fail-safe

1. a system or plan that comes into operation in the event of something going wrong or that is there to prevent such an occurrence.

   “the secondary safety system is indeed a fail-safe”

I am a walking, living, breathing, mess of a person. It’s very blatant, and honestly every single person that has met me knows this. I’m a long limb-ed catastrophe.  I always seem to get myself into stick situations and am somehow always shaking like a chihuahua at any given moment. Don’t bother asking me why because I never ever know why I’m shaking. Even when I’m not nervous, I’m shaking. It’s quite the problem.

ANYWAYS! I’ve noticed that my resting state is kind of just a constant, on edge, nervousness. So, as anyone WOULD think, if I were to get particularly nervous, it’d be awful. Like MEGA MEGA MEGA MEGA nervous. The opposite. I get care-free and pumped and hyped, even if I should be nervous. It’s like my fight or flight response shuts off. It’s the stupidest thing. What’s even STUPIDER is that when I shouldn’t be nervous, I am. Let me tell you all about the time I got fitted for contacts.

So, I march my merry way to the eye doctor, because I’ve decided I want contacts. Me and my dad get there, and I notice I’m a lil’ anxious, but after all I always am. I get a little nervous every time at the eye doctor. I hate the eye puff blowy thing because it scares me. But! I prevail and get it over with, and everything is fine and dandy, right? W r o n g. We go through some more tests and the nice eye doctor with a Minnesota accent goes, “Okay, I’m going to put some numbing drops in your eyes so the contact is easier to get in.”

In my head I’m like, “Okay, that doesn’t sound so bad, maybe just a little weird.” I take my glasses off, let him put the numbing drops in, and they settle. In the next couple of moments, I realize I no longer have control of my eyes, and this sets my body off. When I pass out, my vision will start going yellow before I lose consciousness. So here I am, vision completely yellow, consciousness hazy. At this point I don’t think the eye doctor or my dad can tell, so the eye doctor goes “Which one looks better, one or two.” And me being the nervous person I am, I don’t want to tell the eye doctor I’m about to pass out, so I say, “I can’t see.” And he just thinks it’s too blurry so he changes the slide once more and says, “What about now?” and then I proceed to say, “I can’t see anything.”

This is the moment where I think they realized, and they tried to get me up and into the waiting room, but as soon as they stood me up my head lolled forward and I dropped my phone.

You might be asking, “Now Emerson, why did you pass out in the nice Minnesota man’s optometrist office?” I was asking myself the same question. So I come to clarity, my vision is clear now, I’m shaking violently, but I’m conscious.

Wanna know why I passed out? My fight or flight response kicked in, so my blood pressure bottomed out too fast and that’s why I passed out. I WAS NOT NERVOUS, BUT MY BODY THOUGHT IT SHOULD BE SO IT MADE ME PASS OUT.

I swear, this fail-safe mechanism does NOT work in my favor. Now my mom even has to tell my dentist, “Watch out for her, she’s a fainter.”

If my body doesn’t figure out what it’s doing soon I’ll be m a d  m a d.