Gerick's Odd Behavior At the Fleetwood Mac Concert

My husband, Gerick, and I went to see the incredible Fleetwood Mac Sunday night (after a day of humid 97 degrees– yikes!) THEY were crazy good and no complaints there what-so-ever. Worth the money. Worth the hassle of driving and parking and dealing with the crowds and all of that.

HOWEVER–!

Gerick was a pill. He was sour and snarly all the way there, but once we found our seats and settled in with our beer and wine, I thought he’d mellow out. But no! He scowled and kept looking around him and making mean remarks about the people… I finally asked him several times to please stop, because he was upsetting me. I couldn’t relax with his constant barrage of negativity. Even into the beginning of the concert he was unable to enjoy anything for several songs. Fleetwood Mac’s amazing performance finally won him over and he unable to resist their charms, but JEEZ! Getting to that point was not so fun. Later, on the drive home, he returned to his snarly behavior, much to my consternation.

So I spoke to him about it yesterday, saying he was acting like a sourpuss and it really upset me to have such a wonderful experience marred by his atrocious attitude. If I couldn’t relax whenever we do anything supposedly fun together, what’s the point of our ever going out on dates anymore? He apologized, but didn’t give much more of a response than that and I sadly shrugged and dropped it.

This evening, he broached the subject again and said he wanted to explain. Then he said he was on the verge of a panic attack several times, and nearly wrecked on the drive home because he had one while on the road. He was fighting his fear with anger, and it started almost from the time we sat down in the arena. He wasn’t sure why… but it wasn’t the crowd or anything (I’m the one who fears being trapped in a crowd sometimes) but rather the anticipation of seeing the band. For some reason, he felt on the verge of freaking out– and not in the squee-fan-boy way. The arena itself didn’t seem to help matters, nor the people he was surrounded by… things were bugging him, but he wasn’t sure what.

Gerick has watched me confront and process my own traumatic memories (what few I have) of many alien abduction (or related) experiences, and he said he realized that several things were ‘triggering’ his near panic. He was embarrassed and confused, because he wasn’t even sure what he was so afraid of… and his bizarre negative attitude was the result of that.

I was glad he told me and thanked him for sharing something he generally keeps severely under wraps. He doesn’t like talking about his issues or experiences much anymore. He really hasn’t much in the last 15 years. I didn’t for a while myself, so I get it. I only started “coming out” again after my post-traumatic problems surfaced following several contact experiences in 2006.

This personal revelation of the strange by-product of his “secret life” began a discussion that was very much needed.

I admitted, for example, never having been in a major arena before (smaller ones indoors, and outdoor ones, sure) that I had a funny reaction to finding myself in the tiered seating, looking out over the sea of seats and people. I was amused by how TINY the arena was. I had bits of memory surface about being in an all-white grand arena, full of benches as opposed to seats, with much more space to move around (not crammed together as in where I was Sunday night) and just SO MUCH BIGGER than The Rose Garden arena! Of course, I remember several times being in this place, either with a few others, or in some sort of massive, massive meeting of all kinds of aliens and humans… but most of the details are lost except in a very few instances. I didn’t feel the same triggers, however… The very prosaic, human nature of all the people surrounding me proved to be quite reassuring, ultimately. People talking and coughing and shifting in their seats and the whole, restless, noisiness of everyone. The DIN of the masses of humanity under the roof of an arena like that was also in stark contrast to what I remember of the Big White Arena– the sound was seemingly swallowed up by the silence in Big White. The few humans speaking verbally during massive meetings was very quiet in comparison to the entirely mute aliens surrounding us, and few of us verbal types seemed inclined to get into much conversation in such a setting– kind of like the attitude of being in a public library.

So I did indeed feel weird a few times, and I had some unsettling bits of memory surface. But they didn’t frighten me and I was able to stay firmly in the here and now reality of a bunch of people happily getting ready to hear an awesome band play. During the performance, moreover, the audience participation– clapping, singing along, calling out to the band– was also utterly and completely unlike any alien setting. HUMANS ARE LOUD! In massive groups, we can be intimidating– but sharing a collective experience of music and lights and artful projected backdrops was uniquely uplifting in a way that I was only too willing to surrender to most happily!

Meanwhile, Gerick was getting massively triggered– but rather than admit that at the time he fought it with personal anger. And we talked about how much we’re entitled to be angry. For one thing, having post traumatic stress disorder for a mass of things that you can’t remember and therefore process puts a gigantic burden upon the psyche of any abduction experiencer. The stuff we do remember and try to deal with (if only eventually) can be difficult enough. Some of it turns out to be not so bad and the power of it can melt away if you just take a little time to look at it. Other things are completely horrifying and utterly inexcusable by any human moral standards, but if you can remember it consciously, you can, with some help and persistence, lessen the impact of the original trauma. But by far MOST of what has happened to us we CANNOT remember– and that creates a huge problem for us psychologically.

Most abductees have some weird personal reactions and issues that remain a mystery to them on a conscious level. Like I became completely freaked out and sickened of the idea of eggs to break open, cook, and then eat. There was something about the appearance of a raw egg, broken, with the little cord of tissue connecting the yolk to the white that sent me over the top for several years from about 13 to maybe 17 years old. I got over it eventually, but I recall that I started being really weird about eggs for a time, even hiding eggs to “protect them” and carrying them around with me secretly (never to the point they went rotten though, thank goodness) for several months, in my early teens. Even at the time, I was entirely mystified by my own behavior and remained so for several years. That’s just ONE small, easily hidden, behavioral quirk that I struggled with out of who knows how many dozens– or maybe hundreds. I don’t know where it came from because I DON’T REMEMBER. But despite not remembering what triggered these behaviors in me regarding chicken eggs, I was obviously acting out after some event influenced me in a very powerful way.

I’ve said recently that I’ve learned to try to take a breath and take 2 mental steps back whenever I witness an abductee behaving oddly. I’ve said we’re prone to some bizarre over-reactions to sometimes unpredictable triggers (other triggers are pretty easy to guess at of course, once you’ve become educated in this phenomenon). And here yet again I see an example of where this is important up close and personal. Gerick was embarrassed and upset at his own attitude and behavior, and yet unable to contain his reactions for some time.

Its so difficult to find sympathetic people to share this burden with, and abduction support groups can be so healing because of this. But by the same token, those often subconscious reactions to triggers and resulting behavior quirks end up busting most support groups apart because the emotions and issues surrounding powerlessness and humiliation and mind-blowingly transformative paradigm shifting are SO powerful, and SO disruptive, that we abductees can have a rare talent for causing massively damaging drama. And we’ll turn on each other and ourselves and the truly well-meaning researchers and associated support people too easily when over-whelmed.

This recent concert experience has just helped to emphasize for me how important it is that I re-focus my efforts to finish recounting my memories so that I can move on to a broader discussion of these issues. There is still much more to tell, and then I want to turn my attention to how I feel and what I think about all of this. I’ve shared much in this way already, but I think if I fully share what I recall, my opinions will have more context and perhaps save me the trouble of having to rationalize my opinions quite so much. At Spiral\’s End: What\’s Left After the Paradigm Shatters is the personal paranormal blog of a woman that follows not only current odd events in her life, but recounts incidents from her past, including lifelong alien abductions, encounters with ghosts and other spiritual beings, and premonitions from either waking visions or dreams. She reacts and speculates about the deeper meaning behind these incidents and wonders– what is the ultimate reality or intelligence behind it all?