By 2012 my life was on a trajectory I hadn’t experienced before. Real financial stability. I had huge monthly dividends arriving, had moved out of my apartment, had a bank account flush with cash and for the first time in my life nothing to worry about.
There was one fly in the ointment though – my brain was so conditioned to worry, to my precarious life, to living on the edge, that when I had solved a huge part of that it needed to find something else to latch on to. It did with my health.
Suddenly I had huge health anxiety. Every time I got winded, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Every time I felt my heart beating, it felt abnormal. The anxiety trap I found myself in often triggered a racing heart, which kept making me scared.
Then my mind went to cancer. A benign lump on my body that I’ve had for 10 years, that had been checked out and cleared through MRI all of a sudden had new menace. Something had changed, I was convinced. It had grown, and this time it was going to kill me.
This constant health anxiety triggered an even worse outcome – a full blown existential crisis. For about 5 months, the entire summer of 2012, I was consumed with thoughts of death, of what happens (or doesn’t happen). From the moment I woke up, to the moment I fell asleep, that awareness of my death was with me. It was unrelenting, exhausting and brutal.
All because my life was at its best.
I can recall watching the opening ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics that summer. There was a part of it telling the story of the industrial revolution, about how man conquered nature, the sounds of trees falling, and some of the most beautiful music I can remember hearing, and I bawled my eyes out.
I was a wreck and I had no idea what to do.
Finally towards the end of that summer a memory came back to me. Of my youth, of the countless hours I spent in arcades. About my young wish of having a pinball machine in my home. What a luxury.
And I realized in that moment, with my income, and my home, I could actually do it. And I did.
I found a pinball community online. I researched and found an amazing pinball machine, a brand new state-of-the-art one. New in box. It was a lot of money but my wife, Robin, told me “You deserve it”. With her blessing, I ordered it.
I felt like a kid at Christmas. A feeling I had not felt in a very long time. The anticipation, the waiting. Those feelings of being a kid again overtook the existential crisis and health anxiety. I was so happy.
The game arrived. A huge box. We unpacked it, set it up in the basement, and it was awesome.
It was so awesome I bought another pinball a month later. And then another. And then another. And then I filled all available space in the basement with 5 pinball machines. Robin enjoyed decorating the basement to look like an arcade.
We had people over. I joined the local pinball league and made the first new friends I had made in over 10 years. It was glorious.
And when it came time to buy a new home, we made sure it could support my crazy idea of building a secret arcade. We disqualified homes that could not do that. And then we found one. And we did it. And I filled it with 15 pinball machines and a Pac Man machine and custom neon and tokens and merchandise and I fully realized this crazy idea I had.
The problem was I had only put a Band-aid on a gunshot wound.
I hadn’t dealt with the real work that I needed, my underlying crisis.
When internet trolls attacked me and my arcade, out of jealousy, they weren’t just criticizing some things I owned, but were inflicting terrible damage on a hurting human being.
I was struggling with crippling imposter syndrome, anxiety, and my relationships with people were being affected. Buying things was no longer helping me.
By 2018 I finally made the real steps to recovery and my own inner peace and happiness, starting with getting myself into pysychotherapy, followed by a full-time dedication to self-work.
And then an interesting thing happened last year. I woke up one morning realizing, I didn’t need to own those pinball machines any more. They were just “stuff”, possessions. I was happy I executed my crazy idea, and now it was complete and I could let them go. I sold many of my pinball machines.
The true value was the friendships I created in the pinball community and I treasure those. I still play with my league every week (during non-covid times), but the owning of things was less important.
And I realize now, that’s the true value of my own mental health and progress. My own peace.
Where have you been applying Band-aids to yourself in your own life, and what might be the next step you take for lasting healing?
