Little Panic

by Amanda Stern

  Life is not marked by “aha” moments. There are no narrative conveniences that give our messy stories the tidy shape of a novel or a movie, but there are occasional bouts of epiphany; and recognizing that my grandmother’s agitation was anxiety led me to widen my scope, silently probing others for signals that they, too, were anxious. With practice, I began to see it in my friends, which made me feel less alone and less defective. And then, one day, as I was joking at my own expense—as I often do—and a friend said, “Why do you always do that? Make jokes out of your sadness?” the roots exposed themselves to me, and I realized my dad’s jokes weren’t meant to hurt my feelings; he joked because my fear of him left him feeling rejected. Recognizing in others what I thought existed only in me gave me a context for their shortcomings, and I was overwhelmed by compassion. I couldn’t see what they suffered from because I suffered from it, and they couldn’t see what I suffered from because they suffered from it.

  Anxiety, as the doctor had said, is inherited; it runs in families. In retrospect, that seems so obvious. We can’t recognize in others what we can’t see in ourselves. My suffering went undiagnosed all those years not because they weren’t looking, but because they couldn’t recognize what they saw. For better or worse, we can teach others only what we understand. I’ve walked through the world like a subject in search of its story. In my family, we always looked to others to tell us who we were. We asked, What’s wrong with this picture? What does not belong? Each person begins, after all, as a story other people tell. And when we fall outside the confines of our common standards, we will assume our deficits define us.

  From birth to death, we are measured and weighed, plotted on a line of percentile curves and compared against an invisible normal. We are appraised on our ability to answer questions whose responses are either right or wrong, which telegraphs to us that we are either right or wrong. We are tested, examined, assessed, and evaluated, and the numerical-value results become who we are—but it’s in the chasm between “you” and that invisible normal where anxiety grows, telling you there’s been an error and the error is you.

  This is where I spent my life, wasting my cleanest fuel on a misguided channel-crossing away from who I was and toward some interpretation of who I was supposed to be. At first I thought my feelings were the learning disability, until I realized it was my brain they were after. Beyond “learning disabled,” I was told so little, not even the name for the disability they said was “mine.” When I tried to get answers, my questions hung there without closure, and that incompleteness seeped through me, cementing worry into belief that what was slow and different about me was my own brain; that I was stupid. Where I thought one thing was the matter with me, now I understood there were two. The accumulated efforts to correct me left me feeling defective, and my inability to be fixed became my identity, and it’s followed me all the way here.

  The message to people who learn differently, who are poor test takers, or who display any physical, emotional, or intellectual variance, is that we’re not who we should be, and who we are isn’t right. My fear and my conviction were the same: that I was the flaw in the universe; the wrongly circled letter in our multiple-choice world. This terrible truth binds us all: fear that there’s a single, unattainable, correct way to be human. We rely on measures that disregard human characteristics such as empathy and emotion to tell us who we are.

  Unconsciously, we consider these results our worth, and we shrink or expand our self-image to fit inside these notions, but we are not our results, just as we are not who other people imagine us to be, and yet we are placed and displaced according to these returns. We spend our lives unwittingly applying this system of measurement ourselves, raising our children on it, and teaching them to pass it down.

  I dragged my youthful beliefs into adulthood, granting myself the grand fears of my childhood by building a type of altar to my concerns and making good on old worries. When I was finally diagnosed at age twenty-five, I had to accept a different truth and learn a new way to be me.

  In the end, so many of the things I feared would happen, happened. People died; they disappeared; we lost our house. It’s all come true, and here I am now, living inside the very future I feared, imagining it would kill me. Yet I am okay; I am alive. While I didn’t get the things I assumed I’d have, I did get the one thing I’ve been seeking since I was little: a name for my suffering, and something else—the will to go toward my fears, to feel my awful feelings and live with discomfort and uncertainty in a life that often feels too hard for me.

  I’ve spent my life trying to become the story of myself someone else was telling. I have been looking outside to tell myself who I am; I’ve been looking everywhere for a family to call my own, but it’s me. I’m my family. And Busy is my family. Frankie Bird, the baby I never had, she is also my family. She’s the part of me that never happened, but she’s still a part of me. All these years, she’s always been the family whose story I never got to tell.

  For the Patz family, Etan became a story that the world can’t stop telling, but what we know of the boy himself are the externals: his height and weight, the outfit he was wearing, the bag he was carrying, his route, and every theory that surrounded him, but we never heard his voice or knew what his laugh sounded like. We know only our version of him, and as such, who he was could be only the boy we invented. Etan could be Etan only to his family; to the rest of us, he was a representation, a symbol of our fears for ourselves and our children.

