Blacked Out on a Cold Floor in Morocco — When Strong Becomes Self-Abandonment - Spain & Morocco Part 5
I recently went on a trip to Spain and Morocco that turned out to be one of the hardest experiences I’ve had in a long time. Over the next few weeks, I’ll continue sharing the lessons and stories that came out of it. My intent is not to rehash the drama, but to explore the human experience when life doesn’t go the way we planned.
Sometimes the most beautiful growth hides inside the messiest moments.
These posts will be written in a more personal, I/Me storytelling style, but no matter where you live, where you’ve traveled, or what you’re walking through right now, I think you’ll find a piece of your own story in mine.
They’ll be a bit longer than usual, but don’t worry, here is the link to the audio version if you’d rather listen.
Was I drugged?
Because I am half-unconscious and can’t seem to move my body, this terror-fueled thought is only in my brain. I become more coherent as the sensation of the cold floor intensifies on my right cheek.
What happened? Why am I lying on the floor?
The terror escapes the confinement of my brain and moves into a full-blown panic attack that consumes my entire body as I regain more consciousness, but still feel very cloudy and confused. My body still feels limp, but the adrenaline of the panic enables me to use my arms to prop myself up on the floor.
The left side of my neck and face is in searing pain. As if in a dream, I reach up with my left hand to touch the painful areas, which confirms that they are raw and tender. My brain frantically scans for any memories of what happened, but all I can remember is walking through the lounge area.
Then, I remember that I came to the room to throw up, but I don’t remember throwing up. I don’t feel nauseous anymore, so I must have thrown up. Ruminating on the confusion is only adding fuel to the already spiraling panic attack. I feel like I’m dreaming, but logically I know this is real.
I need help. And I need help now.
“Help!”
“Please help me!”
“I need help!”
Even though I am in front of the front door, it is closed. And everybody else is eating in the dining area with the heavy doors closed. We are the only people at the hotel.
“Help!”
“Please!”
As I regain more consciousness, I realize that the chances of anybody hearing me yelling are extremely unlikely. The helplessness is overwhelming, causing a secondary panic attack on top of the one I am already having.
I’m not in any physical or mental condition to peel myself off the floor and walk to the dining area, but in the laser focus of survival mode, my brain is fully aware that it is the only solution right now.
As if running off a program that my brain has just coded for me to run on, I pull myself up, open the door, and walk with intention to the dining area, focusing on one small, urgent step at a time, trying not to fall over.
Unfortunately, the doors to the dining area are large, heavy sliding doors that require a lot of strength, but I feel so victorious that I was able to get up and walk here that the energy boost provides just enough willpower to crack the door open enough to slide my body through.
The dining table has bench seats, and there is an open space next to the retreat owner. She is mid-sentence, but I slide in right next to her and say softly, “I need help.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I rise and start walking back to the room. I need to lie down on my bed. The retreat owner is right behind and, as we are walking through the lounge area, asks, “What’s wrong? You are ghost pale.”
I’m scared because I don’t know what happened and don’t even know how to explain that to her. I ramble as I start crying, “I thought I was going to throw up, but I blacked out and woke up on the floor.”
She quickly escorts me to the room and sits me on my twin bed in the corner, while she sits on the floor in front of me. I am trying to tell her what happened, but the emotional intensity of having two panic attacks at once is too much, and I can’t speak coherently.
She wraps her arms around me in a huge hug and whispers in my ear, “Breath with me.” She is taking deep, intentional breaths, which feel good against my chest.
After feeling a series of her breaths, I realize that I am hyperventilating and she is trying to regulate my breathing. It feels impossible to breathe right now, but I am determined to try. I begin to pay attention to her breaths and try to mimic her with my own. After a few minutes, my breathing is that of a sane person, and she releases the hug.
Much calmer, I explain, “We were sitting there talking and suddenly I felt like I was going to throw up, so I left to come in here, but all I remember is walking through the lounge area and then the next thing I knew, I woke up on the floor. I was yelling for help, but nobody could hear me.” I start crying harder from the memory of sheer hopelessness.
“Did you hit your head?” she asks.
“I don’t know, but my face and neck are sore.” I reach up to touch the tender areas.
“I think you fell on the door; you have a handle mark on your neck.” She looks at my face, inspecting for other signs of injury. “Your ear is bleeding a little.”
I reach up to my ear. That’s when I realize that I am not wearing earrings. I was wearing hoop earrings at dinner. “Where are my earrings?” I wonder out loud.
We both scan our surroundings and quickly locate my earrings neatly placed on the nightstand. One of the hoops is bent out of shape and has a chunk of skin on it. I panic and reach up to my ear, but thankfully, the part that is bleeding is where the ear attaches to the head, not my earlobe.
The fact that my earrings were off when I went to the dining room for help creates more questions than answers. I suddenly remember something else. “Where are my glasses?”
Again, we both scan the room and immediately see my glasses on the bed. Luckily, they are unscathed. “I must have taken them off before I threw up,” I assume.
“You threw up?”
“I don’t remember, but I must have.”
She goes to the bathroom to look in the toilet. “There isn’t anything in here.”
“I must have flushed it.”
“Do you taste it in your mouth?”
Hmmm, good point.
I take a moment to taste my mouth. “No. That’s so weird. I was so nauseous.” My brain is thinking more clearly now that I am breathing normally, but it’s concerning that I took off my earrings, seemingly after I fell, but didn’t have either on when I woke up.
“How long was I gone?” I ask.
“About ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes?!”
What the hell was I doing for ten whole minutes?
“Well, maybe it was only five.”
