For over a year my life has been frozen. I’ve been wading through a world trying to not only erase who I am but drive me into the shadows. Every day seemed to bring a new effort to shrink my existence and take away my rights, Being a childhood trauma survivor, the effect is multiplied, pushing me back into anxiety, fear, and disconnection. I’ve been wandering through life mildly triggered and disconnected, once again questioning whether I can have a meaningful life in this world which feels so unsafe.

There are three typical reactions to a traumatic situation. The first two, fight or flight are colloquial knowledge. The third, the freeze , is less well known outside of the psychological and mental health professions. It can be a precursor to fight or flight as the body prepares to take one action or the other. It can also be a defense mechanism in and of itself, like the snow hare who freezes against the backdrop of the white, drift covered forest floor when the arctic fox trots by. As a trauma survivor, I often get caught in a freeze like that hare when there is no clear path to safety.

As a queer woman in The South married to another queer woman, we stood out. As a married girl couple holding hands or kissing or just being together we were intensely visible even in our small queer friendly town. At first it was validating to be seen, but as the culture war on queer folk turned to a legislative attacks being seen made us a visible target.

“Don’t Say Gay,” Drag Bans, Bathroom Bills, and other laws passed around us in Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee. I disconnected from knowing more.

I had grown up in hot, humid central Florida, where Disney World visits were just part of life. Every major holiday, visit by a family member, or significant life event seemed to call for a trip to Disney. The joyful escape into a world of fantasy had become woven into the fabric of my life. As an adult I continued to find joy in its embrace, first with my son, then later with my wife. But suddenly Florida was a culture-warrior on the front lines of battle. The state of my long adopted hometown was feeling less safe. My days got fuzzier. I vacillated between compulsively checking the news and actively avoiding it in competing efforts to be informed and to avoid obsessive immersion.

Then on a trip to Disney World we stopped for gas in Gainesville, FL. As I stood pumping gas into the car, my wife opened the passenger door and held out a bag. “Hey, Babe – could you put this in the trash can for me?” with synchronized precision, three other customers around us all turned and stared at me, at us – the queer couple. It had suddenly become personal and intensely uncomfortable. We flew to Orlando on our next trip.

Just wishing things would get better, that the world would come to its senses, seemed hopeless. So, filled with helplessness and unsure of a path forward, I slipped into a traumatic freeze. Falling back into the coping skills I’d learned as a child, unable to protect myself or run away from what was happening, I became stuck – frozen. My home, my career, my life was in a place which was becoming increasingly unsafe and unwelcoming. Suddenly, intrusive memories from my past were coming up unbidden again. I was going backwards. I struggled to enjoy or even live my life because I felt unsafe most of the time. My little progressive book loving town no longer felt safe enough anymore.

Then early this year, my own state joined in legislative culture war with 14 anti-LGBT bills during the legislative session and a ban on DEI in higher education where my day job is. Sure the ban was disguised as protecting academic freedom, but shortly after it was enacted anything with diversity in the title was canceled or cut. Somehow the threat getting so close, right on my own doorstep, helped get me unstuck. I caught up to where my wife had been for a while. It was time to leave before things got worse, before something bad happened to us, before we got trapped and couldn’t go.

Even though I had been stuck over the preceding year, we’d managed to explore places we could move to. Travel helped keep my mind from falling into the darkest places, so we checked out Albuquerque, Denver, Albany NY, Southern California, and Chicago. They all had their charms and challenges, but Chicago seemed to fit us best. It was the city of my young childhood and my beloved Cubbies. I’d always loved it. The towering skyscrapers, the expansive lake, affordable homes, great restaurants, and lots of culture just felt right. So as the need for action unfroze me some, we started planning a move by looking at houses and jobs. It seemed destiny was showing us a path forward, and things were working out. We were going to the Windy City and the safety of its warm midwestern charm.

And yet, fate still wasn’t done with me, I just didn’t know it. We flew to Chicago for a long weekend and picked the suburb we were going to live in. We met the Realtor we were going to buy through. We explored and got comfortable. Out of the blue, I got a call for an interview in San Francisco…then a followup interview.

