Category: nonfiction for mojo 18

And if there were a contest, and [this prisoner] had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the den, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady . . . would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending . . .

— Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”

Five years old, I woke, fumbling in the thick fog between dreamland and my Yiayia’s bedroom as my two sisters and I, in our pink cotton nightgowns, lay like matchsticks in her queen-sized bed.

It was a chorus of laughter, drifting in from the adjacent kitchen, that awoke us.

“What’s going on?” Tina murmured, rubbing her eyes. Eleni and I shrugged, so Tina, the oldest at ten, hopped off and scampered to the doorway to peek around the corner. A moment later, her head snapped back, her eyebrows raised, her jaw dropped in disbelief. She dove back onto the bed, sat up on her knees, and reported her dispatch in a whispered shriek: “They’re dancing! All of them! And I think Mommy is drunk! Pappou and Thia Kaiti are, too!”

Eleni leapt from the bed and raced into the kitchen as the waves of laughter rose higher. Tina followed, and I crept to the doorway to glimpse what appeared to me as pure magic: Thia Kaiti and Yiayia, my father’s sister and mother, clapped their hands and circle-danced around the wooden chairs on which my mother and Pappou stood, grasping each other’s shoulders to balance one another as they kicked their legs clumsily to the sound of nisiotka, the Greek island music crackling through a rusty brown radio—their laughter, loud and strong, like gravity trying to pull them off the chairs; heads back, eyes up, as if gazing at animal patterns in the clouds.

My mother emerged as a cartoon version of herself—crimson cheeks, eyes gleaming like stars, or pegs on a Lite-Brite toy. When she spotted my sisters, giggling and kicking their little legs to join in the dance, she called, between bits of laughter, “Girls, go back to bed!” But Thia Kaiti grabbed the girls’ hands and weaved them into and around the room.

Yiayia lined up four tiny glasses and filled them with Ouzo. Pappou took Thia Kaiti’s hand to pull her onto the chair as he climbed down, then reached for Yiayia’s hand and twirled her while Tina and Eleni clapped. Thia Kaiti and my mother held hands in the air and sang.

Was I dreaming? I’d never seen my mother laugh like this, so loud and free. Something meaningful was happening here, though what that meaning was, I wasn’t sure.

My grandparents’ house on the island seemed like a cave to me, carved into the mountainside with no beginning or end, as much a part of the landscape as the almond trees surrounding it.  The floors throughout were painted-grey concrete until the kitchen was tiled sometime in the early 1990s. One room led into the other, with no hallways connecting, an effect that enhanced the sense of it as a cavern as one moved deeper and deeper within.

Until I was about 10 years old, the house had no indoor plumbing. To bathe, we traipsed along a dusty path of broken rocks—no road ran through the village—until we reach the better-paved section near the church and the natural spring. There, we filled jugs of water and carried them back, the smallest in my hands, the largest in Pappou’s, or on his poor donkey’s, Marika’s, back.

Our toilet was in an outhouse; to flush, we poured buckets of rainwater. I’d wake my mother in the night, and she’d say, “Are you sure you have to go?”

I’d hop around and say, “Yes, I’m sure,” but was I sure? Or was it just some primal urge to be out in the darkness of night, far from the glow of streetlights, the racket of cars, and anything beyond the crickets loudly chirping in the stillness as all of humanity slept?

We’d go out to dinner, on occasion, and Pappou would choose a taverna in the mountains, where we’d remain for hours as he befriended the owners who treated us more as house guests—topping off wine for the adults and bending to smile sweetly at us kids, offering us the final dusty can of Pepsi. Together, they danced, and yes, even smashed plates; they sang and reminisced about the olden days they didn’t share but all knew.

On our way back to the car in the darkness and quiet, the laughter, music, and the bright lights of the restaurant were a memory, the mountain’s shadows blackening the otherwise silvered-by-moonlight sea hundreds of feet below, the air thick with stillness—and we, our family, were the last humans on earth, and that was all right by me.

Years later, at age 29, I return to Greece after seven years away—this time with my husband, a non-Greek, a true blood Bostonian in a Red Sox cap and Nikes.

We tour Athens and the mainland for a few days before sailing off to Andros. From there, we visit Santorini where we hike from the village of Fira to Ios in the 100-degree heat, in the searing sunlight, hundreds of feet up from the metallic blue sea on the dark black mountain, on the stark white concrete path. We pass some old men peddling donkey rides. Eric asks me, “Are those costumes they wear to look like old-time grandfathers?”

