Disneyland Paris: A Roller Coaster of Emotions… Literally

How getting on a roller coasters in Disneyland Paris validated my emotions.

I’ve lived most of my life being told that I’m too much. Too much emotion. Too loud. Too much of the wrong thing and not enough of the right stuff.

I ended up becoming exactly what was expected of me. I became not enough. I didn’t show enough love, and the little that I did wasn’t done the right way. I didn’t show enough vulnerabilities, leading to people not being able to connect with me. I didn’t spend enough time socializing, and so people thought I wasn’t fun enough. I became not enough.

Though I had managed to quiet down the tornado of too much-ness on the outside, the whirlpool on the inside tripled in size. Not being allowed to externalize my emotions led me to have to find a way to deal with them alone.

Eventually, I found that dealing with all emotions in the very same way was the easiest and most convenient way of not driving myself crazy. I ended up labelling all those emotions as Emotion, with a capital E. Just one single Emotion. And the way I interpreted Emotion was worryingly akin to how we deal with fear: by staying the hell away from it. I knew that Emotion was coming about when I felt a tightening in my chest, along with my heart making its way up my throat, combined with the inability to breathe. AKA, all feelings you want to avoid.

Through a fantastic thing called Evolution, we’ve learnt that staying away from fear is how we give ourselves the best shot of survival. Obviously, the bigger the feeling of fear, the bigger the threat. Now, if someone like myself interprets all emotions as fear, it concludes in avoiding a high level of any emotion. So along with wanting to avoid fear, pain and threat, I also avoided happiness, exhilaration, and excitement.

As a result, I’ve lived my life on a thin line. Not allowing myself to feel anything other than just okay-ness. And as a result, everything felt dull, without much reward in anything. Walking the line also translated into wanting to control my life as much as I could. I adopted an insanely strict diet, stuck to a schedule like my life depended on it, and avoided meeting new people – or even acknowledging the people around me – to avoid something unscheduled. My days became monotone, my memories became duller and harder to remember, and my life became… a bunch of nothing-ness.

But then I went to Disneyland.

I don’t know what even motivated me to go there… this is definitely an experience that I would have avoided at all costs before… believe it or not, I’d never gone on a roller coaster until that day. But something in me told me that I should go. So for once in my life, I listened to my gut and took a plane to Disney.

Now, this isn’t a story about how Disney re-ignited the magic in me. I didn’t see Mickey Mouse and got flashbacks to my childhood. I didn’t see Cinderella and remembered dancing in my diapers in the living room. This isn’t that. But I will say this: while walking through the gates of Disney, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time. Though I didn’t understand what it was, I knew that I was feeling an emotion over the threshold I’d lived under for such a long time. And then I felt a tear. And that scared the living shit out of me. I quickly wiped it off and went about my day.

I went to Disney with a friend, and she was definitely not a roller coaster virgin. She decided to start off slowly: the Snow White Ride, and the Peter Pan Adventure, la di da. And then we went to Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain. For reference, I was 12 years old the last time I faced the queue of the Mountain, and I literally broke my wrist running away from it.

I didn’t have much time to think about the fact that I was heading toward the Mountain. We had the fast-track pass: one second I was looking at the roller coaster from the outside, and the next I was sitting on it, strapped into the seat. No going back.

It took me a while to realize that my legs were shaking uncontrollably. I looked at it and tried to make it stop but it was as if it has a life of its own. And there it was, the tightening in my chest, and I knew that it was terror (or, at least I think it was… I hadn’t felt it in a long time). I wanted to ask to get off, but I was paralyzed. In the human categorization of fight, flight or freeze, I discovered that I was indeed a freeze.

My chest got tighter and tighter, my heart crept higher and higher up my throat and pounded louder and louder, and I couldn’t catch a breath. And the only thing I could think was that I hadn’t felt this bad in a long time. I remember thinking what a stupid idea this whole thing was. Why did I ever want to put myself in a situation that forced me to feel this bad? Why didn’t I listen to that one tear that I shed when walking into Disney? It was a clear indication that this was going to be too much. Why did I want to put myself in the situation of feeling such intense and violent fear? I was rethinking every decision I had ever taken that lead me here.

