Can a single day at an amusement park redefine years of anxiety and personal growth? Let me tell you how it did for me.
After a lifetime of precarious financial living, personal bankruptcy, homelessness, living on the edge, dealing with eviction notices for late rent while juggling my young family, booming and busting multiple times, my financial situation permanently changed in 2012. I had finally passed a financial milestone. I had 6-figure cash reserves and monthly dividend income from my webinar company that was more money than I knew how to spend. We moved from our 2-bedroom apartment into our first home as a young family.
We also bought our first car in 14 years. We made due previously by living in the heart of Toronto within a very walkable neighborhood, access to the subway, and renting cars as needed.
We even treated ourselves to season passes to Canada’s Wonderland, the large amusement park just north of Toronto owned by Cedar Fair. We’d take our young kids there regularly.
However, this change in lifestyle came at an unexpected cost to me. I had spent the last couple of decades in a permanent state of worry and anxiety. I lived on the edge in ways I didn’t fully understand or appreciate until more recent years as it got unpacked in therapy. For the first time in my entire life money wasn’t a worry anymore. Unfortunately, my mind needed something else to worry about. It came up with a solution – health anxiety, my own death, and my own existence.
I would regularly feel like I was having a heart attack. The chest tightening, the heart racing. It filled me with fear. Robin, my wife, wisely pointed out that for the first time in my life money wasn’t a worry and my mind was finding other things to worry about. I wasn’t actually having a heart attack. I went through these episodes enough to finally believe this to be true. It wasn’t a heart attack last time, so this time it isn’t. It was still very unpleasant.
I lived in this anxious state for years. It wasn’t until 2018 that I finally found my way to a therapist’s office and started on the work I desperately needed.
That means I had 6 years of feeling these symptoms that I would equate to having a heart attack. Anything could trigger it. Running up a flight of stairs and having my heart start to race was all that needed to happen to trigger the fear and put me in a bad state for the next couple of hours while I waited for the feelings to recede.
It was not a good time.
So, back to Canada’s Wonderland. When I was younger I loved going on roller coasters. The first one I went on was when I was 9 years old. It terrified me, and I couldn’t wait to get back on. Through young adulthood I would regularly go to Canada’s Wonderland, and go on each new coaster as they were unveiled. I’d sit in the front whenever possible for maximum effect. I’d ride the roller coasters until I was dizzy and the room would spin later in the day as I laid in bed.
Jump forward to 2012, and now I’m at this same amusement park, taking my kids, but I would not go on the rides anymore. Just the thought of it would make my heart race. I couldn’t even go on the same rides I once did.
During those years Canada’s Wonderland added a couple of new world-class “giga coasters”. Those are coasters that are over 300 feet tall. I’d stare up at them, and how they towered over the original coasters I used to go on (and don’t any more) and it would fill me with fear at the idea of ever riding them. Even later when I was reasonably convinced it was never heart attacks and just anxiety, it simply was a bad time. Why would I subject myself to feeling that way for hours? Hours of feeling that way for a 60 second ride? I never did.
We had season passes at Wonderland until Covid hit, and then we stopped going. I haven’t been to the park in over 5 years.
This past week we had a couple of distant cousins visiting us from Italy, and my wife wanted to bring them to Wonderland.
The thing is, I’ve gone through tremendous change over the last 5 years. This blog is the literal evidence. I tended to myself and did the work I needed. I am not the same person I was back in 2019, and definitely not who I was in 2012.
When Robin suggested going I knew I had to go and I had to do the thing I had avoided all these years – ride these giga-coasters. Specifically Leviathan, which still is in the top 10 tallest coasters in the world that I actively avoided years earlier.
I’ve proven to myself many times over these last few years how I’m much stronger at doing things that scare me – in fact I lean into that fear whenever possible. I reminded myself that nothing is ever going to be as scary as facing my fears with US immigration. Those stories are intense. And I did them.
It was time to close the book on this other old story of mine with these coasters. And so I went.
It was a gloriously sunny day and the park was filled with families enjoying their time there. You could hear the screams of people on various rides and the enchanting smell of funnel cakes.
But I was there with a single mission.
I got into the long winding line for Leviathan. I rode with my oldest kid, who also had never been on it.
Waiting in line I could tell the anxiety wasn’t with me. I was already proving to myself I’m a different person.
Then it was time to get on the train, and they secured us in. Click. This is the point of no return. I’m not leaving this thing until it’s over.
And then the train left the station, around the corner, and then started going up, and up, and up. Clickity clack, clickity clack.
And it kept going, and kept going. We towered over the entire park. You could see the city in the distance.
And then finally we hit the top, and started to crest. I was seated around the middle. I could see the cars in front of me start to go over. The first drop is 306 feet. That’s being at the top of a 30 story building, and then falling over the edge. And then I felt the train speed up as it went over.
Suddenly, I wasn’t just dropping over the other side but being pulled at accelerated speed. Leviathan is rated at 148 km/h (92 miles per hour). I was facing down, straight down, 90 degrees. Being pulled, at this high speed.
And then we hit the bottom, and then up again. And then something happened. My fear turned to being thrilled. I felt a brief period of zero-G as we crested over the next hill, and then down again, being pulled down. And I started to feel the thrill of what this ride was designed to do – give you these zero-G moments. This was just like riding a jet fighter.
They take your photo while going down one of these drops, and later I would see what a big smile I had on my face.
And after about 60 seconds it was over. We pulled into the station. This 12-year story was now behind me.
I went on a rollercoaster ride of transformation. I confirmed I was no longer the same person I was years ago. That anxiety-filled person that couldn’t even think of going on this coaster. I was someone who rode it with a big smile on their face.
I already knew I had changed. Now I had the final piece of evidence.
I am ready for what’s next, whatever that is.
What’s an old story of yours that you’ve avoided for a long time? Perhaps you’re also a different person today.
Who benefits from you closing that particular story in your life?
This story is featured in my upcoming book “Happy2bInspired: From DJ Booths to Global Impact, Your Blueprint for Reinvention”.
