My Patronus is a Rubber Duckie

Image created with the help of AI using ChatGPT.

I suffer from Fainting Goat Syndrome. It's something I made up. Fainting Goat Syndrome means I get easily startled, and it causes me to react by getting super serious and rigid and perfectionistic and controlling. It makes me feel like I'm living with rigor mortis, which I know doesn't make sense because rigor mortis is something that happens when you're dead. I just feel all stiff and frozen. Or maybe whatever the statue ailment that is in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Oh yeah, it's to be petrified. The cure is also something out of Harry Potter. The cure for Fainting Goat Syndrome, as I know of it, is the same as the spell that defeats a Boggart in Harry Potter: silliness and laughter.

My deepest yes is to create an altar with every little joy, big or small, that has ever come into my life. A rubber duck, paint color swatches, a groundhog sticking its head through a window to peek at me. If I go deeper and say more, this yes is a gift to myself for holding perfectionism and fear of failure like a gun to my head. It's a redo for every time I got criticism or cold logic instead of softness and laughter from myself or my caregivers.

What I mean to say: my yes is what I live for. The yes I live for is joy, inspiration, peace, love—true love that is soft and makes your nervous system relax. This is the yes that I volunteered to come here and play for. It's not a stiff yes. It's a relaxing and releasing yes. It's a giggling and tickling yes. It collects flowers and pads around on soft grass--yes.

I'm going to keep going with my Harry Potter references. Me and Harry Potter have the same fear: overwhelming grief and sadness. This is what I fear—overwhelming grief and sadness. Harry Potter is the only one who is badly affected by the presence of Dementors. He faints when they come close to him, and it is explained to Harry that it is not weakness but because he has actually suffered tremendous grief compared to his classmates. He grieves the loss of his parents, who died to save him from Lord Voldemort.

I fear overwhelming grief, sadness, negative emotion of any kind—even anger, anxiety—because it's very intense when they come on. That's how the Dementors make Harry faint. They bring with them the feeling of overwhelming hopelessness, depression, despair, and sadness. It's so overwhelming that it makes Harry faint even though it's not real. It's not really real for me either, or in every moment I experience this overwhelming emotion. But it feels real, and it feels paralyzing.

And even with Harry Potter, the adults took it very seriously, removing Harry from the Dementors, and the cure in Harry Potter was chocolate. It sounds like I need chocolate on my hands. It feels so awful to be playing, painting, reading books, and enjoying life—to be knocked off by a wave of negative emotion. It doesn't have to be grief or sadness; even anxiety I find disorienting. It could even be a whiff of someone who sounds angry and disgruntled. It makes me want to take my yes, and my rubber ducks, and whatever else is making me temporarily distracted, and go play in the corner.

You know what? I know how to get out of the pit of Dementors. Yep, it feels awful to be knocked off with a wave of overwhelming sadness or negative emotion. I hate it, like Harry. It sucks. But it's the ducks and the little joys, and when I point out these joys to others who are still in the pit, unwilling to acknowledge the emotions they don't want to face, they don't want to play because they fear losing joy.

I had a thought that I wanted to add here, and that is that when I pointed out little joys—when me and my family and friends have been in the pit with the Dementors, where we felt surrounded by hopelessness—people have dismissed these little joys as frivolous, or like it didn't relate, or it didn't matter, or like I was talking about something irrelevant. And they didn't see how I was shifting focus, and the shift of focus is how you get out of the pit. So, shifting focus to what brings you joy, to what feels good, is how you climb back up and out of the pit that a strong wave of emotions takes you.

This is the second part of my writing exercise with my friend. We drew oracle cards. If you don't like your message, or if it's confusing, it's either not for you or being distorted by fear. I don't like this card deck that we're using. It feels dense and anxiety-producing. So I pulled a card from another deck: Find Your Light. I got, I am gifted. I get to choose my yes. Any card and any message or anything someone says is not a prophecy. I get to decide what rings my bells, what's true for me. It's true because I give it my yes.

I do not have to endure suffering for a noble cause. Yes, sadness and anxiety and bad things and negative things will happen sometimes. That's life. But I have a gift, and the gift is to choose my focus. It's choice and focus. I get to choose, and I get to choose what I focus on. When Dementors come in and try to steal my joy, I shift my focus to anything else. My yes is a power I wield. I decide what's for me. That's the power of yes. Because it is the opposite of no. It's a choice. It's freedom. Yes, is something you wield. End of story.

I've had this sickening feeling since high school  It showed up with intense burst of panic and fear when I stood in front I stood before a statue of Mary—that I would be chosen, like the Virgin Mary, to be a messenger of God. Sort of like Harry Potter. Fearful prophecies is what I call it, but my body, my chest muscles clench, and my spirits wither. This is not enlightenment, though it tries to say it is. It is fear, and it sneaks in like a cunning fox into my fairy glen to disturb my peace, snickering at the mischief it causes.

For a long time, I confused this feeling for the will of God, but God's voice is always a cross of roses and relaxes and refreshes. It reminds you of your choices and hands you back your swords of yes and no to wield at your discernment -It's actually a wand or a flower—whatever you want. God is in the butterflies, in the rubber ducks, laughter. God is in the chocolate. She/he is in the comfort, in peace, love, and solace, and joy. Go make an altar of joy and beautiful things and laughter.

When I shift my focus to the rubber duck or to whatever else that's helping me in those moments when I'm being hit by a huge wave, I realized that I'm not avoiding the emotion. The rubber duck or the little bit of joy or whatever it is I'm holding on to is helping me stay anchored as the wave passes by, and I can cry and have the wave of emotion ravage through like a raging river. And that joy anchor is what keeps me from being completely washed away.

I'm feeling all my feelings. I am feeling the depth of anxiety and fear that's in my body and the times that I felt alone to deal with these intense emotions by myself. I am feeling the abuse that I put on myself. I'm not even sure why. I think it was just a reaction to the anxiety. Once again, I'm not sure quite why. I don't think it matters though. But my reaction to the intense wave was to abuse myself with perfectionism and self-blame for anything that went wrong and to take hyper-responsibility for correcting anything ever that went wrong or anyone else's emotional responses to things.

And I'm feeling all of it while looking at a flower or a little ducky or something else that's on my altar of little joys. And the intense negative wave of emotion does pass. It is real, but it also isn't real at the same time. The most real thing in the world is: All is well. All is well. All is well.