I peer at the men in fishermen caps, dirty pants cuffed at the ankles, with gray, horsehair mustaches and gruff complexions. “No,” I say, stoic. “That is exactly what my Pappou looked like.” His generation is nearly gone. “But he would never. Ever. Sell donkey rides.”

We are alone as we continue our trek until a man in a colorfully-threaded poncho, perched on a stoop making jewelry by hand, appears from nowhere.

“Pick something,” Eric says.

We’re told that they’re made from real lava stones from the island’s volcano, and I want to believe this. When I lift a pair of earrings and ask, “How much?” I am relieved when the man says, “Six Euro”—not just because we can afford them on our lean travel budget, but because he hasn’t shattered the idyllic nature of this moment by reminding us, with an overpriced tag, that we are tourists, and he is there to make a buck.

Later that evening, we scour the bars and restaurants to find the perfect place to view the famed sunset but make the right choice to climb over a stone wall and perch on the mountainside. It is the type of sunset that makes you fear the world might end as that impossibly perfect circle of fire dissolves at once into the darkness, the type of sunset that makes you feel you wouldn’t care if it did. I am overwhelmed by the beauty and thankful to be staying across the island at the less dramatically beautiful Kamara beach where I can reflect on and remember—recover and not feel—it.

In our hotel room that night, I untangle my new earrings to try them on, but one slips from my hand, into the sink, and circles down the drain. My hand grabs at the cold porcelain, but it’s too late. The drain is an infinite black hole. We use our fingers, a fork. We sacrifice a toothbrush.

Eric, straining to look serious and grim because I am crying now, quells a smile as he says, “I’m sorry, Ioanna, it’s gone.” Later—as far as months later—he’ll need to say, “Stop telling people about those six-dollar earrings. Really.”

But I am a child whose balloon has floated away.

The night before departure, we sit on Thia Kaiti’s back porch in Athens, surrounded by plants and trees, sipping strong black coffee. Our trip is almost over and my aunt—who retrieved us from the airport ten days prior in a blue floral dress, her hair styled neatly half-up—is in a bathrobe and slippers, hair tossed sloppily into a bun.

“Tell me, Eric,” she says with a half-smile. “What are your impressions of Greece?”

I translate, and he laughs nervously. He’s prepped for this moment—when he’d have to represent his take, not only as a newly-minted family member, but as a full-blown American in a country that has been portrayed in the news as coming apart. It is summer 2010: Greece is in the throes of a massive economic crisis, and images of protest marches, police in riot gear, streets aflame, have become a daily mainstay in the American media.

The question isn’t new to him. I’d asked him the same two nights prior as we lounged on beach chairs, listening to a Greek reggae band play. His reply: “Greek people seem so happy all the time.” He shook his head. “That just can’t be real.”

“I think it is,” I’d said with a laugh. “It must be the Ouzo.”

But it’s not the Ouzo, and I know that. It’s this film of mirth that coats the life here. Or is it a core that bubbles up?

I repeat this observation to Thia Kaiti, who sighs a deep sigh. “We used to be that happy,” she says. “Remember, Ioanna? When you kids were little? How much fun we had? No water in the house, no television, and we were happy.”

I do remember. But what I didn’t understand at the time is that the light from that life—the light that lit the darkness from within—was already fading. In the year 1900, the island’s population totaled 18,000. By the turn of the following century, it had fallen to near 10,000 as habitants migrated from an agrarian lifestyle toward the urban call of Athens.

“This country isn’t what it used to be,” she continues. “Look.” She nods toward the open doorway to where her kids, in their early 20s, sit facing laptops at the dining room table. “They want Apple, Macbook, iPhone. They sit there, in front of those computers, on the Facebook, the Skype, and they think they’re doing something. Ach.” She waves a hand and sighs, closing her eyes—to see what? “They’re not doing anything.”

On the way to the airport the next day, Thia Kaiti asks Eric again what he thinks of her homeland but doesn’t wait for me to translate before she answers her own question. The answer, it seems, is for me.

“Ah, what are you going to think of this little country? What are we, a doulapa.” A closet. “What do we have? The ocean. That’s all.”

In Sailing the Wine Dark Sea, Thomas Cahill writes, “There’s sadness beneath the merriment [of the Greeks]. It is as if, no matter how much these revelers sing, dance, howl, recite their jokes…a constant, authoritative note of pessimistic pain sounds beyond all of their frantic attempts not to hear it.” I read this and think about my family dancing in my grandmother’s kitchen in the wee hours of the morning, and my childhood self, watching in the shadows, from behind the doorway.

