Page 1 of Alarm Fatigue

Chapter 1

As the bell above the door startles me back to the cafe, I look up to see a young woman wrestling a stroller across the threshold. She is not the person I am looking for. Straightening up in my chair, I settle back into my own thoughts and continue to wait.

The truth is, I do not want to be here. I can hear the clock over the cashier’s head ticking the seconds away as I become increasingly restless. Was that clock always this loud? I have been to this cafe before, but somehow I have never noticed the audible clock of doom. This continued waiting has me pressed to the limits of my patience. I did promise my daughters and Amalie, my best and most persistent friend, that I would at least try going on a few dates. Three dates, to be precise. In actuality, I had to promise I would go because I really had no choice; they ganged up on me, in a well-meaning sort of way. They say that they are trying to pull me back into ‘life and living,’ at least that is how they had phrased it. For my part, I feel quite strongly that getting out of my home and participating in so-called life, for that, read dating, is highly overrated. The truth is that all I desire in this life is to hide out in my work or with my family, and otherwise shelter in place at home.

The reason why I often choose to hide myself away is because, to put it plainly, the first part of my life was horrible. I survived, obviously, but only in a manner of speaking. The experiences of my formative years have left me emotionally scarred and socially awkward. During most social situations I vacillate between total brain freezing with nothing to contribute, or talking too much with a sprinkling of a tendency to say the most inappropriate or irrelevant facts that pop into to my mind.

What I have come to understand about traumatic experiences is that they are subjective. Setting aside my less-than-stellar-childhood, there were more recent events that drove me back into a more introverted sort of life. Not for the first time I wish my family, and my friend, really understood how important it is to me that I feel comfortable in my life as I designed it. From my perspective, the ability for me to feel safe is paramount, and getting out there and dating is the absolute last priority on my bucket list. Well, if I had a bucket list, it probably would not even be on it.

I suppose the more recent events I am referring to are actually not even that recent anymore. It has now been nine years since my husband, my beloved Eli, died unexpectedly. And it has been many more years since I escaped my childhood home. I suppose many people would think that at this point, I should be over it and have moved on already. The thing is, I know that as a survivor the biggest risk to me is not that I will be haunted by trauma for the rest of my days. A person could get used to that. Or at least this person could. The bigger danger, in my experience, is to operate from a sense of denial.

What harmed me the most, when trying to move on from all of this stuff, was denying that anything impactful has ever happened to me. I do not mean pretending that I am a completely different person who did not live through the events of my own life. I mean trying to get by in life as if those events do not have any effect on the person I am today. I have tried to be that person before, and it ate my soul from the inside. Because the truth is, trauma is embedded into me just as my subcutaneous tissues and skeletal structures are.

Today, I do not attempt to bury monsters under the subconscious of my mind. I fully acknowledge the traumas I have endured. Of course, just recognizing these happenings are real is not enough—it’s only the first of many steps. The next easy trap that I had deluded myself into, regarding the past, was believing that merely acknowledging these fact of my life would be enough of an effort to heal and change myself. I realize now that for many years, this was the most I could accomplish, and it was enough, for a time. I would have been willing to settle there for a lifetime, just being easily triggered all the time, however my friend and my daughters want more for me. They want to see me embrace a life outside of my head, my work, and my immediate family. Meanwhile, I have cultivated a different tactic and I have excelled at it, building a bubble around myself, full of comfortable lounge wear and no surprises. My daughters and my friend have examined what I have built and decided it is not good enough anymore.

Sighing as I catch myself shredding my paper napkin into confetti and then collecting the pieces to dispose of the evidence of my anxiety, I think about how each person on earth can really only understand their own suffering. For example, a particular event can sound horrible if you speak of it aloud, such as the death of my mother which was caused by my father. The unadulterated truth is, however, one person may feel quite shocked or victimized by the same thing that another person may find is trivial. I mean there are things I have seen in my home growing up that I can speak about quite plainly and it is likely that some of those things might curl the shorthairs on someone else, but to me, it is all relative.

The other thing about trauma is how random it is. At least I like to think so because this beats the alternative, which would be thinking I am some sort of modern day Job. Really, my life has not been that wretched, on the whole. At least once I escaped my father, anyway. A person may be faced with more than a few challenging events in their lifetime, and I have come to believe is just random selection. At least that is the way life has been presented to me.

This is why I watch television: to distract myself from the whirlpool of crap in my mind. I suppose this line of thinking is what my therapist would have referred to as the intellectualization of my issues. My worst fears would actually come true if I just blurted all of these thoughts out to my date—the classic overshare that I am prone to when nervous. That would likely make a memorable occasion for the person I am supposed to be having coffee with, though not in a good way.

