What I Didn't Know I Needed.

I don't know when Anxiety took control of my life, exactly, though I can recall moments when it peaked and how those moments were triggered. It'd been present my whole life to various degrees, but it seems like over the past five years or so it just snowballed and completely took over. I honestly didn't think I was going to make it to NYC for the X-Japan show because of it. Not because I was afraid I would cancel (which I was right up until the moment I could no longer get a refund on the hotel room,) but because I was fairly certain my heart was just finally going to give out. During a weird breakdown the week before (in which I began to systematically dismantle a small Rarity plushie with a seam ripper) I realized that Anxiety was, absolutely literally, killing me. I knew that I really couldn't live much longer in the state I was constantly in, and had been for the better parts of years, now. I realized, with no uncertainty, that the condition was fatal and that my body was nearing a breaking point. I was never sure how I survived 2012 and the Anxiety was kicking up to those levels again. I knew that I'd never make it through another year of that. Something had to change.

I knew that something had to change, but I had very little idea how to facilitate that change. I started listening to mantra's and doing meditations to keep myself calm. I tried to focus on the positive. It helped, and I did have a few glorious breakthroughs, but it just wasn't enough, in the end. During the ride from my friend's house in Pennsylvania to the City itself, I was in such a scary state that I texted my spouse and told him I was finding a doctor and medication the minute I got back home because I was afraid for my life if I didn't. It scared him. It scared me. It was scary.

Our plan was to park at Newark International Airport in New Jersey for the weekend and take the train into Penn Station. To get from the terminal to the train station we had to ride something called the AirTrain. The AirTrain has small cars that allow a few people to sit and a few to stand. The small compartments you travel in are heavily windowed. In places the track is elevated. I spent the ride from the terminal to the airport train station gripping the bar behind me with both hands, my eyes shut, chanting the Moola Mantra to myself. I was terrified.

On another online journal (and on Facebook) I've been participating in an event called Poem-A-Day October. When I returned home from the trip I wrote this:

I am not the person I was when I stepped out of that train station.
Or maybe I am exactly that person.
Instantly galvanized.

On the ride back from the train station at the airport to the terminal to catch the bus out to our vehicle, I was in the same place in the car on the AirTrain. My eyes were open. I held a conversation with the friend with whom I was travelling. I enjoyed the scenery. I don't even know if I held on with both hands.

The city changed me. Everything about it changed me. It wasn't anything that I expected and everything that I didn't know that I needed. The sounds from the street below and the City all around me lulled me to sleep. Not one siren woke me. It was the perfect lullaby after the best show I've ever seen. The City did not frighten or intimidate me. If anything, I felt a kind of kindred to it. It was beautiful. It was old and new. It was history and progress. It was art. It was raw and honest humanity. The most beautiful things we can create acting as backdrop for some of our ugliest realities and some of our most dire truths towering over tiny moments of beauty. It was diversity like I've never seen. The entire crayon box and not just my dingy little worn out small town palette. It had everything you could ever want within walking distance. Life Condensed. I fell in love. I will never be the same.

Tears came to my eyes as I happened to glimpse one last fragment of the tower interrupted sky before our train disappeared into the tunnel out of the City. I'd forgotten to say goodbye to the place that had reforged me so overwhelmingly. I realized, in that moment, that it would not be the last time I would see that City. I will be there again. I will know its streets better. We will come to know eachother, in time.

I don't know when the Anxiety took over, but I know the place I became strong again. I know the place that reacquainted me with a person I had forgotten that I was. I know where I came back to myself. The concert was wonderful and glorious and amazing. The best show of my life. It was the City, though, that gave me back what I'd for all too long forgotten that I was.

Thank you, NYC.
I'll never forget you.
Until we meet again,
Kai