the Rumpelstiltskin effect

This is a chemical reaction. My reptilian brain sucks, basically. There are scientific explanations for why I'm doing what I'm doing right now. There is a shockingly beautiful, intoxicating, delightful, overwhelming, multisyllabic word for why my laundry isn't folded, why I don't have a new job, why there is a big fat plug in the faucet that's turned on full blast, trying to purge this feeling.
I read it in a book. I also paid a very nice hippie lady a large percentage of my savings to tell me that. I thought she was just going to tell me I was not right.I was broken. I really and truly assumed she would assauge me with kind words about how it was a terrible inability to do what I'm supposed to, but that she could give me medicine for that.Or worse, that all she would say was "Mhmm," and "I'm so sorry that happened."

But there are words. Real words that have an entirely different meaning. There are two words that mean i am not constitutionally incapable. In a thin volume, with a beige with darker beige cover are two words that turn my blood to the trembling neon hue of hope.

Tonic Immobility.

Those words are the biggest words in the whole world today. Those words mean that somewhere beneath everything there is a Rachel enhanced. Myself, aglow. It means that since it has a name, it can be fought. It means I will be my own, someday, maybe.

When a human being perceives danger, chemicals are released in the brain that are supposed to tell how to proceed. Our bodies are supposed to tell us how to go through the motions until we can really figure it out. If our senses gather that there is time enough to flee from whatever opponent accosts us, regardless of what it is, we are to flee first. Run. I could not run. i was not fast enough; there was not time or refuge. Upon the failure of flight, something rises up within us. More fear than courage, it boils within us if there is hope, and if our senses asses that we might have the strength, even for a little while, we fight.

For most of us those are the only instincts we'll ever encounter. The threat passes, or is fled from, or fought off. But mice, deer, possums, and Rachel's know of another sort. Mice go limp in the claws of cats, knowing they cannot fight, or flee. Deer stop dead in freeways, paralyzed in opposition to their very will to live. Possums play dead. Rachel's freeze.

We humans with our "higher functions" have another side effect of this tonic immobility called dissociation. We separate from ourselves. I would like to steal the thunder of this chemical reaction by saying that this separation is merely a manifestation of shame at being in the same category as mice and possums, but there is some parasympathetic nervous system chemically mumbo jumbo that would be very frustrated if I didn't give it it's moment. The privilege of dissociation is that I get to watch from the corner as I eff everything up. As theunstoppable ocean of my life breaks agains my immobile toes, eroding my perfect red nail polish.

The moral of the story is this, I got tired. I couldn't run. There was nowhere to go. And I was too damn tired to fight. So I froze. Like a snowman's pee.

But now, it has a name. Haven't you ever felt that burst inside of you when you can finallly put a name to the inescapable fears of your mind. It's like the delicious warmth of a sun-ripened raspberry breaking open in your mouth. Like the release of a bubble popping on a child's fingertips. The incubi that come to haunt you in the night are suddenly robbed of something when given over to their rightful names. The names seem to tame them, to lull them. It's as if you've been pushed against a wall and had your hair pulled and your nose bloodied by some horrible, freckled, snotty, bully and suddenly, his mother comes into the room and swats him across the butt.

It can be such a saddening feeling when it happens to the lovelier things of the world. It's almost worth knowing that when a sonnet tries to match that stomach as a hot air balloon notion it will fall nearly as flat as that chastised bully. All spiderweb flutterings of eyelash against our cheekbones can never compare to the real feeling of lips soft and kind and forgiving against our faces, and still we give them over to language. We seek out the words... AHEM>>>>>

Because I know it's name, it cannot have me, and that is my justification. In spite of the Rumpelstiltskin effect, I would bear faulty testament against all the sweet tinglings of my heart in the name of being able to look something in it's eye and call it it's rightful name.

And so I am encouraged, and thawed by two not so little words: Tonic immobility.

Thank you.