Eight years later, Eric and I return to Greece with our two young children, ages one and four. The heat in Athens is beyond all reason, the city a tinderbox. The night before we leave, we plan to visit Thia Kaiti and her family, but Eric and the girls have fevers from the hot sun beating down in hours of city traffic. Our departure—despite the moments of joy and beauty—feels like an escape. Days after we return home, a wildfire breaks out, killing more than one hundred people in a seaside village we’d stayed in ten days prior.

I add these moments up and think of loss. Not just of the old world, because the old world, as Dylan essentially sang, is always rapidly fading, but of what we didn’t keep from it. Between my two main points of reference, Greece and the U.S., the former was slower to change, but the change was coming, and for—in many ways—all the wrong reasons. It wasn’t long before my Yiayia’s death when Greece converted its currency from the drachma to the euro.

“This isn’t going to be good,” she said at the time.

She knew because she could no longer comfortably afford fruit at the farmer’s market down the road. A couple of years later, that market was gone. She was left to buy her fruit at the sprawling superstore some miles away, when she had energy enough to take the bus, or when someone with a car could bring her. It’s hard to envision her there, pushing a cart down endless aisles brimming with shiny merchandise under the abrasive neon store lights. It must have been overwhelming to her, abounding with more than she could ever have imagined needing. And it’s this misplaced sense of need that has marched us along on the relentless journey toward “progress” in the form of Macbooks and platinum credit cards and all the things that dull our senses to a level of intensity that we, in our fear of losing emotional control, can handle. We’re driven to distraction by a desire for more, for what’s physically attainable, or better yet just beyond our reach, to keep us striving, consumed by anything but the infinite uncertainty of now. The distraction itself becomes a toxic pleasure that anesthetizes us from the knowledge that we can’t live every moment in the light; that, in its purest form, it blinds, while its total absence, the dark, leaves us frightened.

So we settle for the dim. We hide behind the doorway, glimpsing joy, privileging shadows, deferring to the wisdom of the den, and neglecting our souls at our peril.

In 2010, Eric and I were visiting a land in crisis––steep economic turmoil that seemed insurmountable. On our trip, we visited the ruins of Mycenae, the legendary home of The Iliad’s King Agamemnon. The roughly 4,000-year-old site has been visible to modern society for less than 150 years. A complete excavation, conducted by German amateur archeologist Heinrich Schliemann, began in 1876, a few decades after Greece achieved its independence after 400 years under Ottoman occupation, during which such excavations, we learned, were forbidden. Until then, the true existence of this place, written about by Homer around the eighth century BC, was lost and doubted as a myth. Now, anyone can tour the remains of the palace grounds, the king’s tomb, the ancient grave circle.

We, in our modern century, have been under a different occupation, but crisis can allow us to dig deep, to see what lost and forgotten treasures can be salvaged.

The wisdom of Plato’s den would say we’re fools for treading up into the light. What can that bring but the sadness beneath the merriment of Cahill’s Greeks? A sadness, knowing we can’t live every moment in the light, and the beauty it reveals. That we’ll forget its truth back down in the dark, and resume our naming of the shadows. Maybe that’s the note of pessimistic pain Cahill describes—a sound that drives us back down into the den, where the shadows come today in the form of more and maybe someday, over there . . .

The joy in a simple kitchen full of revelers dancing together on chairs made of straw in a tiny dark island village is not an attempt to ignore the sound of pain; it’s an attempt to sing with it, and yes, maybe above it.

A wisdom all its own.

It’s half past midnight when you wake me up. The light beside our bed is on, and you shake me—a rough shake that creates bruises on my shoulder blade from your careless fingertips.

I’m delirious, and when I sit up, only one side of my hair touches my shoulders. Before I went to sleep, both sides did. I’m tired of these uneven haircuts, but I’m even more tired of never getting a full night’s rest.

“It’s time,” you say, and you are already dressed. Formal wear. Your eyes are wide and pupils are blown, but I can’t tell what drug you’ve taken. It’s too early and my mind is hazy.

I dig the heels of my palm into my eyes as if that will wake me up. It doesn’t. Cotton is on my tongue and it tastes stale. “Time for what?”

There are no clouds in the night sky. I know this because the curtain to our window is open, and moonlight shines in. Being able to see the moon relaxes me.

It doesn’t relax me tonight.

“Our meeting,” you say. You get up off the bed and bounce on the balls of your feet. The knot on your tie is loose, but I don’t reach up and tighten it. Your fingertips leave bruises, and I’m not yet healed.

“Where is the meeting?”

It’s not what I want to ask. I want to ask who we’re meeting. I want to ask why we’re meeting them in the middle of the night. I want to ask why I have to go with you to pick up drugs. I have my own dealer; I don’t need to trek out to wherever yours is. Besides that, you help yourself to my stash, and I never get anything of yours.

