The Opposite of Normal, Andrew Boggan [brene brown rising strong .TXT] 📗

would create. Even myself; having a fear with loud noises I too would get excited whenever Mum and Dad were loading up the car to take us kids to the Ekka.

We could always tell when it was Ekka time. The days were cool and brisk and fierce blustery cold winds would blow across the city sending the smell of cooked Dagwood dog’s across the city. Yes it was Ekka time in Brisbane.

Everybody always enjoyed the last few hours of the ekka. This was usually when we all headed down sideshow alley to watch the big rides and enjoy the wood chopping in one of the small arenas. On of my favorite spots were the colored chickens and the cattle in the breeding halls. As we walked towards sideshow alley my Dad had me on his shoulders. I felt like I was sitting on top of the world. I was completely safe with my dad right below me and I could see all the smiling faces of kids getting off the big rides and watching some of the rides in their many beautiful and bright colors shoot high into the sky followed by screams of thrill and pure excitement. What would attract me the most to sideshow alley was all the different colored lights the rides made as they span around, upside down and side ways. In a way the colors put me into a trance as it grabbed my attention the most.

With the biggest smile on my face, we all began walking down sideshow alley. I was very alert to my surroundings and I was eagerly examining every ride that we passed. But within an instant, that was about to change.

I could see a dark a red house up in front with grey and black flashes happening on the outside. On the side, stood a skeleton echoing its evil laughter as people entered the haunted house. On top of the house was a fake window and a little red devil would pop out and rub his pitchfork as if he was conjuring up an evil demon or spell. The stand was so well put together that the little devil that popped out of the window had tiny steely grey eyes that you could see off in the distance, and the eyes moved.

As soon as my eyes made contact with the devil, I started screaming and begging for my dad to turn around, but he wouldn’t, he just kept going. As we got closer to the house I could feel the beat from the music was pulsating in my blood and I simply had to get out of there. From the top of my lungs I screamed, with such fear driving me I nearly made myself sick. My dad knew I was scared but I can’t work out why he kept going. Dad, why did you keep going? You knew I was scared.

Imagine seeing a tiny little boy with sandy blonde hair and laughing blue eyes filled with tears while those little eyes look all around for something to make them feel okay. Is it right to let a little boy feel so vulnerable? I remember I needed somebody to hug me but I was on top of my dad’s shoulders and there was nobody tall enough to reach me and give me a hug to make me feel better. The only person that was at my level was the devil at the window of the house and he was just about at my side as we approached. When I look back at that moment now, I have many mixed emotions about it. As I sit here writing this part my eyes have filled with tears. Is it because I’m sad or is it because I was such a cry baby? I don’t know why I’m crying at this part. I guess it’s because I felt so vulnerable at the time that it’s still left a permanent psychological scar embedded in my memory. In more ways I was somewhat angry at my dad for not turning around, he persisted in walking past the haunted house. I guess that’s where myself and my father have always had our differences. Our approaches on how to deal with fear and anxiety are very different. His way of thinking was to always just throw yourself into the fear and try and swim – my opinion was has always been “approach with caution:”

Because my brothers and sister were much bigger than me, they could always brave the big rides, and although I enjoyed watching the rides I wasn’t old enough to go on them. Instead my dad had taken me to the part of sideshow alley for toddlers. This part of sideshow alley was filled with magical rides like the carousel, small pirate ship and the tea cups and I used to think that I had entered the fairytale of some children’s storybook due to the magical colors and excitement that filled the air at this part of sideshow alley. We found a ride that my dad thought might have been suitable for me to sit down and enjoy. I can’t remember the name but it was a giant pool of water that had small boats in it and the boats would float around the pool for 5 minutes. There were all sorts of colored boats from red to blue to green and pink. I can still remember wanting to get into the red boat. As my dad had lifted me up into the air to place me into the boat, unknowingly why, I began screaming at the top of my lungs as my dad started to raise me into the boat. I can clearly remember seeing the little boat float on the water that appeared to be a bottomless ocean. What if the boat had capsized, I couldn’t swim so would I have been able to survive? Well any person in their right mind would think “yes, what are you stupid?” But the truth was I never knew that I had a fear of water. Until that day at the Brisbane Ekka.

