Little Panic

by Amanda Stern

  When she answers I greet her through snot and tears and a clogged throat.

  “What’s the matter?” I can hear her sitting up in bed. It must be late.

  “I know,” I tell her, “that I’m crazy. I know now. It’s okay. You can stop pretending.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s okay,” I say, emphatic. “Really. It’s better for me to know. It’s the right thing to do, you know, to tell me the truth about me.”

  “Manda, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not crazy. You have a learning disability, that’s all.”

  “I don’t have a learning disability!” I yell. “I’m crazy. I can’t leave my house. I can’t stop crying. I am afraid of everything. I’m going to die. If I leave the house, I feel like people are going to kill me. For months—” I can no longer speak through the sobs.

  My mom convinces me to get a cab to her house, even though she’s only five blocks away. I sit on the side of her bed and cry and cry and she leaves a message for her therapist and I sleep in her bed and in the morning, I see her shrink, whose job it is to tell me I’m crazy. Unless, of course, my mom got to him first and told him not to. Or unless this creepy cabdriver kills me first.

  I’m sitting across from my mother’s therapist. Like every other teacher, tutor, doctor, and evaluator whose office doors I’ve tripped in and out of, no wiser or better than before I arrived, I know how it goes now, and I’m disappointed in the outcome before the session has even begun.

  “Can you tell me what brings you here today?” he asks.

  “I’m crazy and no one will tell me the truth,” I say, sounding completely crazy.

  “And why do you think you’re crazy?”

  I tell him everything: how I am afraid of the world, how I can’t go to sleep because I’m afraid I won’t wake up, how just having friends visit makes me throw up, and throughout all of this I have to keep my worries hidden.

  “Can you tell me what happens in your body when this occurs?”

  I tell him what’s been going on and when I finish listing the symptoms, I look him in the eye and confess again, “I’m crazy. These are all the things a crazy person does.”

  “And when do these things happen?”

  “I don’t know. There’s no one thing that sets it off. I mean, one time I was in a restaurant and they dimmed the lights and I freaked out and had to leave. I freak out in cabs and on the subway and walking down the street and well, just, always.”

  “And how long has this been going on?”

  “God, I don’t know. Since I was very young. A baby. Before I could talk.”

  “My goodness. And you’re how old?”

  “I just turned twenty-five.”

  “It sounds to me like you have a panic disorder.”

  “A panic disorder?” I say the words, never having heard them before, and they fit right inside my mouth. “Panic,” I say again. “That’s it. That’s the word I’ve been trying to come up with, and that’s it, yes! It’s panic!” I am so pleased I can hardly believe this moment is occurring. I have the name for the thing I’ve suffered from my entire life, and it’s only one word long.

  “I don’t understand how it’s taken this long for someone to diagnose you,” he says.

  “You and me both,” I say, practically punchy.

  “It’s rather obvious, if you ask me,” he says. “Textbook, even. You have all the symptoms, but because you’ve gone so long without a diagnosis or treatment, your condition has grown extreme. Without treatment, panic spirals out of control and branches into other disorders, which is what’s happened here. At the moment, I’d say, on top of having a panic disorder, you are also suffering from social anxiety, clinical depression, and general anxiety disorder. That’s the bad news. The good news is this is all treatable. I can prescribe you medication that will help manage your emotions, but I am also prescribing therapy. You must take the medication in conjunction with therapy.”

  I can’t believe that my mom was right all this time. Medication does solve everything! “How long do I have to be on the medication before I’m cured?” I ask.

  “Well, it’s not quite that simple. There is no ‘cure’ per se. This is a treatment. A lifetime treatment. You have a biological disorder. You don’t just have panic attacks, which are situational and circumstantial, you have a disorder, which means the attacks come on without any known pattern. Anxiety is hereditary. It runs in families. Your mother is my patient, so I can’t use her as an example, but people are born predisposed toward certain things—weight, let’s say. This doesn’t mean people are fated to struggle with their weight, but it does mean that if unhealthy eating habits are already in place when they’re born, they will, most likely, wind up struggling with their weight.”