“TradeWinds. On Gulf Boulevard. Just get dressed. Wear something nice,” you say.

Your response makes me stop stripping the sheets off my body. TradeWinds is a little fancy for a drug deal. There are bound to be cops everywhere for the safety of the patrons. I don’t know if I want to join.

Then I notice that there’s a filled duffel bag at the end of the bed. The mattress creases around it, the fabric of the comforter puckering. The letters from your high school logo have peeled off the side of the bag until only bury igh hool remains.

I stare at the spaces where forgotten letters used to reside. What happened to them after they detached from the bag? Did you pick the pieces from the ground and assemble them so they read what you desired? Or did you shove them into a trash can? Did you burn them with your lighter? Maybe you stubbed your cigarette out on them and smiled while they melted from the pressure of your touch.

Maybe I am the letters and you are the duffel bag.

“What’s in the bag?” I ask as I try to find my bra. I know it’s somewhere in my suitcase, but I’m having trouble locating it. Unpacking my suitcase would probably solve the I can never find any of my clothes issue, but I’m afraid to unpack because I know that the moment I do, you will ask me to pack my things up and leave. And although life might be better without the judgmental curl of your lip or insult of the hour, I’m afraid of that too. I’m afraid because I don’t know who I am without those things. They are my identity. Without them, I am just letters. Forgotten letters that have peeled away from something that once resembled a human.

“Clothes,” you say. “And books. For our journey.”

Our journey. I wonder where you believe we will go this time, or what will happen so that we don’t.

“You need to hurry up,” you say. “He won’t wait forever.”

“Who is he sending?”

“An agent. Important. C.I.A. We can’t risk me falling into the wrong hands. So hurry the hell up, or I’m going to leave you behind.”

I debate begging you to never leave me behind, but I end up deciding not to say anything at all. Instead, I continue to search for my bra.

You toss a dress in my general direction. It lands at my feet, wrinkled from being stuffed in the closet without a care. “Here. Wear this. He’ll love it.”

I pick the garment up, turn it over in my hands. The wrinkles are too noticeable. You must have noticed them. Behind your head, I see my bra hanging in the closet. Somewhere I would never put it. I don’t go for it. I know why you’ve put it there.

I slip the dress on. It bunches in odd places on my body. The creases seem to taunt me as I look at myself in the mirror.

My face is swollen, and there are pimples along my forehead and chin. I am not wearing makeup because you will not allow me to wear makeup. The hairs on my legs brush against each other as I step closer to the mirror. I haven’t shaved my legs in months because you will not allow me to groom myself. The dress is not bunched in odd places. It is bunched on pockets of excess skin and fat. I am not allowed to run because you will not allow me to exercise.

You pull the strings and my puppet head turns to you. “Does this dress look okay?”

“You look fine,” you say, but you are not looking at me and you don’t notice how the words sting.

I don’t want to look fine. I want to look beautiful. I want to be beautiful for once in my life. I thought that you might make me feel beautiful, but you have never wanted to.

We are delusional.

You think that you’re communicating telepathically with the president. You think that he has sent someone to bring you to the White House so that you can correspond face-to-face about the fate of the world. You think that you are the second coming of Christ.

I think that you love me.

“We’re leaving now,” you say. You zip the duffel bag up, and I realize that you didn’t put any of my things in the bag. None of my clothes. None of my books. I wish you would have asked me. I could have told you what I needed. I could have packed a bag for myself.

I try to zip my dress up, but my arms can’t bend around my back. It remains unzipped, and you do not offer to help me.

You do not open the car door for me. You do not wait for me to get inside the car before you start it. You do not wait for me to buckle my seatbelt before you put the car in reverse.

I light up a Camel and crush the menthol ball to release the minty flavor. You take the cigarette from me and say, “Damnit. I hate it when you crush the ball. I don’t like menthols as much as regulars.”

It is your cigarette now. I light another one for me. It is my last one. I crush the ball.

“I’m going to be honest with you,” you say as you blow smoke out with each word. “I didn’t want to bring you with me, but the president insisted. This is too important of a mission, but he thinks you’re essential.”

The mint is bitter and burns my tongue.

“Okay,” I say.

I look at you and try to figure out if there was ever a time that you loved me. If on our first date, when you surprised me with wine and roses. If when you asked me to be your girlfriend. If when you took me to all those baseball games and kept your arm around me through every inning. If when you wore that Jacksonville Jaguars shirt I bought you, even though you hate the Jaguars and it had been several years since they had a winning season. If when you proposed at the threshold of my bathroom after we’d been drinking too much at Outback.

