After an emotional therapy session, Jonathan Delavan was able to come to grips with a part of his life he’d nearly forsaken.
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“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are really princesses who are waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
It was in late April of last year that I experienced the worst panic attack of my life.
It started on a Wednesday evening as my group therapy session began talking about a topic that always made me panicky — sex. Whenever that topic came up, I would instantly freeze up, become stiff as a board and shut up like a sealed oyster clam. Why? Because sex and sexuality absolutely frightened me; they were some of my major triggers when it came to the abuses I endured growing up in a religious community.
Well, that night was no different. But something else was different in regards to what ended up happening.
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Leading up to that group session, I had been seeing this girl I met at work for a couple of weeks. I tried talking about my experiences with her at these sessions to get feedback on them. But that night, I was directly asked a question on the topic at hand by another member as it related to my sporadic dates with this girl: “Did you have sex with her?”
I panicked, as if my very soul was in real danger! I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t think, I was on the verge of a complete panic attack as my body assumed the fetal position. I somehow managed to tell the group that I just couldn’t answer the question. I received this terror-inducing question towards the end of the session and quickly left as soon as it was over.
This near-panic attack was not letting go of me during my forty minute drive home. Not even music, which had always calmed me down before, was taking it away. Moreover, it seemed to be getting worse the longer I drove.
I started screaming to the point of hyperventilating.
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After half an hour of driving with this surging panic within me, I feared that I wouldn’t be able to drive safely. With white-knuckles clinching the steering wheel for dear life, I exited the city highway and parked in a nearby empty lot in front of a Gander Mountain. I remained in my car with my seatbelt still buckled.
Then, in that dimly lit and abandoned parking lot, began my worst panic attack to date.
I started screaming to the point of hyperventilating. While screaming compulsively, I started rocking back and forth in the seat pressing my arms against my chest and grasping my face with both my hands. For what seemed like the longest time, I was completely consumed with fear. There were no words, no thoughts, no other emotion, only pure fear.
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Why was I having such an extreme reaction to being asked what many consider a rather simple, albeit straightforward, question? Because the answer to that question is yes. I did have physical intercourse with her after one of our dates. In fact, she was the one who wanted to have sex with me and initiated it between us. But to have sex at all — whether it was with her or another person — was a reality I could not accept at that moment.
I was still compulsively shaking, and the immense fear was still fresh within both my chest and my soul as I drove.
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As my worst panic attack episode began to subside enough for me to be somewhat cognizant again, an image began to form in my mind that gave meaning to this immense fear:
I found myself alone on a galleon drifting away from a harbor — the only harbor I’ve ever known and was “safe” within. It seemed as if I was being expelled from that harbor by an invisible and impervious force, and could never return. No matter what I said or how much I pleaded, my fate was sealed. Being alone on that massive ship, I also felt powerless to change its course — my course — as it drifted further out into an empty sea. I believed I was going to die on that ship, banished, alone, without any hope for a future; and that somehow, I was responsible for my exile, my death sentence, due to a moment of “weakness” or poor judgement.
In short, I was lost in every meaning of the word.
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After what seemed an eternity (but was more likely about thirty minutes at least), I regained enough composure to restart my car and continue my drive home. I was still compulsively shaking, and the immense fear was still fresh within both my chest and my soul as I drove.
Assuming that the worst was finally, I decided to try listening to music again to help me calm down. The song that came on through the car speakers as I started up my Zune was Katy Perry’s underrated song, “Unconditionally” [if you haven’t heard it before, I strongly urge you to do so soon]. As the first lines of the lyrics spoke to me, I was once again overwhelmed with emotion and had to stop driving, parking in the back of a nearby Chilies restaurant.
…a love I had yet to experience over this traumatic issue in my life.
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I had no illusions that Katy herself was speaking only to me in this song, but I did begin to experience a deep love that is expressed through this song — a love I had yet to experience over this traumatic issue in my life. I was in such an emotional state by this point that I began to cry. Then the song came to a small but potent verse:
Acceptance is the key to be,
To be truly free,
Will you do the same for me?
At that precise moment, another image flashed before my eyes. For barely a millisecond, I saw myself at thirteen, looking back at me with an innocent expression on his face that said “Why can’t you accept me? Am I really that appalling?” That’s when I really started bawling my eyes out — no exaggeration!
For the first time in my life, I saw my young sexuality as natural, innocent, and wanting to be accepted. I also realized that just as I have been abused growing up, I have been neglecting and hurting my sexual self since its emergence within me. And so I cried; more accurately, I grieved. I grieved that I could not accept my sexuality till then. I grieved that I treated it like some vile disease that had to be purged. I grieved as I would of learning of a child who was wrongly abused and punished for simply being himself and realizing that child was actually myself.
There is no fear now
Let go and just be free
I will love you
Unconditionally
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That night has become a milestone in my life. Yes, it was a night when I experienced my worst panic attack to date, but it was also a night of immeasurable healing for me. I would rather not live through something like that again, but I am nevertheless deeply grateful to have passed through this personal “valley of death” when I did. This brings me to my last point, a reflection looking back at this pivotal moment.
It is strange to say that I can now feel joy because I first felt grief, but it’s true. Because I truly and deeply grieved for the first time in my life back then, I have slowly but surely been able to feel and express true joy since that moment. In other words, because I felt both my fear and my grief thoroughly that night, I became capable again to experience my joy — as well as my other emotions — in time. I can say that now because it has been over a year since that night, and I can now see how far I’ve come in my emotional understanding, expression, and health since then.
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To conclude, I would like to give a shout-out to Katy Perry for writing and singing a beautiful song that has forever changed my life. So, Katheryn, thank you for helping me find my light by sharing your own light through your music!
Photo Credit: Anthony Albright/flickr