  “So my emotions are struggling with their weight?”

  He laughs. “You could say that. But, as I said earlier, there are treatments. If one doesn’t work, we try another. Although you may often feel as though you are dying, you are not. What you have isn’t terminal, it just can feel that way.”

  I smile. I like this guy. “What kind of medication do I have to take?”

  “We’ll try you out on an antidepressant called Zoloft and see how that goes. It might take a little while to find the right medication, but if you have patience, we can do it. Just remember, you’ve spent twenty-five years unmedicated, untreated, and undiagnosed, so you can hang on a few more weeks or a month until we find the exact right thing for you. Okay?”

  I feel out-of-body, but in a good way. The matter-of-factness with which he’s said all these life-altering things astonishes me. I’ve spent my entire life battling some impossible, invisible plague no one ever seemed to see, and this guy did it with such ease, as though panic disorder is easy to establish, obvious to anyone who would take the time to ask what my symptoms were; textbook, even. I feel weirdly solid, like I’m a valid human being. I didn’t even realize my feelings were categorizable as symptoms. Panic disorder. The air is softer, expansive, as though the world has suddenly opened and is unfolding every opportunity my panic had once ruled out. Every single thing in my life now makes perfect sense: the connections I couldn’t bridge; the choices I couldn’t make; the strange switches the natural world and all its sunsets turned on and off in me. He hands me a prescription.

  “I’ll come up with a few names for therapists you can see. Since I’m your mom’s therapist, I can’t see you both.” Now he’s pressing another paper into my hand, with the name of a psychopharmacologist he wants me to call so she can help me find the right cocktail. “You need to call her today if possible, okay? You can’t just take medication and not see anyone.”

  I promise, and I walk out of his office into a new world. Outside, I lean against the building. The relief, like my panic, is all-encompassing and everywhere. It’s in the pollen dusted on cars, the dirty pacifier lost in the gutter. Everything I see and feel and smell is folded into my liberation. I’m going to be totally normal before long, like everyone else. It suddenly feels so clear. All those years of feeling dumb, of everyone insisting I had a learning disability, are about to melt away, while my panic, my gloriously treatable panic, will be eradicated with a pill. I’m not just going to change; I’m going to be a brand-new me. For just a moment, I imagine returning to my eleven-year-old self, walking down that hall with an unwavering confidence behind Dr. Rivka, and whispering from the future, No matter what she asks you, tell her your symptoms. But then I’m back and I think, it took only twenty-five years, but you got what you’ve always wanted. What now?

  Forever Mama

  I miss Frankie, I miss Javier, and I miss my home. Maybe if I had gotten Pilot now, when I feel more confident as a caretaker, I’d have been able to make it work. Now, at least I realize that I can be someone’s safe thing, the way I was for Frankie. But now that I will never be a mom, at least to a baby of my own, whose safe thing will I be? Maybe I can find Pilot somehow and get her back. When I fir
st started thinking about having a baby, I read parenting books, but I didn’t do that before I got Pilot. But maybe I should. I’ve discovered the more I teach myself about what I don’t know, the less afraid of life I feel. So yes, I will buy books about separation anxiety in dogs, watch videos, and find a trainer, and then I will search for Pilot. If I find Pilot, I can get a do-over and show her that we can be a family. I’ll tell her I’m sorry I failed her the first time around. We’ll be a family and maybe even move away from here and make our own secret garden upstate.

  But now, just like Javi and Frankie, Pilot already has a family. The one who took her when I gave her up. Even with dogs my timing is bad. I’m ready to give up entirely, until on Petfinder one midnight I come across a small, sweet-looking dog named Penny who was just rescued from a kill shelter in Tennessee. I apply for her. Out of twenty-three people I am the first, and I win the dog. It’s raining the day I pick her up and her fur is matted, making her look half her original size; it’s not love at first sight. I’m disappointed by how small she is, but she looks like she’s smiling. Her ears are black and floppy, her body is white, her belly is spotted like a cow, and she has a black pirate-eye. When the foster woman hands me the leash, the dog sweetly licks my calf and then sits patiently beside me. Oh, she’s lovely. I write a check, and the dog and I walk away, neither of us knowing what we’re doing.