I think about these moments often, but I can never figure out what they mean. I can never figure out if they mean love or if they mean control.

Maybe love and control are the same thing.

You are talking about the mission and what it means for you. Not what it means for us.

I stare at the burning cherry at the end of my cigarette when I inhale. It is a safe thing to look at, but it will extinguish soon. I toss the cigarette out the window.

We pull up to the resort, and you park in the back of the parking lot far away from all other cars. I want to ask you why the agent didn’t just pick us up at home because our car might be towed, but I don’t.

You throw the duffel bag at me and curse when I don’t catch it. I stumble to the ground to grab the long strap so I can sling it over my shoulder, but the fabric rips, and the bag tumbles to the ground again.

You push me into the car. “Use the handles, dumbass.”

It’s all you say before you walk off. I am left with the deteriorating duffel bag and a bruise on my elbow from hitting the car.

But I pick up the bag and scurry after you. It is heavy, and I wish I didn’t have to carry it, but I’m afraid to ask you to relieve me.

You walk into the inner courtyard. The hotel borders this courtyard. Surrounds it, like it is a treasure. It is beautiful, and there are beautiful people throughout. Each person is holding at least one drink.

A brunette around my age stops me as we walk past. You don’t notice this exchange, and you continue walking until you’re in the middle of the courtyard.

She reaches out and, for a second, I think she’s going to touch me, but then her hand is back at her side, the other hand cradling what looks to be a margarita. She is squinting like she is asking me a question, but I don’t know what she’s asking, so I don’t answer.

She smiles at me, and for a moment, I want to drop the duffel bag and have a conversation with her. As she looks at me, despite my disheveled state, I think that I could possibly be beautiful to someone.

But then her boyfriend bounds up to her, asking her what she is doing. She is whisked away, leaving only a parting smile, and I am left forgotten.

I try to forget her too, but she reminds me of someone I used to know and someone who I think I loved that may have loved me, but you tell me that belief is impossible. You constantly tell me that I am unlovable and that I am lucky that you love me.

I must be lucky, I think, as I run to catch up to where you’re standing.

I wait for you to notice my presence, but you don’t acknowledge me at first. You stare up at the top floor of the hotel, where the rooms are.

“See that man? The one that’s standing in front of the room door. Second to the top floor. See him?”

I think of the brunette’s smile. I think of the way her fingers curled around the stem of her drink glass.

“I see him.” Even far away, the man doesn’t look right. He towers over the railing in front of him, but his arms are crossed, and he is not wearing a shirt. Bright pink and yellow hibiscuses are on his board shorts.

He does not look like an agent, but maybe he is undercover. I suppose that I shouldn’t be able to tell if he’s an agent or not. That would make him a bad agent.

“That’s our guy.” You move as if you’re going to meet him, but stop abruptly, pressing your index and middle fingers to your temple. “But that’s not possible.”

You are not talking to me.

I want to ask what is wrong, but I am afraid to. I am always too afraid.

“Damnit,” you yell. You snatch the duffel bag from me and hurl it away from us. It is loaded down with books and does not go very far.

I am a good doll and pick it back up by the handles while everyone in the courtyard stares at us.

“We have to go. Now,” you say. I think you would like to yank my arm the same way you yanked the bag from my grip, but you know better with the number of people nearby.

“What happened?” I ask as I follow you. We are almost out of the courtyard when you whirl around on me. The sudden motion makes me knock into you, and you push me away.

“Our position was compromised,” you say. You squeeze your forehead with your hands, fingertips straining with the pressure, and I think you’d rather it be my neck. “If we had been here a few minutes earlier, we would’ve been fine. I shouldn’t have taken you. I should’ve gone against his orders and acted on my own. I’m more powerful than he is. I shouldn’t have listened to him.”

You stomp toward the car again, ranting about the embarrassment of my failures, though you have no audience. I don’t think you care that I’m not beside you.

I stop at the edge of the courtyard and try to find the brunette. She is not there. She is probably laughing with her boyfriend and her family and friends, surrounded by people who love her and who she loves in return.

I wonder if she has already forgotten me. I think I will always remember her.

In the beginning, there is power in the body. The way a woman carries herself, and the promises of all the things she will become. When she walks, how oceans curve and change the patterns of their tides. Her words, and how they carry certainty. How flowers bloom from her mouth. 

In the beginning, there is a body. 

There is a house where she has had too much to drink. Where she stumbles in a tunneled sort of darkness. There is a house with a bed that sits too low upon the hardwood floor. She loses words.

