From the minute I walked in the store there were Halloween costumes that triggered memories of Lynda's costumes when she was a little girl. Then a lavender blanket that looked exactly like the one she carried around like Linus. One thing after another brought another memory which wasn't a bad thing but what I learned yesterday is I'm not ready for the sensory overload that comes with a visit to just about any type of store.
There was a scene from an NCIS that flashed scenes from Gibbs' past one right after another. Some were pictures. Some video clips. They were random and fast and it was a simulation of his past flashing before him in a particularly dangerous situation. There is also a video on YouTube that a young man with Asperger's has made to try and simulate how it feels to walk down the sidewalk in a city when a person has autism or Asperger's. It shows how the colors are brighter, the sounds are louder and sounds that you and I might not pay any attention to are magnified for people on the spectrum.
I felt like I was in one of those videos. By the time I walked to the back of the store, I was exhausted. My mind was flashing memories as quickly as the television version I described. It was just sensory overload. I've experienced it before when I've gone in to stores in Tupelo a few weeks after Lynda's death but I always attributed it to just being so emotional so soon afterward. I'd always end up in tears and headed for the front door. Yesterday was a different kind of experience and it gave me a much better understanding of what our children with autism must experience multiple times a day. By the time I walked to the back of the store and then immediately back to the front, I had vertigo and had to sit in the wheelchair at the front of the store while I waited for Russ. I wasn't crying. I wasn't really upset. I realized I had just experienced sensory overload and it actually affected me in a physical way as well as an emotional one. My brain has been racing through images and little video clips of memories for two months now so it's not a new experience but in those instances, I seemed to have more control over what was coming next and I could finish processing one before I was bombarded by another.
The mind can only process so much at a time. There isn't any place that I go that I'm not reminded of Lynda and those memories are precious. I've just learned from yesterday that I'm not ready for the stores like Dirt Cheap that have merchandise mixed all over the store. In department stores, you know where the children's department is and you can avoid it or whatever else is a particular trigger for you at the time. In other stores like Dirt Cheap (which I usually love) you don't have any warning of what you'll see next. So you may encounter one memory trigger after another within a few steps of entering the store. This was a huge revelation to me and I learned a lot from the experience.
One day I will be able to walk through the store and others without feeling I'm being emotionally assaulted but not now. It's no big deal. I don't have any need to shop anyway. I was just trying to make myself get out and do something that involved something I thought would be mindless and some place in public I could go by myself and feel there was no need to have Russ close at hand for security. So, I've been there and done that. I've added that experience to my understanding of how grief operates and I came out of it thinking Wow, that was pretty intense. No one ever told me about that one but I've been there and done that.
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