High Agency Human

“It’s good to see you never lost your courage.”

The handwritten words and signature stare back at me from the piece of paper in my hands. It was torn from a notepad, the kind you tuck into a shirt pocket; the paper is crisp and the ink vivid. It could have been written yesterday. But these words, this signature—it just couldn’t be.

I toss around the few old letters and mementos in the fire safe, looking for more evidence. Nothing. Nothing else from this time or person. Just this note.

Its writer, Matt, is a good friend, a solid man known for his kindness. His note is an apology for not staying more closely connected over the years, and to say that even though we haven’t been in touch, he’s been cheering me on from a distance. This is what brotherhood in the military, and in life, means to me. We’re not always close, but there for each other to weather hard times or celebrate success.

Matt was passing though base while we were both deployed in Afghanistan and left the note on my bunk. We missed seeing each other in person, and on the next deployment, he died.

That was twenty years ago.

His words were found and resonated today.

Because I have, in fact, lost my courage.

At least that’s what this feels like. A defeat. A giving in. A cowardly acceptance. I was sick with a virus a few months ago and it began instantly—relentless and debilitating waves of anxiety attacks, two or three a day. The nausea, perhaps the thing I loathe most, lasts four to six hours with each attack. Then there are the darker thoughts that seem real even when I know they are not. It feels like a weighted blanket is wrapped around my mind and the smallest of missteps, like eating or stress, sets off the next wave of misery. Wave upon wave upon wave. I fear it. I’ve given in to it. I’m in the middle of an anxiety attack right now. There’s no rhyme or reason behind it, it’s just here. Sorting through my things was meant as a distraction, and then I found the note.

The coolness of the hardwood floor in my apartment feels good, a momentary sense of relief. I look at Matt’s words, then at my military medals and my grandmother’s pearls, also in the safe: all reminders of agency, capability, and grit. Matt always made life happen, the medals are symbols of my own ability to live big, and my grandmother, well, she was the very definition of grit. Another wave of nausea is incoming and the heat rises up through my body. I want to turtle and ignore the world until it goes away, but I think my incredibly wise friend Lynne was right yesterday when she matter-of-factly stated that I might be the main contributor to this purgatorial state.

I want to be the person Matt knew. The one with courage, and a lot of gumption. And if I want to be that person, I have to be that person.

It’s time to get up off the floor and get to work.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been told that experiencing anxiety attacks will be a lifelong struggle, something to accept, something unchangeable, by friends, colleagues, and doctors alike. And maybe that’s what they know, the experience they’ve had. But I know and you know that when we operate as High Agency Humans, most things are changeable or, at minimum, within our grasp to influence in our favor. We have an influencing role in our outcomes and the agency to switch gears when we need to. Anxiety attacks are not a label nor an identity, but an experience to move through. This is simply the next obstacle in this season’s hero’s journey in a life full of hero’s journeys.