When she wakes up in the morning, she panics at an unfamiliar room. Seconds feel like minutes as she orients herself and looks around. A body in the sheets beside her. Clothing on the floor.  Missing pieces of a wardrobe missing pieces of a night. A throbbing headache.  Panic.

Six a.m. on a Saturday, a pair of legs inside a string bikini climbs out from the backseat of a cab, and she pays him and she goes inside and she puts whiskey in her coffee. She climbs into a scalding bath and lets the water ease the places that are aching deep inside of her, the aching of a space that she can’t see but knows is there. She drinks her coffee with the whiskey, and she counts the bathroom tiles. There are bite marks on her breasts.

She cannot remember the night. She remembers his hand, a bed that sits too low to the floor. 

For three hours on Saturday, she empties the tub and then refills it with the scalding water. She vomits twice and tries to gather memories. She gets up to pour more coffee, leaves wet footprints in a trail across her home. 

The bed too low to the floor is perfect for a woman to fall upon. There are bruises on her skin. 

She feels strange but doesn’t want to seem dramatic. You are just regretful, someone says.

I am just regretful, she says.

And they laugh about a pair of legs inside a string bikini climbing out from the backseat of a cab. 

In the beginning, there was power in her body. The way she carried herself, and the promises of all the things she would become. When she walked, the ocean moved beside her.  Her words grew flowers on the surface of the earth.

Now, the bite marks on the breast are healed. Now, a baby is sleeping deep inside her womb.  When she walks, the waters dry out up into the soil. When she speaks, entire landscapes wither and they die. 

Her body—

A mirror to reflect his power.

Words that tell a story she has never heard before. 

At the clinic, they ask if she was raped. But no, she is just regretful. An honest mistake, she says.

They give her two pills and a bright red cherry lollipop. Do you want to see a picture? The lubricant squelches from between her legs. The paper gown crinkles up against her skin. It sticks to the inside of her thighs. When the nurse leaves the room, she cries. 

At home, she bleeds so much that she stays for days inside the bath. All that baby pouring up and out of her. She gets high and mixes pain pills with the whiskey and still it hurts, the baby pouring up and out of her. 

She never remembers the night. She laughs about a pair of legs inside a string bikini climbing out from the backseat of a cab.

An honest mistake.

Two pills and a lollipop. 

I am just regretful.

“Give me your sharps,” she said.

I stared at my new therapist. She was a blond athlete. She could have easily beaten me up.

She reached her hand out. “Give me your sharps. Now.”

“Why?” I protested.

“You have two choices,” she said. “Either you give me the glucose kit, or we don’t do this.”

I held the kit in my hand. “But what if it’s actually a blood-sugar issue? What if I die because you took this kit away from me?”

“I’m willing to take that risk,” she said.

“Well of course you are!” I fought back. “You’re not the one who might die!”

“You’re not hypoglycemic. Now, give me your sharps.”

“You don’t know that! You’re just a psychologist and not even a real psychologist. You’re just a grad student. You’re not even a real doctor!”

She adjusted her glasses. “Do you know what I majored in undergrad? Sports medicine, specializing in diabetics who play sports. I’m completely prepared to assess what a blood sugar crash looks like.”

Out of every fucking therapist-in-training I could have gotten, of course, I would have gotten the one who was a diabetes expert.

I hadn’t been able to tell my parents that I was in therapy because, if I did, think of the other questions they’d start to ask. The entire Jenga tower of lies I had so carefully crafted would crumble. There was only one way to be in therapy that they would never know about. I went to the University of Toledo’s psychology department, where they have one of those free-for-the-public therapy schemes, where you receive therapy from a grad student aspiring to be a therapist.

I handed her my sharps. “I’m gonna die. You have to know that I’m gonna die.”

“No, you’re not,” she said, snatching the glucose kit from my hand before I had a chance to change my mind.

“I spent money on that you know, you’re literally stealing my property that I worked hard for.” I tried going for pity.

“Hmmm,” she said. “Great point. Let me ask you, in the twelve to fourteen months that you’ve been using these every day, how much money do you think you’ve spent? And remember, I’m well aware of how much those strips cost.”

She was right. I had spent hundreds, maybe even a thousand dollars within the last year. But at the time, a thousand dollars seemed like a small price to pay for my freedom.

She stared at the bruised and purple tips of each of my fingers. “How many times a day do you prick your fingers?”

“I don’t know, maybe four?” (I was lying.)

She inhaled, annoyed. “I’ll ask again. How many times a day do you prick your fingers?”

“Um… ten?” (I lied again.)

