Dangerous Drug

Metaphors, metaphors. Always metaphors. So I’ve been encouraged to just come straight out with things, but the metaphors just keep coming. Last weekend my longsuffering spouse and I started into another one of our perennial cycles of disconnect. My emotional intelligence quotient is sadly on the low side, so my response at such times is often confused and shot through with fear. Often I assume that the things I feel are things everybody feels. Sometimes this is true, sometimes not. When things are off kilter between me and my partner, I can certainly feel hurt. But I’m realizing that even more strongly I feel fear. When the facts come out and the dust settles, I once again know that my wife truly loves me. The hurt is rarely intentional and even when it is it is almost always in the context of an overall caring and attempt at nurture. Why I cannot accept this and operate from this basic assumption when things get fuzzy I do not know. It is something at the core of my emotional pathology. Yes, I do need some professional help. But my past experience has my level of hope in such very low and my level of cynicism very high. Anyway, what made me start typing here, besides an effort to come “straight out with it,” was, of course, a metaphor. The fear works a lot like adrenaline. It’s something completely out of control. When the threatening crisis happens, the response surges through me with a suddenness and potency I can only compare to adrenaline surge. It’s different, but very drug like. And just like it takes adrenaline time to be metabolized and the effect to drain away after the threat has passed, the fear drug also lingers. But it seems to take a lot longer to metabolize. Adrenaline bleeds off in hours. The fear drug, my fear drug anyway, takes days even after all is well. It’s mildly sickening, very uncomfortable, and annoyingly, largely unnecessary. I’m considering that maybe the way this happens with me isn’t part of the human condition. Maybe only some of us respond to things this way. This is a huge crack in my armor. (sorry, there's another one. I really can't seem to help it.)