I am usually not in a good place while surrounded by people, let alone swimming among a crowd, yet after years of practice, I blend in most of the time. It does not show to the naked eye that I go my way a little “off”.
But today I hit rush hours in Paris’ subway, the crowdest city after Tokyo, and had to cross one of the biggest European’s mall the first week of summer bargains (”les soldes” in Paris is a real institution driving even more people in retail stores to hunt for the best bargains of the year). Now, I won’t recommend that to any schizoids or introverts alike… Can’t really get any uglier… A fire evacuation from a big university would have been peachy compared to that one!
I obviously did not readjust my radar to the far heavier concentration of people here in Paris. And today, I felt like 20 years ago when I had to battle with myself to cross a subway station or a crowded street. And like then, I fell back to a really basic comportment: Total and complete shutdown…
The noise, the neon lighting, the fast movement of bodies around me… I was in total sensorial overstimulation, something I had under control for a long while I thought. When that happens, my brain is like an overheating CPU stalled into using all its processing power on unimportant tasks (filtering the “noises”), unable to free up some juice for the higher functions. I then enter in what I call “the zombie state”. Meaning my body is really on auto pilot. I breathe (tough It occurred to me to even skip a few inhales or exhales in the same situation in the old days), but just walking is a hard to impossible task… I could easily stay put in the middle of the crowd, not able to move or speak in some cases, just freakishly stuck in some endless loop.
We are talking living nightmare here, the full fledge concretization of the fearful “lost of control” that is the root of most schizoid personalities (at least mine).
Well today, today… It was bad… I had worse mind you, but it is a low point I had not hit in many years… I was WAY off. I mean I felt it myself. The way I stared, the way I walked, the way I looked at things around me… The overstimulation was gaining, I could feel it, and I could FEAR it. That adrenaline shoot that skydiving did not procure a few weeks ago? Well I got it today… that tells you what I am really scared of!
While I felt the uneasiness come, I recognized it right away. I was in the dead center of a three levels huge mall, and I knew so well to what extreme it could drive me… Adrenaline plus a few basic protocols (always know your emergency exits as soon as you enter any closed area), were here a life saver.
Standing out like I hate it, I managed to get to the far end of the mall. Taking the sub? In the beginning of rush hours, very bad idea in my actual state… Just going outside then? This is Paris La défense… The outside here (”le parvis, l’esplanade”) is the busiest corner of the capital, before “Les champs Elysée”. This is the equivalent to Wall Street at trading closure time… Again not a bright idea. Only two ways I could really go: Pace myself in a toilet booth, or sooth it all in the darkness of a movie theater…
I do like movie theaters; they have been such good friends to me. For some reasons, even crowded, as soon as the lights are off, I feel good. Luckily, it was around 16h00, so nobody was waiting to enter in long lines. I grabbed a ticket at the automatic booth, urged in, and calmed down in a nearly empty theater.
Of course the movie ended just a bit to early to escape the end of rush hours in the subway… So I waited, grabbed a bite, watched another movie, and finally took a late sub around 23h00. Finishing the day with the usual split headache a sensorial overstimulation episode never misses to bring…
Seems I have some heavy lifting to do to reacquaint with people density, mentality and culture (Jack, seriously, bargain week how could you miss that!) here. Well, I was born here after all; I should be able to adjust fairly quickly…
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