“Your fingertips are completely swollen and purple.” She rubbed her eye, becoming increasingly irritated. “How many times a day do you prick your fingers?”

“I don’t know!” I finally shouted. “I don’t count (a lie), maybe like twenty or something?” (There we go.)

She handed me some papers. “Time’s up. Take these home, fill them out, bring them in next week.”

I looked at the papers. The first one was about Exposure Therapy, and what it meant to engage in it. The second was a questionnaire with questions like, Do you sometimes hear voices that nobody else hears? The other was a consent form, acknowledging that I was going to be partaking in physical activities and that I wouldn’t sue the university if I got hurt or died.

Exposure therapy, for those wondering, is, “therapy that involves exposing the patient to the anxiety source or its context without the intention to cause any danger. Doing so is thought to help them overcome their anxiety or distress.” In short, exposure therapy is a bitch. It forces you to do all the things you don’t want to do. And non-stop exposure therapy started the minute I left that office. I was out in the world, forced to live without the one thing that made me feel safe. I was now a crack addict without his bump. I was antsy, easily agitated, and mad at everything around me.

I had considered buying a new glucose kit the second I left her office. But I was completely broke, and my entire life had been destroyed by anxiety. As terrified as I was, I was willing to do anything to overcome the panic attacks. Even if that meant facing death head-on.

A week had gone by and I was back in the therapist’s office. I had spent much of that time avoiding the world. I went to work with candy in my back pocket for moments when I felt a blood sugar crash coming. After work, I went home and hid in my room. I felt like I was agoraphobic again.

“You were agoraphobic this entire time,” she said, crossing her arms.

“How am I agoraphobic?” I argued. “I was going outside and living a somewhat normal-ish life before you took my damn kit away!”

“Were you stressed and anxious while outside of your house?” she asked.

“Sort of,” I replied, losing confidence.

“And did you need to test your blood every hour, sometimes more, to make sure you were ok?”

 “Well, I mean… yeah.”

“That’s because you’re agoraphobic. You never overcame your problem, you just found a coping mechanism that turned into an addictive ritual.”

“Listen, Sarah…” I said, trying to take control of the conversation.

“It’s Samantha,” she replied.

She was playing hardball. “Ok… Samantha. I’m trying really hard here. I mean, I’m the one who initiated therapy. I get that I’m fucked up. But you gotta understand that I’m doing my best.” I tried playing the sympathy card again to little effect.

“You’re what, twenty-five years old?” she asked.

“Twenty-four.”

“Okay, twenty-four,” she said, leaning in, “you’re a young man in the prime of your life, and yet you’ve let panic and anxiety control you. I know you’re trying and so I’m doing my part as well. You’re young, healthy, and in shape. I’m not going to treat you like a sick old man.”

She went through my questionnaire and made sure I signed the release form in the right spots.

“Great!” she said, giving the first glimpse of actual interest. “Looks good. We can start doing exposure exercises next session!”

Yay.

EXPOSURE EXERCISE 1

Toledo, Ohio is a weird little place. It was once an industrial town that was destined to be the Chicago of Lake Erie, but after its economy collapsed in the 70s, that never happened. Ever since then, Toledo had been losing jobs and population, and has had a steady rise in crime and drugs.

A great example of this contrast is the train track that runs straight through the campus of the University, a relic of Toledo’s glory days. Our first exercise was to walk the tracks. No shade, no shelter. I was to feel the wide openness and the brightness of the spring sun beaming down on me. I wasn’t allowed to bring any snacks or water. Samantha would say those are just crutches.

“So, how are you feeling?” she asked as we walked aimlessly.

“How long do I have to be out here for?” I asked, hoping this little jaunt would come to a quick end.

“Depends,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

I thought maybe I could make this end quicker if I pretended this was giving me more anxiety than it was. I feared that if I stayed out there too long, I would have a panic attack. I was still worried that maybe I had an actual illness.

“I’m um, not doing well actually. I’m, feeling kind of like, a panic attack or something…”

Before I even had time to react, she lifted my shirt and started rubbing her hand on my back.

“Whoa!” I shouted. “What the fuck!”

“Your back isn’t sweating,” she said in disappointment. “Let me see your hands.”

I was shocked. This bitch just lifted my shirt up. Who the hell did she think she was?

“I said, ‘let me see your palms,’” she said in a way that I haven’t heard since kindergarten.

I reached out my hands and turned them over so my palms were showing. She started rubbing her hands around my palms.

“Your back and your palms are dry,” she said, looking down at me. “When you start panicking, the first signs are almost always a sweaty back and sweaty palms. You’re lying to me.” 