  As we’re walking to Petco, she licks every leg she passes, trying to see inside swinging purses and absorbing the world with an outsized, limitless curiosity. Even before I’d met her, I had a short list of names, and Busy was one of them, so that when a woman stops and says, “Such a busy little thing,” Busy jumps off the list and onto my brand-new family. Busy Stern.

  In the cab on the way home, I am overwhelmed by the silence. I want her to like me, so I start to feed her treats. One after the other. We’re halfway to Fort Greene when Busy throws up all over me. Okay, no more treats. I scoop the vomit up using the Petco bag. Busy and I stare at each other.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  What have I done? Who is this animal? Have I made another mistake?

  Like so many of my OkCupid dates, Busy doesn’t look like her picture. Her nose is too pointy. She’s too little. I feel embarrassed by her physical traits as though they were my own. I hate that I feel this way, and by this point in my life I’ve had enough therapy to know I’m treating her like a narcissistic extension of myself, but I don’t know how to stop. In the apartment, I follow the books’ instructions, keeping her on the leash while introducing her to each room, but that seems to overwhelm her. I take her leash off and she follows me to the living room. She stares at me. Then she pees on the floor. I call my friend Laurie.

  “She’s not too little?” I ask, standing over the dog.

  “No,” Laurie says, standing next to me.

  “Too pointy?”

  “Nope.”

  “Maybe I should take her back. Maybe there’s another, better, bigger dog for me out there.”

  “No, this is a really good dog. Look how sweet and loving she is.”

  “Look how skinny she is,” I say.

  “You’ll fatten her up.”

  “I’ll give it two weeks. If I still feel this way in two weeks, I’m taking her back.”

  “You won’t. I know dogs. I’m telling you this one is special.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what they said about me, too.”

  After Laurie leaves I decide to face the potentially unendurable task of leaving Busy alone. I have a plan of action. Ten minutes, three times a day at first, and then longer increments until she’s used to it. I set up a video camera to film what she does, so I can know when she’s used to it. Yet, with all these things in place, I’m still terrified she’ll be Pilot, second edition. Deep breath. I wonder if I’m more afraid to leave her alone than she is of being left alone, and that’s when something strikes me. With Pilot, the rescue folks told me to do everything with as little fanfare as possible, so that Pilot wouldn’t absorb my panic, and I did that, but I’m realizing now, I did it only through my actions—emotionally I was still a mess. And she must have picked up on that. I was reinforcing the very thing I was afraid would happen. So now, I use all my energy to really not care. Or worry. Ten minutes, big deal.

  I walk out the front door and stand on the stairs and soon I hear her crying and I can’t stand it. I feel the pain that’s driving her to cry, I can feel her terror inside me, not knowing where I am, where I’ve gone or why, or if I’ll come back. I want to save her, soothe her, make things better, and my instinct is to comfort her, but I don’t. My mother did this for me, thinking it would help me, but it did the reverse. One thing I know to be true is that in order to get over a fear, you must face it. To save her will reinforce her sense that she needs to be saved, that she should be afraid and sad and panicked without me, the way I felt without my mom, and that’s a feeling I don’t want to pass along as my legacy. I didn’t want that for Frankie, and I don’t want it for an animal. I can hear her cries all the way from the lobby, so I force myself to leave the building and walk around the block, taking in the early July heat, and when I return she is still crying. I spend the rest of the day, and the week, leaving and returning, leaving and returning, in longer and longer increments.

  At first she sits by the door and cries. Then, after a few days, her cries fade to whines. Toward the end of the week she whines less but continues to wait by the front door. Eventually, she heads toward the living room when I leave and waits for me on the couch. And by the end of the next week, once she realizes I’m gone, she goes into the living room, grazes her toy basket, pulls something out, and begins flinging it from one side of the room to the other, racing after it. My sweet, vulnerable little dog is entertaining herself, and I’m proud that I have been able to train someone to be self-reliant, to trust that when I leave, I always return.