Are you any good at math? Until then, my emotional spectrum lied between both extremities of f(x)=cos(x)/5 . At that moment, seated on the Hyperspace Mountain, I was living and the bottom extremity of f(x)=cos(x)*250. Pick up a graphing calculator and draw it out. You’ll see what I mean. I felt like I was about to have a heart attack. At that moment, I was wishing that my right arm would go numb: maybe then I’d break into fight mode and get myself out of there.

And then we started moving. The train made its way up to the top of the mountain. I shut my eyes so hard that I gave myself a headache, and dug my nails so far deep into the palm of my hands that they bled. Not only had I never been on a roller coaster, but I was also feeling emotions for the first time in years (terror of all things). My life was no longer in my control, I didn’t know what was going to happen, and I was frozen. The further up the train got, the more intense everything became.

And the next thing I remember was starting to scream as I had never screamed before. At that moment, I forgot about everything I had ever learnt, anything I had ever feared. For the first time in years, I wasn’t thinking about what I was going to eat next, I wasn’t thinking about my insecurities or the people I had lost. I wasn’t thinking about the future or the past. I was only thinking about the present. And I was feeling every twist and every turn and every loop. And for the first time in years, I was just living my emotions in plain sight, and loudly. I was too loud and too frightened and too exhilarated all at the same time. I was too much, but at the same time, I was too much along with everyone else around me. “Let go of all your pent-up emotions,” my friend had told me. And I did, I really really did.

And then it ended way too quickly. The train came to a stop, the harness released, and I was asked to step out, half expecting people to be staring at me for screaming too much. But no one cared, and everyone went about their way. With my hands shaking and my legs weak, I walked towards the exit.

And then I froze. I froze because I saw myself in the reflection of a mirror: I was smiling. The too much smile that showed too many of my teeth and exposed too much of the asymmetry in it. And I couldn’t stop. The smile turned into a laugh which then turned into tears – the good kind. And then all of that together. And I couldn’t stop. It was a rush as if all the emotions that I had shoved down all these years made their way out and wouldn’t stop coming out until I made up for all those years of numbing myself.

I was too much again. And just when I was about to calm down, I look over and lock eyes with my friend. And I see her laughing and crying and smiling just as much as I was. Her too muchness matched mine. And suddenly I noticed that I wasn’t too much. I was the right amount. I was exactly as much as I should be.

The rush of emotions that stemmed from the roller coaster now turned into a release. I laughed for what felt like hours, and it felt so damn amazing. I laughed for all the times that I stopped myself from laughing, I cried for all the times that I bit my tongue, and I smiled because I remembered that I could.

And then I realized why I had to feel terror and fear just a few minutes before. I remembered why I must feel disappointment, disgust and agony. Why it is that I let myself feel low lows, and why I let myself feel pain all those years ago. I didn’t know the reason back then but it was exceptionally obvious now. It’s a package deal. Without feeling the pain of one extreme, I could never feel the joy of the other extreme. I couldn’t feel absolutely ecstatic without feeling absolutely distraught. It’s a package deal.

But here’s the thing: it’s absolutely worth it. The pain of one extreme is worth the euphoria felt on the other. The vulnerabilities that others know about you are worth the love and affection that you get back from them. The tears that you cry are worth the laughs that you’ve shared. The hard work that you put in will be worth the outcome in the end.

But to every rule, there is an exception. And mine is this: the tear that I’ve shed when walking into Disney was not worth the years of repressing the child in me, the years of shoving down Emotion until I was numb, and swapping my too much-ness into not enough-ness. Sacrificing one negative emotion is not worth forgetting what it was like to laugh until your stomach hurts and smile until your jaw aches. So be too much, and laugh too hard. Because there’s life is a roller coaster.

And suddenly, the tear made all the sense in the world.