Safety Always Matters
This Thanksgiving was hard on both my physical and mental health - and I’m not particularly proud that I ignored the latter.
I received my first-ever invitation to a friend’s Thanksgiving, and as someone who grew up a lonely kid and either did Thanksgiving with my immediate family or attended an extended family dinner in the Northeast where I never ate anything, I was so excited to feel like I would be a part of things.
I baked nut-free brownies since my friend and I are both severely allergic to nuts. I spent a long time picking out an outfit and some fun video games to bring, since my friend invited me to bring games and stay for the day, not just dinner. And I convinced myself that even if I didn’t eat much (or anything at all) for dinner, my friend knew I was picky and wouldn’t mess with me.
And so, I went to Highland Park for the first time ever this Thanksgiving - and it couldn’t have gone much worse.
I had been missing Reese, my dog who passed away nearly a year ago, quite a bit - which made me very happy to hear that there would be two dogs at my friend’s mom’s house. None of my friends who live nearby have dogs, so I thought it would be a treat to hug a dog for the first time in a while (aside from petting random dogs on the street).
I was only in the house for a few minutes when one of the dogs lunged for me and tried to bite my leg. I was able to dodge the worst of it since she was a smaller dog, but she did get a tight grip on my pants. I was instantly very scared; I felt my old fear of dogs from before Reese came into my life flooding through my veins as my heart started to pound.
My friend and her mom handled the immediate situation, but it didn’t take long for this dog and the other one in the house to start snarling and snapping at each other. I cowered on the couch, feeling trapped, remembering how narrowly I’d escaped a bite and thinking of the fact that I am on blood thinners and really, really didn’t want to go to the hospital.
At this point, I was told that I was being overly frightened. I retreated further into myself, playing my video game and doing my best to take advantage of every distraction. But the people there weren’t particularly friendly aside from my friend who invited me, and I didn’t feel any better until her mom and a few other family members decided to take the dogs - who were still fighting - to a local dog park.
Even though I thought that idea wouldn’t be great for the other dogs there, I was at least relieved that they would be out of the house. I was still afraid and didn’t calm down until they left entirely. I enjoyed spending one-on-one time with my friend like we do on everyday hangouts, but when her family got back, things got so much worse.
Even before the dogs had entered the house again, I was feeling anxious just knowing they were coming back. I was afraid of getting hurt, but since the attempted bite from earlier hadn’t done any actual damage, it seemed like no one but me really cared.
My friend’s mom also brought someone back to the house who my friend had never met. She brought a large gift bag of pistachios and started eating them with her hands, then offered some to my friend and I. Initially, she seemed apologetic when we told her we were both allergic to nuts, but her demeanor completely changed when she passed me something and I wiped it off (which I have to do whenever anyone has touched nuts or else I get a rash - it may look like an OCD behavior, but it is in fact for my physical health).
She went into the kitchen and started loudly confronting my friend’s mom about my “rudeness,” then proceeded to touch all the food in the room with her hands that were contaminated. Now that I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat anything at all, and knowing that I would not be safe in a house with someone who disregarded food allergies like this, I finally did what I had wanted to do for hours: I booked an Uber, went home, and ate Thanksgiving dinner by myself.
As I sat in the car, contemplating the traffic that likely wouldn’t have been there if I left when I actually wanted to, I wondered: Why did I not feel comfortable speaking up when I was anxious? Why did I wait to leave until it was my physical safety at risk - for the second time that day?
Even though I’ve spent the last almost four years of my life blogging for No Shame On U, I still fall prey to the stigma sometimes. I still think I’m not valid for feeling unsafe in my head and that I need to get used to things other people are used to.
I’m in two minds about this. Part of me thinks I don’t need to do things that make me uncomfortable just for the sake of pushing myself, but another part of me realizes that my experiences have been limited by my relatively small comfort zone and I need to get out of it sometimes. It’s finding the balance between these two frames of mind that I find particularly difficult, and what tripped me up the most on Thanksgiving.
I spent so much time sitting on the couch, playing a video game that I can zone out while playing, and thinking about what to do. I knew that I wanted to leave hours before I did, but I didn’t feel justified until something came along that would cause real, physical danger other people could see. In other words, the fact that I was afraid wasn’t good enough - I had to show other people that I had a good enough reason to leave.
I felt like just saying that I was anxious wasn’t a valid excuse to leave because my anxiety didn’t immediately threaten my physical safety. But when I talked through this with my therapist, she reminded me that feeling safe doesn’t only mean that you’re not actively getting hurt. Not to mention, my anxiety put me in a worse position when the nut allergy contamination happened - I had a much harder time explaining why I was feeling the way I was and getting myself out of the situation because I wasn’t thinking clearly.
This experience was a good reminder for me that I can say no to things if I don’t feel safe mentally or physically. I don’t have to be in immediate danger - if something feels wrong, I am allowed to listen to my head and my gut and that does not make me a coward. I hope that, the next time I feel this way, I trust what I am feeling more than the opinions of others and do what I know is right.
Michelle Cohen, a writer in the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.