It's been said that one never forgets a smell. Maybe that is why I can smell the skin on a rubber doll or open Elmer's rubber cement and be 6 again? Or walk in the house and know my grandma just made those one-kind-of crackers-that-I-dont-know-what-they-are-called-but-they-are-my-favorite? Or why I love certain colognes and hate other ones? Or why I can close my eyes and recall the distinct smells of my high school locker room, my mom's candle shop, my best friend's perfume in junior high, and the halls at IBC when the trash didn't get taken out? At any rate, my point is that we associate smells with different times in our lives. I was over at a friend's house the other day, and I smelled something awful. The smell itself wasn't awful, but I was subconsciously associating it with something ...something I couldn't recall. Since she was not home , I decided to investigate this awful smell. I finally found the source: an Airwick Plug-In air freshener with a Lavender scent in it. I pulled it out and held it up to my nose. I finally remembered. As psychotic as this sounds, I wanted to cry and scream and run and vomit all at the same time. Let me explain............. It was an awful summer I had endured a couple of years ago. I had bouts with severe(with an emphasis on severe) anxiety. It started by my being exhausted all the time. Then inexplicable anxiety began to smother me. I couldn’t decipher what was causing it, but it was hindering my precious, few hours of sleep. ( I was an au pair for preemie twins.. sleep was hard to come by...)
A few weeks into the summer, I was barely sleeping. The anxiety had launched into crippling panic attacks. The attacks began to happen several times an hour. I would get physically ill, lose all sense of direction, and become hysterical. I was living with people I didn't really know which did not help in the slightest. So, all in all, I felt like I was losing my mind. My only comfort that summer seemed to be in phone conversations with my parents and my( once again) amazing best friend. When I say phone conversation, I mean middle-of-the-night-wake-them-up-out-of-a-dead-sleep conversations. They would always stay on the phone as long as I needed, or until I fell asleep and they could hang up. It is impossible to convey with words the amount of tenderness I was shown by these 3 extraordinary people. God blessed me with the only three people in the universe that could handle me when I was at my worst. So ANYWAY... back to the original thought... To me.. Fear smells like lavender. That summer, I had an Airwick Lavender PlugIn in my room and to this day, I associate that smell with fear. Sounds improbable, but it was real to me. I felt almost every emotion I felt that summer flood back. So I am writing today to get down in words the million emotions that I've been feeling. I won't bore you with the entire situation, but I will say I have found a new determination in my struggle. Although my present anxiety hasn't been half as bad as it was then, it's still present. Today, I am fighting it with everything in me....for several reasons. 1. Up to this point, I let myself accept me, fear and all, as the girl that would always be... And it does not need to be like that. Just because I have learned to live life with it... does not mean it is the best way to live. And... I want the best. 2. It is robbing me of several things that I want for my future. I will not allow that. 3. Since when am I a quitter that lays down and allows something to walk all over me? 4. If I do not have the guts to fight it for myself, I will fight it for the people that it affects most.. because they don't deserve to fight my battles. All that said, I hate the smell of Lavender with all my heart.