Months earlier on a lark, I’d submitted an application to a university in San Francisco — my favorite city on earth. It was someplace I’d always wanted to live, but believed to be forever out of reach. So I never expected my application would amount to anything or that we could actually make a move across the country to one of the highest cost of living regions in America. It was a pleasant fantasy, an effort to escape my fear and pain.

An offer arrived for that university job in San Francisco. After we’d decided to move to Chicago, after we had made plans, told people, gotten comfortable with the idea, and even bought new winter coats. Now the truly unexpected was in front of me.

This offer seemed good enough that we could make it work. My wife’s company even had an office nearby. There would be no frigid, snowy winters. I’d evolved from being stuck, to a hopeful path to Chicago, to having choices. These were not just the choices of desperation, but between things I truly wanted. We decided to follow our dream. After having only visited San Francisco twice in her life, for a total of 5 days, my wife took a leap and jumped aboard for the ride. We would move to the bay area and follow my golden dream.

Six weeks later with all of our belongings in six suitcases and a couple of moving containers plus our car on a transport truck, we left The South on a one-way flight to SFO. That was three months ago at the beginning of this endlessly sunny California summer. Those five-and-a-half hours in the air shifted my life completely from where I was. Here nobody notices the queer girl couple, we are simply part of the cultural tapestry. We see ourselves reflected in many others. The laws work to protect our rights instead of the opposite. As I find my place in our chosen home, it has started to sink in. I am safe here.

Today I sit in a coffee shop with my laptop able to write for the first time in almost a year. I am finally thawing enough in California’s golden sun to find my voice again, to be present in the world. I am alive again. I never want to lose the freedom I have found here.

In the midst of this pandemic shutdown I find myself missing something many people don’t give a second thought. It’s not the kind of thing which those I interact with on a regular basis seem mention. It’s not social gatherings or sporting events. It’s not shopping, a girls-night-out, or eating out. It’s not even the carefree ease with which life was lived before social distancing in the age of the Coronavirus. It’s something far more pedestrian. I’m missing coffee shops as humble as they are.

It’s not the coffee (or tea!) I miss as much as the place itself. The deep leather chairs and hard wooden tables, the aroma borne of countless urns of brewed coffee and kilos of ground espresso beans which pass through each day leave a blank space. I miss the hustle and background hum, the clatter and snippets of conversation that blend into a pleasant white noise which soothes my mind.

I miss the feeling of being on my own in a sea of ebbing and flowing humanity. I miss the calm and comfort I feel of being alone in a crowd. That feeling of being surrounded by people, yet by my self is comforting and calming to some tattered, wounded part of me. In that liminal space between alone and not alone, I somehow feel safe in a way that often eludes me.

I’ve often wondered why I’m this way. Questioned what it is about who I am and the way I came to be in this world makes me so comfortable in such a space. For years I’ve known that I work best in a coffee shop or similar busy place where the world passes by. If I need to get something done, I don’t seek quiet, I go to the closest Starbucks. If I really want to read, the quiet of a library or my couch is not as helpful as a diner (with a hot cup of something and slice of pie) or a coffee shop.

I’ve long judged myself for not being able to focus in ways that others could. Only now and I starting to accept that I can focus, I just need the right environment. But why? that question burns at my mind. After some thought I have a couple of ideas.

To explore the first idea, I need to tell you another story. You should know my son got into racing as a young child. I blame the Pixar movie “Cars.” He loved that movie, but the real impetus for his interest was a Memorial day weekend NASCAR race that happened to be on TV while we were at a Mexican restaurant. The big screen display with the race was impossible to miss from his seat, and the screen drew him in as usual. He watched enraptured as the *red* car (his favorite color) led the race. Later that night he insisted we watch at home, and he was excited she he found unit the next morning that the *red* car (the #9 driven by Kasey Khane) had won the race. He was hooked. At the age of six, he had a favorite NASCAR driver and a race watching habit.