  I used to think the closest I’d ever get to having a family happened already, that perfect April when I lived with Javi and Frankie on the small island off the coast of Maine, but I’ve since realized that family isn’t just a feeling, it’s a manner of action. I’ve spent years gathering supporting arguments for my claim that not creating a family of my own means I’m deficient and I’ve failed, without ever redefining for myself what creating a family of my own actually means. I was chasing an insular, closed system when I’m not an insular and closed person. Family is what happens between people, it’s the support you provide and receive, it’s the connections you build, it’s pushing and pulling toward maturation, and it’s witnessing. Every meaningful conversation I strike with strangers, the connections I have with my friends’ children, the dedication to my friendships, the dinners I have with my neighbors, the morning chats with my friends from the coffee shop, my Saturday afternoons at the farmers’ market, time spent with my family of origin, and every moment I’m with Busy is me creating and expanding a family of my own. Family is connection, and all I’ve ever wanted in my life is to connect with others. Just like my panic disorder, I’ve had a family this whole time. All that’s been missing was its name.

  Acknowledgments

  How do you write a book about intelligence when you don’t think you’re smart? How do you tackle a memoir about anxiety when you have a panic disorder? These are the questions I wrestled with for the near decade I spent avoiding this book. As my friends and fellow authors published one book after another, I sat at home, stunned in front of my computer, ashamed, filled with dread, and unable to move forward until I wrote this book that I could not write.

  Without my family, friends, therapist, psychiatrist, antidepressants, the ghosts of loved ones, a few ex-boyfriends, and my dog, Busy, I would still be sitting in front of my laptop debilitated by fear and preemptively gutted by imaginary bad reviews. In the four years it took to write this, I was provided with support, guidance, reassurance, advice, dinners, patronage, early reads, late reads, emergency reads, tough love, and belief that my anxiety was bad enough to write about from this spectacular group of people: Nelly Reifler, Lynne Tillman, Robert Lopez, Melissa Febos, Julie Orringer, Maria Popova, Eva Karen Barbarossa, Megan Summers, Fiona Maazel, Nell Freudenberger, Lisa Edelstein, and Tenley Zinke. Space and time to write, swim, garden, eat, breathe, play archery, and participate in the occasional séance in Bearsville, New York, were made possible due to the blind generosity of Neil Gaiman an
d Amanda Palmer, at whose home I wrote a substantial amount of this book.

  When I needed them, Sarah Manguso and Andrew Solomon came through like warrior ninjas with brilliant presale blurbs, followed soon after by Darin Strauss, A. M. Homes, Meg Wolitzer, and Alexandra Kleeman. And all the while, my writers group saw me through and cheered me on. My secret weapons were my agent, Bill Clegg, and my editor, Millicent Bennett. Together, and separately, they lifted, reshaped, cut, rearranged, and helped me create a narrative that matched the one I’d carried, without words, inside me for decades. And what’s more, they did it with the warmth and kindness of your long-practicing primary-care physician. (Please never retire.) For putting up with my anxious phone calls (one in actual tears), and for being hands-down lovely, I thank the Clegg Agency Team: Chris Clemans, David Kambhu, Simon Toop, and Marion Duvert. My gratitude to those at Grand Central for their belief, excitement, and effort, specifically: Caitlin Mulrooney-Lyski, Andrew Duncan, Joe Benincase, Liz Connor, Meriam Metoui, Ali Cutrone, Ben Sevier, Carolyn Kurek, Brian McLendon, Rachel Hairston, Karen Kosztolnyik, Karen Torres, and Michael Pietsch. I’m indebted to my brilliant cousin Sam Terris for his publicity help, and Gretchen Koss, I can’t remember who introduced us, but however we met, I’m forever grateful. (JK, Kimberly Burns—you’re the best.)

  Toward the end, when I nearly called the whole thing off, Kara and Eddie Stern led me across an invisible bridge and never once joked about pushing me off. Throughout it all, quietly, and in the background, Judith Rustin raised me up with her wisdom, counsel, and encouragement each time I sank, and Joseph Squitieri kept me balanced. In less than two minutes, Dr. Steven Friedfeld saw in me what no one else did, and promptly saved my life.

  To all of you—my love, appreciation, and gratitude.

  But we’re not done!

  For letting me write about them, special thanks to all my Stern and Stuart siblings: Kara, Eddie, Nick, Rebecca, Nina, Jes, Jms, and M. And my aunt Maggie Stern Terris, for always believing in me, and giving me the first round of incredible notes. While she refuses to learn how to read, I still must thank my furry, hypoallergenic heart, Busy Stern, for her patience, and for understanding what “Ten more minutes!” means. And, if you will reference the dedication, my parents, Eve and Eddie.

  Finally—to you, dear book, I’m so glad I wrote you, and I’m so glad to be done.

  About the Author

  Amanda Stern was born in New York City and raised in Greenwich Village. She is the author of The Long Haul and also eleven books for children written under the pseudonyms Fiona Rosenbloom and AJ Stern. In 2003, she founded the Happy Ending Music and Reading Series, a long-running and beloved event that became an essential part of the New York City literary landscape. She lives in Brooklyn with her dog, Busy.