I feel like she is reducing the amount of time so that I don’t start hyperventilating again, but five minutes is still a long time to be blacked out. Also, the left side of my face and neck are sore, but I woke up with my right cheek on the floor. I must have fallen once, taken off my earrings, and fallen again. I have no idea, though.
What is happening?
I already feel betrayed by this trip. Now, I feel betrayed by my own body.
She checks my eyes and asks a few more questions about my head. After talking for a while, she leaves when my roommate arrives, then we both get ready for bed. I inspect my face in the mirror, and there is bleeding skin above my left eyebrow, a rip on my left ear where it meets my head, and a clear imprint of the door handle on the left side of my neck. My neck and jaw are throbbing in pain.
I try to sleep, but between the physical pain and not feeling safe in my own body, I only manage to sleep for a few hours.
I can’t move my head at all to the left, and I’m still in a lot of pain. I have taken ibuprofen, but it’s like eating candy to manage pain. Since I can’t turn my neck, I can’t surf today, but I can’t say that I’m disappointed about it. Although being in this much pain doesn’t seem like a break from the torture of the cold water.
As we eat breakfast, someone asks me how I am feeling.
I feel like shit. I didn’t sleep, I’m anxious, I don’t feel safe in my own body, I can’t turn my neck, and I’m in agonizing pain.
“Not good. I’m in a lot of pain, and I’m still scared about what happened because it may happen again.”
I’m met with a chorus of toxic positivity:
“You’ll be okay.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“Just think of it as a reset.”
“Maybe you’re just stressed.”
No shit, I’m stressed. This trip sucks!
I had an awful experience, and it feels dismissive to be encouraged to brush it off immediately, as if it didn’t happen. The anxiety grips my chest even harder.
I don’t need optimism right now.
I need someone to say, “I understand how you are feeling. What do you need?” However, there is one helpful comment.
“I have codeine if you need some.”
“Yes, please!”
After everyone leaves to go surfing, I try to take a nap, but my neck hurts too much because the codeine hasn’t kicked in yet. It feels lonely being at the hotel by myself, so I take a walk on the beach.
My anxiety is through the roof as the chilly, dusty air reminds me that this walk is only a slight relief from surfing. I’m scared about what happened last night. I don’t feel safe in my body. And I feel really turned off about how everyone else seems to be dismissing my experience.
I just want space to feel how I feel.
I feel angry at everyone on the retreat, but then I redirect my thoughts from playing the victim and blaming everyone around me to having an epiphany:
I have not been giving myself space to feel how I feel.
In less than a week, my flight was delayed causing an overnight stay in a twin bed in cold, rainy, Germany, I missed eighteen hours of my time in Spain, I still had to pay for my room in Spain for the night I wasn’t there, I messed up the bus station address in Málaga and had to pay $200 for an Uber to the ferry, the hotel employee tried to make their problems my problems, the lady on the airplane tried to make her problem my problem, having a shared room, sleeping in another twin bed, having a shared room at the same price of a single room, constantly covered in dust like Pig-Pen, the freezing ocean, the agility-less wetsuit, the crowded surfing conditions, getting hit on the wrist, and overall joyless surfing.
This entire time, I have been wearing the mask of the strong one, telling myself that everything is fine and that I can handle it. I’m tired of being strong. Everything is not fine. And I’m tired of handling it.
I regret coming on this trip.
There it is. The feeling that I have been avoiding since Germany.
I finally allow myself space to feel how I feel and have a total emotional breakdown on the beach, ugly crying and all, relieving me of the burden of suppressing the emotional weight of the immense regret.
(To be continued in Part 6)
Glow Tip:
When Strong Becomes Self-Abandonment
In Morocco, I kept blaming everyone else for how misunderstood I felt. I told myself: they aren’t giving me space to feel my feelings about this experience.
But the truth is, nothing externally was withholding that from me. I was doing it to myself.
In less than a week, I had been through an emotional rollercoaster, powering through the discomfort and pretending I was fine.
But that day, standing on the edge of the ocean, I realized:
I wasn’t unsafe because of what was happening around me. I was unsafe because I was abandoning myself inside it.
When I finally stopped running from the discomfort and just let myself feel the fear, the exhaustion, and the grief, my body unclenched. My breath returned. My nervous system finally got the message it had been waiting for: you’re safe now.
That’s what emotional safety really is. Learning to create calm inside yourself despite the world blowing up around you.
Because when you can hold space for your own experiences, you stop needing anyone else to.
And that’s when you glow from the inside out.
Video version: https://youtu.be/txJ9xauVUz0
Ready to stop running from your feelings?
For years, you’ve looked for safety outside of you in approval, certainty, control, and perfection. You’ve bent, performed, and silenced yourself, hoping the world would make you feel secure.
But true safety isn’t out there. It begins the moment you give yourself permission to feel and honor your fear, your exhaustion, and your grief, without rushing, numbing, or apologizing.
The more you create space for your own experience,
the more your body relaxes,
the more your mind stops spinning,
and the more you realize that you don’t need anyone else to make you safe.
If you’re ready to finally feel grounded, steady, and truly at home in your own skin…
Then, it’s time to book your free Find Your Glow session.
👉 https://www.runninginslippers.com/work-with-me
Here’s what you’ll get:
Clarity – Identify the hidden patterns blocking your confidence, connection, and joy.
Compassion – Gently reconnect with your emotions and inner voice (without judgment).
Confidence – Leave with a personalized next-step plan to reignite your glow.
Because glowing isn’t about needing the world to be calm. It’s about trusting that you are your own safety.
With love and fire,
Angie
