All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [25]
The role was physically demanding and draining, as were the logistics of the locations all over the Bay Area. One frigid morning I would be clambering over rocks to stare at a waxy corpse bobbing in the bay; that night I’d be in a police gym, training to fight like a cop. The length of the shoot precluded me from finding a rental property for the duration. The constant shuttling between sets and temporary dwellings left me feeling continually nervous and adrift. I was disconcerted by a sensation of always being in transition, always on the threshold of something else. It was disturbingly familiar. Without realizing it, I was reprising the pain and uncertainty of my dysfunctional childhood living arrangements, where I never knew what to expect next. This unwelcome déjà vu was fueled by the fact that my rental homes were in Marin County, just north of San Francisco, where I had spent those two soul-destroying years in third and fourth grade.
My anxiety that summer was compounded by the added stress of being apart from my husband for a few weeks at a time. I typically spend a lot of time with Dario during his racing seasons on the IndyCar circuit. I unabashedly regard my husband as one of the greatest open-wheel racers in history, and having grown up with remarkably gifted people, I find it perfectly natural to passionately support his talent and the rigors that racing at his level demands. I love the rhythm and repetition of going to the same events year after year, the arc each race weekend entails, from preparation to practice to qualifying to racing. But film schedules are rigid, like the racing calendar. Dario often flew thousands of miles to be with me between his races, and I cheered up when he was around: We would hike the Marin headlands or he would take long rides on his bicycle, and we often had company when both local friends and family came to visit. However, I was relying on him too much to stabilize my moods, and I found his comings and goings between races to be very hard.
I was plagued by insomnia, a condition I have lived with since childhood, which used to worsen when I was unsettled. Eventually my anxiety kept ratcheting up even when Dario was with me. I tried to make everything perfect for him: the right turkey for his sandwiches, the latest video games in my trailer, as if somehow that would make him happier, and if he were happier, maybe he’d magically be able to stay longer, and if he stayed longer, maybe I wouldn’t have anxiety. Follow? On the set, I was obsessing about my shooting schedule, making myself a nuisance to the hardworking production staff by constantly bargaining for later call times because I was so exhausted. I kept telling myself I would feel better if I could just … get fifteen minutes more sleep, come to work later, squeeze in this personal appointment, or whatever.
This pattern of trying to control my environment is an old coping mechanism that I developed during my chaotic childhood. By trying to arrange everything outside of me to be “just so,” I could occasionally secure a modicum of emotional and mental relief from the pain inside. And because it worked sometimes, and I had no other tools, I continued attempting to manage everything more and more, in pursuit of the ephemeral relief. By 2002, these survival skills were working against me. My emotional life was increasingly unmanageable. I was sick and tired of being so tired—I fought it all the time—but I had no idea what was really wrong with me, and I didn’t know how to change the cycle, even though