My Breaking Point

I'm not very good with crowds.  I am very neurotic in that sense and though I wouldn't consider myself as claustrophobic, the idea of being in a crowd of people really gives me chills.  I don't go to a lot of festivals or concerts because I just need to know that I'm free to get where I want to be in a reasonable amount of time without having to worry about the pace or sparseness of others. 

I was on a plane once and we landed.  We landed.  And we were waiting for the plane in front of us to finish hauling their sheep off of the plane and to get out of the fucking way before we were able to finally taxi up to the fucking tube and be able to cart ourselves off.  I remember sitting in the window seat and waiting 30 minutes before we actually moved.  This was the first time I realized I wasn't good at handling this situation.  I knew that I was different but then all of a sudden you find this emotional center of yourself that you didn't even know existed or at least it came out so rarely that you pretend it doesn't exist. 

I'm just sitting there in coach with a couple sitting next to me, probably in their 50s and at a certain point I huddle over myself with my head between my knees and its 15 or 20 minutes in without moving and I've got my hands over my ears because not only are we not going anywhere, not only is my 6 foot 6 body dying to stretch out over a long flight and the fasten seatbelt light is still lit so I can't move around, not only do I have to go to the bathroom, but somewhere in this godforsaken sardine can is an incessant beeping noise that nobody else seems to hear or care about and it's driving me insane.

The thing that bothered me the most was that I was stuck there and unable to do anything about it.  Not being in control of where I was or where I could go was absolutely frustrating and annoying beyond anything I've ever felt and I'm crouched in a fetal position hugging my knees and trying to pretend like none of this is happening and wondering if time really had stopped forever. 

It's usually only in moments like this that you can remember that last time you felt so crazy and that indeed it wasn't the first time and probably won't be the last.  That we all have breaking points but some of us simply have a higher threshold than others or just weird nerve centers that when you touch them they freak out.  Some of the nerve centers are common, like a broken heart.  Others are weird and abnormal and you'll see those on a mid-day talk show talking about how toilet paper scares them to death.

I found mine in being stuck in an airplane when we've already landed and unable to just stand up and go home, when I could literally see my destination and do nothing about it.  That doesn't seem so weird when I put it like that.