Leggy Blonde: A Memoir by Aviva Drescher Read Free Book Online Page B

want anyone else to think I was losing it. Our family had more than enough to deal with.
    Since I’d felt better among people, I tried not to be alone for fear of that out-of-body sensation coming back. To this day, I still experience these sensations in certain situations, especially on tiny airplanes. However, at least I know what they are. I’ve never walked that particular stretch of Seventy-third Street alone since that day thirty-odd years ago. My brain associated the attack with that block. Although I knew there was no connection, I avoided the “scene of the crime” for fear of another attack.
    That first anxiety episode led to others, about once a month. An attack came when I least expected it. I was completely at its mercy. When it was over, I was amazed to have survived it. I was equally convinced the next attack was going to kill me or push me over the edge into lunacy. My nightmare vision was that I’d fall on the floor, kicking and screaming, and a crowd of people would gatheraround me, gawking. Not only did I live in fear of that happening, but I also feared being found out that I’d been having the episodes. I kept them secret, just as I hid the abrasions that could have caused osteomyelitis and might have killed me if left untreated. I didn’t want anyone to know. I learned to keep the internal sensations from showing. I might get quiet for a few minutes. But otherwise, I appeared normal. Meanwhile, inside, I was coming undone.
    When I was fourteen, I found a book on anxiety at a bookstore and finally had a name for what I’d experienced: panic attacks. I wasn’t alone. Other people also had episodes of sudden terror. I was so thrilled! I searched the book for a cause . . . say, for example, a gruesome accident as a young child. The best conclusion I could draw at the time was that I was probably born with a predisposition to anxiety and the accident lowered my baseline. My hospital and surgical history brought on hypochondria. Anxiety and hypochondria fed off each other. I became fearful that something would go horribly wrong with my body and mind. An unexplained bruise had to be leukemia. A headache had to be a brain tumor. I believed that any tiny symptom meant I was dying. Mom’s mysterious illness, and Dad’s obsession with weird food and healers, only reinforced my fears.
    My mortality had been violently challenged. Most people believe in their own immortality until their early thirties. They do reckless stupid things—drive drunk, smoke, party heavily, do drugs, and have unprotected sex—without worrying about the consequences. When they said, “Nothing’s going to happen to me,” they meant it. I never had that kind of blind faith. For every kid who was warned, “You’ll lose an eye!” how many actually lost the eye? One in a hundred thousand? One in five hundred thousand? How about the kids who were told, “You’ll lose a foot!” How many actually lost the foot? One in a million?
    Something bad did happen to me. I was convinced, If something else bad is going to happen, it’ll happen to me .
    Having your foot chewed off as a child affects a person.
    My parents sent me to a shrink to talk about it when I was seven or eight. The therapist asked me to draw the barn and the barn cleaner. Crayons were going to cure me. The shrink badgered me to talk about the accident. I hated the sessions, and complained until my parents let me quit. People have suggested that my anxiety was the result of not dealing emotionally with the accident. My response to that is: bullshit. Unless you’ve walked a mile in my shoe, you can’t judge my behavior.
    All I wanted was to move forward with my life. I never grieved for the girl I might’ve been. I never mourned for the lost part of myself—nor will I. I don’t do self-pity.
    I was, am, determined to have a great life. Not “a great life, considering.” I decided very early on that I could do it all. I could go anywhere and be anything. I