FND and Me
I am an acrobat. I am an artist. My craft is physical, and my medium is my body.
I have a condition referred to as functional neurological disorder (FND). Upon its onset some years ago, while I was a full-time acrobatic circus student training 4-8 hours a day, 5 days a week, it functionally ruined my life. It is a type of dissociative disorder that manifests through physical symptoms similar to epileptic seizures. FND is also referred to as pseudo-seizures or psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, although these are more outdated terms associated with a negative stigma.
On days when I eat appropriately, practice mindfulness, and don't forget to take my medicine, I am often able to perform high-caliber acrobatics and do handstands over 7 feet in the air. On bad days or nights when I do less than that, I fall out of my Uber attempting to get out and lay, vibrating and shaking, in the middle of the street at midnight, covered in dirt, and pitiful.
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Over 8 years ago, at the bright and bushy-tailed age of 20, after taking recreational circus and acrobatics classes at a now-closed circus school called Circus Maine, I decided, on a whim and with a blip of knowledge of the industry, that I was going to move from Maine to Denver to attend an aerialist and acrobatic artist apprenticeship program. After living in Denver, training for 9 months, and coming out of my first, real professional work environment, I was utterly humbled. I knew more, and I then knew how much I did not know. In Denver, I thrived in many ways socially, but my overall mental health was curdling in a gross, deep, dark gutter of a place.
In Denver, my specialty with the company MOTH (Movement of the Heart) Contemporary Circus Center was Chinese Pole. Many people synonymise this discipline with the dance pole because they may seem similar. However, the Chinese Pole is a rubberized apparatus, 8 to 20+ feet tall that wobbles, can bend, and is rigged from the top to a series of industry-grade cables. This is where I would show you a picture if we were together, but you will just have to believe me for now. Chinese Poles are meant to be climbed upon, inverted on, slid down and up, and more generally for beautiful people to make beautiful art through the mediums of this apparatus and our simple, fleshy, human bodies.
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And so, after my brief stint in my first professional physical theater environment, having developed a full 3-4 minute Chinese Pole Act, I moved back to Maine, because the love of my life and a relatively new circus school in Biddeford, Maine had opened. This was a combination that could not be beaten.
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However, my condition started after a set of traumatic events. Within a week of moving to Biddeford, I had gained an unexpected stalker. Walking down the street, this man was screaming at a young lady whom I barely even remember now. He said: “What are you going to do? You’re a woman, you can’t do anything, and you can’t defend yourself!”
At that moment, I had a series of choices to make. They included but were not limited to, 1) call the police, 2) step up to this broad, burly man with my tall, skinny, combat-inept body, or 3) walk away.
Choosing option 2 changed my life forever.
After I said to him, “You said it yourself, she’s a woman and she can’t defend herself. So, maybe you should leave her alone,” this strange, strange man chased me through a new town that I was unfamiliar with through a strange, foreign neighborhood for more than 30 minutes.
Moving forward, I would have to endure nearly half a dozen encounters with this man for the police to, as they said, “take it seriously,” at long last.
My dream then and now was to be a circus artist; this entailed daring feats of physical strength accompanied by grace and an immaculate stage presence that could captivate an audience of thousands. After these encounters with my stalker, who continued to pursue me in a similar fashion and who would not be arrested or searched for months on end, I started having trouble getting out of bed to train in the morning—my fast track to working as a performing, majestic circus artist.
My body was trying to protect me through psychological and physical incapacitation each day I awoke before heading to train during those years at circus school, but at the time, there were no medical professionals who considered this serious enough to consider what kind of treatment I needed to move on.
The blurry vision, full-body inability to move, racing thoughts, and petrified fear wrought my body with the wrath of this man, despite how far away he always was or wasn’t. It would take hours each morning of my 5-day training week of 4-8 hour training days to stop shaking. Still, I dreamed, despite the onset of what I did not know would be a life-altering condition that is exacerbated by excess stress and anxiety.
Imagine physically exerting yourself for dozens of hours a week upside down, which is exhausting enough already, and on top of it all worrying and not knowing when you would be approached by a strange man who wished you nothing but ill, anywhere at any time. The stress of preexisting anxiety and physical fatigue confounded by hyperawareness with a dollop of trepidation from moving across the country took its toll on me. I can’t imagine anyone who would not struggle in such a specific and unfortunate situation.
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Where has that dream gone now, 6 years later?
Well, I am working and performing, and more importantly, I am safe. I graduated from college with an undergraduate degree in Criminal Justice, I work my new art and craft as a journalist for my state’s only multi-lingual newspaper, and I have performed as a circus artist this year as of July more than I have over my past nearly decade long circus career. I survived a pandemic—shaking and stiff on good days, and unmovable on bad days—and yet I still point my toes upside down. I still feel the weight of my body supported by the knuckles on my hands. I still throw and catch humans to entertain astonished onlookers, and I do so in more beautiful, artistic, and aesthetic ways than ever.
It may have taken months of commuting to Boston from Maine for specialized treatment and an overnight hospital stay where they monitored and recorded my brain activity constantly. Still, I have come out on the other side. In 2024, while I still struggle with enduring symptoms—blurry vision, occasional stiffness in my right arm, and, on bad days, full body shaking, lying on the ground after falling out of a car into the street—I now have the wherewithal in my mind and body to get up the next day and work on my craft. I can travel without fear. I can perform handstands and dance in front of audiences of hundreds. I am an acrobat. I am an artist. My craft is physical, and my medium is my body. I am grateful for my medium, because even with its changes and stifles over time, it endures. More importantly, so do I.
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