin’ like a villain.”  Is it from a song?  A book or movie?  Hmmmm.

I don’t want to jinx myself, but I think I have finally come out of one of the most intense anxiety episodes of my life.  Three weeks of a racing heart, upset stomach, muscle aches, and for the cherry topper – constant, agonizing anxiety.  Super fun.  I know the triggers – world events piling on top of each other at a rapid pace, the election and constant news and media reporting.  The speculations and conspiracy theories floating around.  The doom and gloom of many.

For you Christians out there who can’t possibly understand how another Jesus-believing person could possibly experience anxiety disorder – trust me when I tell you – it isn’t because I don’t pray.  I pray, I meditate, I listen to music, I turn the computer and television off, I sit and be still, and yet… . I don’t blame God for this, rather, I just think there’s some lesson to be learned and I’m not learning it.  That, or I need me some medication and fast.  I seriously think there’s a chemical imbalance though.  It’s like PMSing where you know it’s coming, you can feel it arrive, knocking at the door and you have absolutely no control so you open the door and let it in which goes against everything you feel in the moment.  You know you ought not be a complete bitch but you just can’t help yourself.  I’ve been there too and it’s frustrating because one side of my brain is saying, “T, you know better.  You know this isn’t Husband’s fault, just be still and don’t speak.  You’re being irrational.”  But the other side of my brain is like a ride with no one at the controls.  And that side wins.

Speaking of rides…

I went to Disneyland with my mom, aunt, and my mom’s best friend who is, for all intents and purposes, my aunt.  This same crew took me to D-land for my 30th birthday and we had a blast.  Because I was in the midst of this ridiculous anxiety episode, I wasn’t able to enjoy it in quite the same way as last time, but I was able to let go enough to enjoy myself and enjoy the company of these amazing women.  Until, well, until we were on Thunder Mountain for the 3rd (and FINAL) time that day, actually, just as night fell, and the freaking ride STOPPED at the top of a hill.

Okay, I’m going to tell this from my memory and my mom and two aunts might have a little different version from their perspectives, but here it goes.  We’re in line and we get to the end and the woman cuing up the lines asks, “How many?” and we say, “Four,” and she says, “Okay, take lanes 1 and 2.”  I was going to ride with my Aunt Marge, and we were in front of my mom and Aunt Janelle, so we take lane 1 – the very front of the ride.  I don’t like this one bit but I’m not going to be a baby about it at this stage in the game – I’ve been on the ride twice already so I know what’s coming.  Train pulls up, in we get and off we go.  But it kind of lurches a little and would slow down at the top of hills where normally we’d be flying.  And you know how when the ride takes off, you go to the right, into a dark tunnel and then it starts going up, slowly up, this HUGE hill before the ride really starts?  It’s that part of the ride that gets your insides a little mushy and it’s for dramatic effect.  Well, my aunt Janelle (where I get my smart mouth from, God love her) yells, “It’s a clanker!” because you can hear the clank, clank, clank of the wheels hitting the track as you go up this hill slowly.  And I’m like, “Shut up!” but all respectfully and stuff cuz she’s my aunt.

So up to the top of the hill we go and down like a rocket ship, but as the ride goes, it just doesn’t feel right.  We’re cresting another hill and the ride slows down and stops.  This is bad for many reasons – one, we’re up on this hill in this ride and it’s not like we can just get up and walk away to safety.  There are no paths and for another thing, we have that stupid bar holding us down into our seats.  Also, I don’t know if you’ve been to Disneyland lately, but they get people off and then loaded into those carts at record speeds and I wondered when the next train would be a’comin’ behind us and would they know we were at a complete dead stop?  Marge, who is sitting next to me looks slowly to the front of us where the beginning of the train is – you know, the little part where the driver would be sitting – and slowly turns back to us and says, “There really IS NO ONE driving this thing!”  Okay, good, I’m not the only one panicking.  It’s hard to tell if I’m over-reacting because of my condition.  Plus, as the ride stopped, I hear my mom behind me moan loudly, “Noooooooooooooo!”  Okay, three for four – how about you Janelle, you panicking?  Maybe not until this jackass a couple rows back says loudly, “You know, I thought something was wrong because when we got in this light was flashing.”  SHUT UP YOU IDIOT!  He could have said, “It’s going to be okay.  I’ve been on this ride a million times and this has happened before.  Really, don’t worry.”  You know, he could have been a gentleman and thought of someone other than himself.  But no, he had to be Mr. Know-it-all and pipe up about how freaking smart he was to notice something was wrong.  Well, then why did you get in the ride? Moron.

