Excerpt From My Memoir- Chapter 6 Draft

 

By Kelly McClain 

Memoir (title TBD)

Chapter 6 (partial) - Draft

(All rights reserved, intellectually property and all that jazz)

I was talking to a friend recently about what happened after I quit my job in 2020 (when I was 47). From the outside, it probably looked like I finally escaped a toxic situation and should have started feeling better.

Instead, my body completely fell apart.

What I understand now is that sometimes when you’ve been surviving for years, the collapse doesn’t happen while you’re in danger. It happens when you finally feel safe enough to stop running.

Let’s talk about what a “mask” is in the context of body and brain issues…Masking is the unconscious habit of hiding traits, needs, sensitivities, or struggles in order to appear “normal,” capable, or unaffected. It’s a survival skill that can work for years—until it doesn’t. A mask is what happens when survival becomes a full-time job. You learn to perform competence, calmness, and resilience even when your nervous system is screaming for help. My mask was the highly functional, people-pleasing, get-shit-done version of me. The one who showed up to work, paid the bills, smiled politely, and pretended fluorescent lighting, toxic bosses, anxiety, and chronic overwhelm were all perfectly reasonable things to endure.

My mask actually started slipping years earlier, around age 45. That’s when I first noticed perimenopause really rearing up,  and it’s also when my anxiety at work started becoming impossible to ignore.

At the time, I didn’t have the language for what was happening. I just knew that I kept seeking out dark, empty rooms. I’d hide in quiet spaces whenever I could. I thought I was just trying to get away from people. Now I realize I was trying to regulate my nervous system.

My job gave me panic attacks. The environment was a sensory nightmare: fluorescent lights, two computer monitors, constant interruptions, phones ringing, people yelling. And then there was my boss—five-foot-five of toxic masculinity with a gun on his hip in the office. He screamed at people in his office almost daily. And I sat right next to his office in an open cubicle.  It was hell. 

So yes, all of that affected me.

At the time, I thought it was just stress. Now I understand that being a highly sensitive person in an environment like that wasn’t simply unpleasant or stressful - it was physically damaging.

And work wasn’t the only thing in the pile.

Before that, I’d survived an abusive marriage. I’d had another relationship that ended with stalking and a year of looking over my shoulder. There were old injuries, old losses, old survival strategies. Trauma has a way of stacking itself neatly in boxes while you’re busy functioning.

Then in April of 2020, right after Covid started cancelling things,  I quit my job.

And I swear my body looked around and said, “Oh, is this where we’re unpacking our bags?” *boom* 

Not long after, I got COVID,  like many of us did. Then I got Shingles. Then what felt like an avalanche of health issues, one after another. For a while I just thought I had some mild “long COVID” issues. But it became apparent it was more than that. 

Human nature always want to know what caused it. Was it the trauma? Was it COVID? Was it perimenopause? Was it years of masking? Was it burnout?

Likely yes…All of it.

I don’t think there’s one smoking gun. I think there was a lifetime of physical and emotional stress stacked on top of a very sensitive nervous system that had been white-knuckling its way through life for decades. Eventually, something had to give.

And when it did, the mask basically said, “Peace out, Bitch! Best of luck!” Even my damn mask got burned out! 

And when it did, everything I’d been compensating for, accommodating, or ignoring came charging out of the cracks and crevices.

I started recognizing traits that looked suspiciously like lifelong mild ADHD. And I began wondering whether there was some neurodivergence mixed into the recipe. As a result of masking for decades, my nervous system became disregulated, oversensitive, hyper vigilant and generally too loud.  Then came fibromyalgia, which is a nervous system disorder that amplifies pain signals.  Then POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia)-POTS is a disorder that affects the body’s automatic functions. In practical terms, it means my heart and nervous system sometimes overreact to ordinary activities, leaving me hot, dizzy, exhausted, and wondering why walking across the room feels like a cardio workout. Then Chronic Fatigue, hypermobility-related pain, and a body that seemed determined to send strongly worded memos every single day.

The funny thing is that when I was a dancer, hypermobility was an asset…flexibility got applause.

Nobody tells you that the same loose joints that help you hit beautiful lines at thirteen might become a problem at fifty.

A couple of major injuries when I was young never fully went away. Now those old injuries are some of my biggest sources of pain and disability. 

My tendons and ligaments aren’t exactly committed to the job of keeping my hip (and other joints) where it belongs. So it’s a bit slippy and grindy in there.  Fibromyalgia amplifies the pain signals. POTS makes my heart act like I’m running a marathon when I’ve merely considered standing up. Then Chronic Fatigue Syndrome generally weighs in with, “Bitch, just go to bed.”

For a long time I felt my body had betrayed me. Now I know it was trying to protect me. For years I’ve taught clients that your body remembers your emotional and physical  pain.  Your cells hold those memories. And they don’t forget.  So I had to become my own coach (also Lord knows no one else can coach me!)

The truth is that I wasn’t weak. I was exhausted. I wasn’t broken. I was carrying far more than I realized. Just like we experience burnout in our jobs, I feel my body got burned out too.  “Oh she quit?! Thank God! Now we can too!”

And once survival was no longer the only priority, my nervous system finally felt safe enough to hand me the bill. So it did, and it was pretty steep…