  Also by Amanda Stern

  The Long Haul

  Reading Group Guide

  Discussion Questions

  Little Panic takes place in two narrative moments: when Amanda is a young child growing up in lower Manhattan, and when she is facing down adult relationships and larger life choices. In both cases, she seems to be craving one thing: a family. Discuss the different kinds of families she finds, or loses, over the course of the book. Do you agree with her choices?

  In Chapter 2, Stern describes feeling as if she is “not the right kind of human.” What does she mean by this? Do you agree that there is such a thing as a “right” way to be human?

  Discuss the narrative importance of the “secret garden” and Amanda’s childhood home on MacDougal Street. How does her relationship to that house change, or not, over the course of her life? Have you ever had a house, or physical space, that served a similar purpose in your own life?

  Amanda’s life is interwoven in unexpected ways with the famous missing child case that rocked New York City in the 1970s, the disappearance of Etan Patz. Discuss the impact that Etan’s abduction had on her Greenwich Village neighborhood, and on Amanda herself.

  Stern’s narrative offers a vivid picture of the world through young Amanda’s child-eyes—especially about how she can trust the world, and the laws of physics, to operate. How does this narrative choice, to keep readers inside Amanda’s head, affect your experience of the book? Do you agree or disagree with these choices? How would this have been a different book if Stern chose to narrate fully from her more measured, adult perspective?

  Amanda’s mother responds to her fears by offering constant reassurance that “bad things don’t happen to children.” Do you think this was the right approach, or is there something she—and other authority figures in Amanda’s life—could have done differently? What would you do as a parent in this situation?

  Amanda struggles with her own desire to become a parent. What important lessons does she learn from her own life that help shape her decisions by the end of the memoir?

  One of Amanda’s greatest sources of panic is that the people she loves will disappear. Talk about how her experiences with Melissa and Baba impact her. Do you see any echoes of this worry in her adult relationships?

  One of the later chapters in the book is titled “A Word Never Means Only One Thing.” What do you think the author means by this?

  Did the experience of reading Little Panic and getting to know Amanda change your perspective on mental health treatment at all? Why or why not?

  Q & A with Amanda Stern

  You’ve had a successful career as a novelist and children’s book author. What inspired you to write a memoir? And why now?

  I spent a decade avoiding this book. Instead, I wrote a novel about intelligence testing, but it was missing something. So I wrote another book and another and another. Four manuscripts, all unpublished, were dancing wildly around a missing topic: anxiety. This book began as a way to let the panic out, but it soon became my sole focus, and I decided to dedicate myself to the project. The process was incredibly painful, although ultimately rewarding.

  The theme of standardized testing is one that comes up again and again in the memoir; you talk powerfully about how those tests affected your sense of yourself and your place in the world. Is there a lesson here for parents and educators? What would you want them to take away from this perspective?

  We come in all styles, and measuring the vast array of people with a one-size-fits-all model is counterintuitive. One size does not actually “fit all.” All means everyone. Think of every single person you meet in a day, in a week, or in a year. And imagine asking each of them the exact same questions. Their responses would be wildly different from one another, and impossible to score using one set of criteria. It’s a flawed system and it needs to be completely revamped. Tests are an accurate measure of a person’s comfort level in an artificial environment, not of what they know.

  I really applaud the parents who are opting out of testing. What we need are more options. We can’t customize the tests to each student, but we can customize the environments and the methods by which the tests are administered.

  What would you want to say to yourself, if you could go back now and talk to the little girl you were?

  I would tell myself to be really brave and talk to a teacher, tell her all of my symptoms, and say I needed someone to talk me through all my what-ifs.

  It’s evident that 1970s and ’80s New York City is very much a character in your story. Are you still a New Yorker? How would you say the city has changed? How has it stayed the same?

  I am still very much a New Yorker, geographically and psychologically, although SO MUCH has changed. All my beloved haunts are gone, the landmarks of my youth; the mom-and-popness of the landscape has also vanished. I’ve been in Brooklyn for fifteen years now and what’s most noticeable to me is the absence of multigenerations. I grew up surrounded by people of all ages, and I was friends with the people I liked. It didn’t matter if they were a decade older or younger. There’s a very specific energy to having three generations in a neighborhood, and I can’t find it anymore. What’s the same? The sky?

&nb
sp; You go on so many different emotional journeys throughout the book, as a child and as a woman. Can you say a little bit about where you are now in your life?

  I still have anxiety, but I am better able to manage it. What’s helped me (outside of medication and regular therapy) has been my decision to be completely transparent about my struggles. I’ve been able to do that because of the accumulation of people who, over the past ten years, have confided in me about their vulnerabilities. Once I realized what plagued me was universal, it’s just that mine is severe, it helped me relax a little bit more into the world. My dog Busy and I live very happily in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, two blocks from my brother Eddie, and surrounded by friends. I am dating on and off (mostly off) and mulling over the idea of living in another state, or country, for a year.

  What are you working on next?

  I’m not quite sure. Either a book of speculative fiction or a collection of humor essays. Or something else entirely that hasn’t occurred to me. Although I do have four unpublished manuscripts on a hard drive somewhere…

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