I try, unsuccessfully, to stop reflecting on the past by distracting myself with the photos on my phone, as if I were normal person.

This anxiety and tendency to make social faux pas is what I am at risk for any time I go somewhere I have not been before, or meet someone new. I understand now that this reaction stems from my imposter syndrome: that sense of being in my own life by accident. The terrible feeling that any minute now, someone will show up to the door of my home or peek their head into a room while I am evaluating a patient and say, “Excuse me, but we have just realized you actually do not belong here.” That dreaded inkling that my white coat does not belong to me and it was meant for someone else. On my worst days this evolves into a notion that I should have done more in life and that I chose the wrong path, short-changing my entire existence on the planet, an apprehension that I have been trapped by my choices. When I feel driven by these worries, I run my mouth without thinking, and say more than I mean to.

So here I sit, on a Tuesday evening, now panicking about the probability that I will overshare while simultaneously having guilt about everything I have not accomplished in my life. Now, I wish I had called out sick from this date, which is already going horribly wrong, and the other party is not even here yet.

I check my text messages from Amalie, again, to confirm his name…Mark, but knowing me, I expect I will forget it again soon. I have no idea what he looks like, as my supposed friend has screened and chosen the dates for me. All her text is giving me is:

Amalie: about your height, dark eyes

and hair—his name is Mark and he

knows you are wearing a blue sweater

I suppose she and my daughters knew I would not follow through if they left it up to me. They would have been correct in that assumption.

I imagine myself calling him by the wrong name, or worse, just sitting here, speechless with nerves, desperate not to make a fool of myself. I imagine this future version of me, embarrassed and clearly demonstrating my discomfort with my habit of uncontrollable blushing, which to me is the worst feeling in the world. Meaning shame is the worst feeling, not blushing. They kind of go hand in hand but it’s the feeling of being embarrassed that is the one that truly feels like it will kill me.

Well, if I do happen to do or say anything out of turn or that is entirely awkward, I suppose I could try to make a run for the exit. Or, at my age, at least a brisk walk to hide in the bathroom until the place closes.

I check my lipstick in my compact and frown. My youngest daughter, Hannah, picked the color, and it is not a choice I would have made for myself. It is so…red. Of course, my choice would be colorless chapstick, which I suppose is the other extreme. Hannah, being an interior designer, had made it difficult to argue with her taking control of my makeup and outfit choices because, as she said, she literally has a degree on how to design the best version of me. She said this color red was perfect for me, but I think I am looking a bit more like I run a brothel in my spare time than as if I am an elegant and polished medical professional.

I check the time.

He, (Dave? Mike? I have already forgotten) is late. Or probably not coming. Or maybe he was here, took one look at me, and could see all the insecurities floating around in my aura and decided to give this opportunity a miss.

Why is my brain like this?

Was I born to react this way to life? Or was I molded this way by those aforementioned traumas. While I would not admit it to my daughters, I did admit to Amalie that the anxiety and heightened awareness of my awkwardness has become a little worse in the last few years. During the pandemic, I nearly had a nervous breakdown due to the isolation and stress those of us in healthcare were working under. For that reason, so many things came to light, and after a lifetime of avoiding mental health professionals, I came to have an entourage of specialists. Sometimes all this therapy and analysis seems to make me feel worse, not better.

The truth, from my perspective, is that so many things that I think are wrong with me seem to be the product of how I think rather than any particular thing that has happened to me. It is not as if I could know another life…another set of experiences. While it is true that a day does not go by that I do not hear the constant criticism of my father in my head, I now have a discourse with it, rather than being paralyzed into inaction.

I recall my early life when I was truly incapacitated by my negativity and my fears, and now I can see that the inner workings of my mind did start to improve during my training to be a nurse, and then even more when I studied to become a nurse practitioner. I found learning practical skills installed a confidence in me I did not know I could have. Later on, due to directly interacting with patients, I found my personal pain and suffering actually helped me with the ability to be empathetic. I guess in that sense, even the abuse of my father brought something positive to my life. Or at least to my encounters at work. I have found that I have the heightened ability to sense what patients are feeling, and it helps me be in tune to the emotional needs of each person I evaluate in a way that can often put people at ease. As a child I developed that sense to try to protect myself and my mother from being hurt. It did not always work out that way, but I never gave up trying.

Later, when I met my beshert, he helped to continue to cultivate the strengths within me. He was a generous and supportive man and he helped me see myself through his eyes, which was a much gentler impression than what I was able to see on my own. As I have so many times before, I say a silent prayer of thanks for him.

I hear the bell of the door opening again and startle, nearly spilling my coffee. I startle so easily—it used to make my husband laugh at me, although on more than one occasion it did annoy him. It is funny… the things that were awkward between us became some of the strongest memories from our years together.

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