I assumed it would fade after a few months like most childhood infatuations, but not so. As the summer wore on and fall approached his interest didn’t wane. Living in the south, there just happened to be a track within an hour or so drive. It hosted a fall race. Against my instinct, I decided to take him to a race. Not the big “cup” race, as I was sure he would never make it through hours at the track. I picked a shorter (and cheaper)”truck” series race the same weekend and bought 2 tickets fully planning to leave after 5 minutes.

Full of trepidation, we arrived at the track and found a spot we liked -surprisingly there was no assigned seating. He seemed calm through the preliminaries and some practices. I was worried that as soon as the noise began in earnest, he would struggle mightily. My son has some sensory issues, and I was worried the extreme noise would set him off into a full meltdown. I had unnerving visions of having to carry him out to a quiet spot.

I sat practically jittering in my seat as the drivers lined up to start and the flag waved. I missed the start of the race, because I was watching my son, just waiting to bolt with him for the exit. His eyes shined with anticipation as the trucks took off. I looked for any sign of distress, but as the trucks made their first lap I saw something unexpected.

He relaxed. His shoulders slid down a bit, and the tension eased out of his body. He calmed. My normally high-strung, overly sensory sensitive child calmed into a relaxed state. I was stunned. After a while I asked as best I could over the noise how he was doing, and he said “fine.” He seemed as calm as when he sat with his stuffed bunny in my lap on the rocking chair each night reading books before bed. He stayed that way till we left about an hour later (after the first wreck.)

I struggled to understand how this child who was normally sensitive to some of the minutest sensory inputs could calm so dramatically in the face of that overwhelming wall of sound. I pondered for quite a while until later an Occupational Therapist (OT) explained to me that in some people with overly sensitive sensory systems a massive sensory input will actually overload the sensitive part of the nervous system and allow it to function normally. Kind of like how in high school chemistry an experiment showed me that a buffered solution barely changed PH even when sulfuric acid was added to it.

The overload of noise leveled out my son’s sensory response, just like those apocryphal tales parents sometimes tell of colicky children falling asleep moments after the vacuum cleaner is turned on. So… how does this connect to the coffee shop I ache for every day now you might ask?

Well, reflecting on my son’s experience makes me wonder if some part of my nervous system is in its own form of overdrive. I suppose it’s possible that I share some of his sensory issues as 50% of our DNA is in common, but I have an unfortunately more sinister suspicion. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a childhood trauma survivor. The world I lived in for so many years simply wasn’t safe. Danger and awful things could happen any time, with almost no warning. So, early on in my life at some level I became hyper-vigilant with some part of me always on the lookout for danger. In a quiet space, every noise, change in lighting, or even air movement triggered a response to check for danger thus pulling me away from what I was doing. This hyper-vigilance is actually a feature and diagnostic criteria of PTSD.

A coffee shop provides me with a level of input that masks those little noises and changes. It in effect lowers my threshold of awareness for things that would trigger my hyper-vigilance. So I feel calmer, and more able to focus. I think this is why I first started journaling about my childhood experiences in a coffee shop, and why I’m best able to process those experiences in that kind of space. I can often write volumes in my journal at a Starbucks with my headphones on and at home struggle to get down a paragraph. That alone makes sense of why I miss coffee shops.

Yet it leads into the other reason I think I find alone-in-public spaces so comforting – there is little danger for me in a busy public space. Almost all of my traumatic experiences happened in secret – behind closed doors, in the dark, beyond the reach of public view. A busy public space is the anthesis of that. Besides I usually don’t know anybody in these spaces beyond a casual acquaintance with the usual barista or perhaps crossing the path of repeat patrons on occasion. Not only were my worst childhood experiences hidden, but like so many others it was often at the hands of those I knew. It makes sense that a public place full of strangers feels safer to me.

So I spend my days missing coffee shops. I wait anxiously for it to be is time to go back into my safe space again. Until then I do my best to find snippets of safe enough time and space to write wherever I can.