My Important Side

I wish I could show people my most important side.  The one that rages and reacts and sweats.  Slaps herself.  The one who knows what adrenaline tastes like.  The one that no one can help.  The one that kind of doesn't want help.

I've been having panic attacks since puberty.  I don't know if I was born with a predisposition for them or if they were slapped into me by the time I was six.  Probably a combination of both because I think the slapper also had some sort of panic issue as well.  So, probably I was born this way AND got it slapped into me.  I'm that kind of lucky.

I'm not writing this to "out" anyone.  I'm writing this because I don't know who I would be without my most important side.  Some of my most lucid and true thoughts have echoed through my brain while I'm busy stuffing myself into a closet (presumably to find a womb like setting) or hiding under the covers while dry heaving.  Sometimes this is the only way I know how to find out what I'm really thinking.  Answers to questions I never learned to properly answer when I was young.  "What do you want?" and "What would make you happy?"  Questions you shouldn't feel guilty or wrong for answering.

My husband probably suffers the most from my panic attacks.  My kids - hardly at all.  I am definitely NOT slapping anything into them.   Never my babies.

My husband, though, he's not my kid.  I need him to bear witness.   This sweaty, crying mess that I become doesn't want to hide.  There is something in there and every time I withdraw when I can't be fabulous,engaging or even just calmly boring then I feel very dishonest.   I have left many a friend based on that judgement of myself until I learned that not every friendship need go that deep.   However, my marriage does or I feel that I might as well go it alone.

I just realized that this whole entry is kind of a love letter to my husband.  I don't need to show my most important side to everyone.  But I need to share it with him.  I trust him to listen to the answers only crying under a kitchen table - or, lately (and more gently), sweating into a terry cloth yoga mat - will get me.  It's my kind of normal.  This life that we have built is what makes me happy even if sometimes I don't know it.