As an adult I instantly know what causes my panic and anxiety attacks to go off, I’ve learnt growing up what I can and can’t handle. As an adult I live every day trying to avoid whatever situation that would result in an anxiety or panic attack. But as a child you have no idea what these factors are and the only way to find out where the boundaries are in the comfort zone of a child is to just simply live life and see where how far those boundaries can be stretched. To me, I was simply being myself as a child given that I didn’t know any different but from my parents perspective, I often wonder if I was too much of a needy and codependent child, if this is the case I am yet to apologize.

My fear of loud noises continued to be a disturbance in my life as a child. The sound of a lawnmower shredding through the oversized grass in the backyard used to be like a thousand nails stabbing me in the ear drum. When I was much younger and began to display reactions to noise, my mother would always need to calm my anxiety down whenever the lawnmower was switched on. In my early days when I was still sleeping, dad would go under the house and retrieve the lawnmower to cut the grass, the moment he switched it on and began working the mower over the lawn I would wake up in a horrific state of shock from the sound of the lawnmower, this apparently persisted for a number of a months until my mother had lifted me up to the front window to show me that Dad was working the lawnmower. Whenever I saw dad working the lawnmower, I would calm back down to a peaceful state of mind.

As I have become older I still have an issue with loud noises. At my work, some tradesmen are building a footbridge to link the city with the south bank parklands and for every few hours, every day for the last month there has been constant banging as they thump the concrete pylons into the river. While this banging happens I can’t concentrate on my work and I’ve ended up making a few mistakes. Every now and again I have to get out of the office and go for a walk around the block as the anxiety from the sound sends a thousand needles down my body. Even tho I know what the sound is and where it comes from, the only way to make the anxiety dissapate is to use some form of coping skills but I need to be careful how I exercise these coping skills – I wouldn’t want my work colleagues knowing what my problem is.


Chapter 2

The Age of Innocence


From the age of 3 upwards when certain behavior patterns become very much known to my parents, my mother had always said I was very particular to whom I responded too. There were 3 people in my childhood that I would always respond too given their position in my life. Those people were my mother, my grandmother and my sister. I always saw my sister like my second mum. If ever mum wasn’t around to give me the attention that I needed or yearned for, I would go to my sister who could somehow fill that missing void. I have a very clear memory of one hot summer night when a thunderstorm had rolled in about 2 am and as usual I was trying to hide away from the storm by burying myself under the covers with my fingers blocked into my ears. My mum had picked me up and had taken me into my sister’s bedroom where I slept in her bed for the rest of the night. The comfort of knowing my sister was there always made the fear disappear and when you have somebody in your life that can make any fear or anxiety disappear, it’s a natural thought process to want to keep them in your life.

Even tho I saw my sister as a second mother, there were numerous occasions when she would make fun of me for the hell of it. One Saturday afternoon my sister and her best friend had put a dress on me and covered my face in make up, changing me from a male to a female and they walked me down to the shops. From recollection of my memory, I recall having a pearl necklace on and blue eye shadow. Now as an adult I would probably see this as detrimental to a child but in all honesty, the thought of this rather hilarious. My sister had always said that people around the shops had come up to my sister and said that she had a beautiful little sister. Little to their knowledge I was actually a little boy. My sister always had a number of friends come to our house for sleep over’s and I can always remember being invited to play with my sister and her friends. Because I didn’t have any other friends I remember vividly being able to just be me – a child who might be a bit strange but loved to enjoy myself. I even recall one time in summer when I was playing under the sprinkler and my sister and her best friend Renee came out to play under the sprinkler with me. There were a number of friends that my sister had as a child and I got along with all of them. Perhaps my lack of social skills was just not clearly visible at this stage of