Awesome Disabled

(5 minute read time)

(CW: childhood trauma, severe mental illness)

I just got back from camping with my kids. I don’t know who told me that it is a good idea to camp by myself with two tweens, but they are surely mistaken. I did it because we want to have memories, and it is cheaper than a big fancy vacation. But it’s also because we want to reconnect with ourselves, each other, and the land.

Last year, I bought a used, giant-ass cabana-style tent, complete with two side rooms. It is a beast. It feels much better to be able to stand up properly in a tent than the have to hunch over all the time. Plus I got two cool hammock chairs from Costco, and that feels fantastic.

Camping is at the nexus, in my mind, of excitement and terror, with just a hint of lingering anxiety. It’s a mixed bag, for sure. But I am a parent, so I persist, because I have no choice.

One night on my last camping trip, the anxiety definitely won over. My kids and I had settled in to our tent and, to my relief, I was actually feeling drowsy. Sleep has been a big issue for me throughout my life, because my body and mind have rarely been relaxed enough to actually drift off. It started in my childhood, my brain so doused in stress hormones that it couldn’t shut itself down. I would violently bang my head on my headboard in order to knock myself out. (Come to think of it, it’s possible that I have some brain injuries from this. I really never had a chance for a healthy brain, and that’s another thing I’ll need to reckon with in time.)

I have worked to improve my brain health over the years, and, with the help of a couple of prescriptions, my sleep has improved tremendously. But my autism doesn’t like when I’m in a new place, which interferes with my ability to sleep. Dozing off in the tent gave me hope that I maybe had set all of that shit behind me, and I was ready to engage in camping like a normal, non-traumatized person.

“Mom!” my youngest shouted.

“What, baby?” I could hear my exhausted voice respond.

“I need to go to the bathroom!”

“Can you go by yourself?”

“No– come with me. Please!”

My oldest chimes in. “I’ll go too then.”

I rolled over, groaning. I felt absolutely defeated. I had had a moment of celebration about feeling drowsy in a new place, but now I would have to completely re-start my whole relaxation routine to try to sleep.

We walked to the bathroom and back, and then I tried to settle back down, but I couldn’t reach the drowsiness I had before. I laid silently for what felt like hours, listening to my own thoughts. Finally, it all became too much. I thought about having to drive the next day, worrying that I wouldn’t have enough sleep to drive safely. That thought sent me, and my brain spun out into a panic.

My heart started beating heavily and my breath came in short gasps. My whole body felt like it was being burned from the inside out. I hadn’t experienced anything like that in a while. I suppose it was a testament to my improved mental health that this feeling felt so unusual to me– I used to live there.

But it still sucked big time. Recognizing that I couldn’t un-spin myself out, at least not in my current state, I turned on a lantern and started reading a book. I read a couple of chapters, then finally managed to doze off.

I was proud of my resilience, but frustrated that it happened in the first place. It was so disheartening to be so close to a good night’s sleep in a new place, and to have it snatched away like that was devastating. And additionally, it was pretty awful to feel like I had fallen so far from the robust wellness I’d built for myself.

I started to feel shaky in my sense of my own wellness. To have a panic like that felt like a failure.

Was I regressing, for real? Of course not. Once those neural pathways have formed, they’re there forever. And when the stimulus presents itself, the brain can recognize it, even if that pathway hasn’t been used in a while. Something I’ve learned is that, when moments like this happen, the recovery is important– how do I get back to normal? For me, that recovery went well, and I didn’t have any more panics. The next day was predictably rough, but we got through it. Now I’m back in town, and I’m sleeping well. My moods have been much more stable. I track them on an app on my phone, and it’s been an absolute game-changer to have my data over time.

So now here I am, a sometimes-panicker, striving for balance and wellbeing. One day at a time. One step at a time. We got this.