We hear this voice, as though from the heavens, except that it couldn’t possibly be God.  Nope, it was a young man telling us that our ride stopped (really? we hadn’t noticed!) and to keep our hands and feet inside our carts.  Uh, okay, AND???  My mom reaches towards me and asks, “Tana, are you okay?  Are you crying?”   “Not yet!”  but I’m pretty ready to completely lose my stuff.  My heart is racing and I think my head is going to explode from the pressure.  You don’t know the amount of faith it takes for me to get into these rides in the first place.  And throughout each of those rides that day I was half enjoying it and half reminding myself that it would be over in 3 minutes.  The only ride I didn’t feel that way about was the Winnie the Pooh ride, which I kind of wished had broken down because it was for three and four year olds and the colors inside that ride were amazing.  I went on that ride while the other three went on Splash Mountain – I can’t take that final drop at the end of the ride.  It was the only ride I refused to go on.  And like my mom said, I am an adult woman who can make these decisions for myself.

Click-click, the guy comes back on the speakers and he says, “PLEASE DO NOT PANIC.  Your ride will resume shortly.  Keep your hands and feet inside the cart.”  Uh, you could have told us to not panic the FIRST time you click clicked onto the speaker system.  And you mind telling me why I shouldn’t panic – that would be very helpful.  Because all I know is that when this ride does start up again, we’re going to barrel downwards and into a right turn that takes us on our sides, where if we look to our right, we can see the ground from quite a few feet up.

A few more seconds go by then he click clicks on again, and says, “Your ride will begin, pause, pause, pause, pause, NOW.”  Seriously, he paused for seconds and then as he says “now” it starts up again.  The four of us up front are not screaming anymore or waving our hands in the air or laughing.  We are gripping for dear life the handle bars in front of us, willing this stupid ride to be over.  As we pull into the “station” I watch the expectant faces of the people waiting to get on and I couldn’t help myself, I yell out, “BEWARE, BEWARE, BEWARE.”  And to drive the point home, as I’m wobbly, getting out of the ride, I say, “Get me the F out of here.”

Now we’re walking back towards Tomorrowland and I thought it was because my aunt and I needed to get some souvenirs at the Star Wars store for the kiddos in our lives.  We’re all laughing about it, still nervously, but laughing and recalling and honestly feeling better that each of us weren’t the only ones completely freaked out by it.  My aunt Janelle says to me, “Now you can tell Husband that you had a near-death experience.”  To which I respond semi-jokingly, “When you have anxiety disorder, every day is a near death experience.”

I’m watching my mother nearly sprint towards the Space Mountain entrance (seriously she could win any speed walking competition) and I look at my aunt and ask, “Where is she going?” and she says, “Oh she wants to go on Space Mountain again.”  I stop dead in my tracks.  She has got to be freaking kidding me.  I watch her and my Aunt Marge walking the line, going up the ramp and I tell my aunt, “I can’t do it.  I can’t get on that ride,” and I book it the other way, almost running for cover so that when my mom realizes I’m not in line with them, she can’t lean over the railing, find me, look me in the eyes and use her Mother Powers over me to get me to go with them.  And she would have too.

Space Mountain? Seriously?  After our Thunder Mountain debacle?  Seriously?  SM is IN THE DARK, many, many stories UP IN THE AIR, with many turns that put you ON YOUR SIDE.  I don’t think so.  I’m not going to have THAT ride stop on me and then have some pimply faced teenager tell me, over a loud speaker, to NOT PANIC. My heart hadn’t fully recovered yet from the previous ride.

I went to the Star Wars store instead and built a light saber for Conrad.  It’s totally cool – it lights up and makes noises. I kind of wanted one. I was the only adult in the “make it yourself” line without a child.  Yes, I got weird looks.  I met the three brave ladies as they were exiting the Space Mountain ride and my mom says that she wished I could have gone on that ride with them to have a good experience as my last experience.  A good experience for me at the moment was having my feet firmly planted on the ground.  Or my butt in a stationary chair.

I won’t be needing a Disneyland fix for a while now.

We are home-bound in four and a half weeks.  I am so excited to get home, back to my land, my trees, my house, the quiet, the rural-ness, the slower pace, the clean air, the 35 mph speed limits, the yarn stores, the stillness of the rain, the wintry weather, the familiar.  I cannot wait to see my friends face to face.  It’s taking a lot for me to not start packing up right now.

It’s definitely countdown time.