  Being able to do for Busy what I needed someone to do for me fills me with a certainty and groundedness I’ve felt only with Frankie. There’s a hole in my heart and Busy seems to fit it perfectly. Now I know what it looks like to grow free from panic. I know how to do this, I think.

  Busy is patient and wildly affectionate. She’s easygoing yet playful. She’s not at all like Pilot, and, unlike me, she’s quick to learn and easy to teach. She is my true complement. Where I am a hyperactive New Yorker, she is West Coast calm; where I am always in a rush and tossing back coffees, she is a leisurely European taking time with her espresso. But we are both eager to please, both dislike sudden lunges—by dogs or people—in our direction, and both dislike being left behind.

  At the farmers’ market I introduce her to everyone, and I feel a sense of family fulfillment I haven’t felt since Javi and Frankie. At the dog park I imagine she’s me as a kid, and I do what I wish had been done for me: I’m consistent. I stand in one place. I make sure she knows that every single time she turns back to check on me, I will be exactly where she left me. I don’t want my concerns to become Busy’s, and if she’s to take her cues from me, my cues must be steady and calm, even if I’m faking it. When I’m hosting Happy Ending, I set the tone for the entire night. From the second I step onstage, my energy and presence matter, because they tell the audience how to feel, just the way a parent’s energy and presence tell their child how to feel. If I’m strong and assured, the audience won’t worry about me, or the show, or themselves; they’ll be able to focus and be present. But when I’m nervous, they’re nervous and the show suffers; and over the course of the night I watch in horror as it grows into an insecure teen, awkward and constantly angling for reassurance.

  Over my life I’ve worried so much and feared so many things, and though many of those things actually happened, here I am, still alive, having survived what I thought I couldn’t. I didn’t turn out the way I thought I would: I didn’t get married and I didn’t have kids, and the not-having didn’t kill me either.

  As I’m watching Busy learn to enjoy independence, I th
ink back to a dinner I had with my mom right after I had to give Pilot away. I was proud of myself for doing a difficult thing, and I wanted to be recognized for it.

  “After everything she endured, I finally realized I had to do what was best for—”

  “You,” she said, pleased to be able to finish my sentence.

  “No,” I said, confused. “For Pilot.”

  This exchange nagged at me and I am only now understanding why. Years ago, she was me and I was the dog.

  I wish I had realized then that giving Pilot away to guarantee her happiness at the expense of my own represented exactly what a good parent does. A good parent puts their child first, before themselves and all others, and that’s what my instincts had suggested without having to be told. I chose her, and when I saw she needed more than just me, I chose for her, giving her what she needed. I chose her future happiness. I was a good parent at the exact moment I thought I wasn’t.

  I think back to another parenting revelation I had nearly two decades ago—which I promptly forgot—when Kara invited me to sleep over with her and May, my six-month-old and first-ever niece. I was besotted by the baby, and while Kara’s role in life had expanded to include that of a mother, her role in my life hadn’t changed in the ways I feared. In the morning, Kara let her snuggle with me and she crawled my body awake. May’s existence offered my narrow frame of feelings another layer I hadn’t felt since Nina was born—hopefulness. It was a tough transition, and while Kara was a natural, being a new mom was hard. She and her new mom friends were overwhelmed and depressed. I wanted to be as good a sister to her as she is to me, but I didn’t know how. I noticed that the babies absorbed the emotions of their caretakers. Their moods altered to mirror their moms’ or nannies’ nerves. I wondered then if that’s what happened to me when I was a baby during my parents’ divorce. Maybe I picked up all the bad energy and stored it like a sponge, but could there be a solid, calm Amanda, free of other people’s troubles, still buried underneath? I learned a lot just by watching May take in the world, surrounded by adults who loved her but who were all struggling on their own terms. I wondered then if emotions were transferred in utero, if my mother’s emotions seeped into me. All the inexplicable feelings I have possessed, it occurred to me, may not even have been mine.