I tried justifying my lie to her. “I’m just scared,” I said, sounding pathetic. Even I was annoyed with myself. “I don’t want to die on some train track in Toledo.”

Samantha set down her notebook and put her hair in a ponytail. “Well, now we’re gonna make you sweat. We’re going to run until I say stop.”

Now I was sweating. Running, in the heat without water or chocolate? If I was ever going to have my epic hypoglycemic crash, this was it.

“What? No!” I yelled. “This can’t be allowed. Aren’t there rules for my safety or something?”

“You signed the form,” she said. “Now, run. Or, we stop therapy.”

That constant threat of ending therapy. God damn that woman.

We ran the train track. I tried doing more of a jog than a run. My goal was to be as slow as possible to avoid depleting my sugar levels. Samantha wasn’t having it.

“Speed up!” she said, almost effortlessly, as if she wasn’t using up any energy at all.

I sped up. We ran until I started to get panicky. My fears got to me. My legs started feeling like Jello. All I could envision was myself dying on the train tracks of the University of Toledo, a college I never even applied to because I felt it was so far beneath me. My heart raced. It was hard to breathe.

“Oh my God! Stop!” I yelled as I fell, gasping for breath.

Samantha sat down on the tracks next to me as I struggled to catch my breath. She watched me silently. My breathing started to stabilize. My heartbeat slowed. Then came that post-panic attack coma, where nothing matters anymore.

“Are you finished?” Samantha said.

I looked at her, stunned. “Am I finished?”

She ran her hands through her blond hair, enjoying the spring air. I had never met such a heartless asshole in my entire life.

We walked back to her office mostly in silence. I took it slow, still feeling drained. She gave me some space, allowing me to walk as slow as I wanted. I kept telling myself I wasn’t going to die. I was terrified that the exhaustion I felt wasn’t the result of a panic attack, but was my sugar levels running on empty.

When we arrived at the office, I sat down in a big plushy chair. I felt myself sink into it. It felt great. I wanted my entire body to sink away into a deep sleep that could restore my energy and reboot my system. Samantha opened up a bag and gave me a bottle of water.

“Nice job today,” she said. “Next time, don’t lie to me.”

I left her office and couldn’t wait to get to my car where I had stashed a bar of chocolate. I knew that, without it, I’d have another panic attack on the drive home.

EXPOSURE EXERCISE 2

A few weeks had gone by since the last exercise. The previous weeks’ sessions had been me and Samantha bickering back and forth about hypoglycemia. What it was, who could get it, the signs of a blood sugar crash, and so forth. She kept reminding me that if I wanted to devote my life to researching an illness, I should at least focus on one that I had. She reinforced the idea of agoraphobia over and over again.

Her main argument: if it’s blood sugar crashes, why do they only happen when you’re outside of your house?

My main argument: I hate you. You don’t know me. You’re mean and evil.

She made it her goal to not only get me reacquainted with the outside world but to do everything she could to challenge my belief about the blood sugar crashes.

It was almost the end of the semester at the University. The campus was bustling with students eager for their summer break. Samantha and I took to our normal routine and walked the campus. It felt nice to be around all the students. They all seemed so innocent and naïve, completely unaware of how awful the world could be. It made me wish that I could go back to my life before anxiety. I wanted to be nineteen again. I had always hated my life, but nothing in my past compared to becoming afraid of the outside world.

“So,” Samantha said, “you’ve gone about a month without the glucose kit. How are you feeling?”

I didn’t tell her that I had replaced the glucose kit with a stash of chocolate and candy. “It’s been okay.” Keep it light. Keep it simple. Avoid further questions.

“Have you been anyplace?” she asked. “Do you ever walk around the mall? Or a park? Do you ever explore?” She didn’t care if I was trying to avoid the topic.

I watched as a hot guy walked past. He was in an electric-blue tank top with green shorts. His biceps were flawless. His calves flexed with every step he took. He was tanned. He was the guy I wished I could have been. He was also the kind of guy I was extremely attracted to. It made me both horny and sad to look at him. Horny because he was hot. Sad because he was living the life I never would.

Samantha nudged my side. “I asked if you’ve been getting out in public or not.”

“Um, yeah, sort of,” I said halfheartedly.

She could tell I was lying. “Alright then, let’s amp this up a bit.”

We walked to one of the main buildings, University Hall. Next to it is a hill. College kids were lying on the grass, reading in the warm sun. Some were playing Frisbee. Guys were talking and laughing, girls were tanning. It was exactly what colleges look like in 90s movies.

“Alright,” Samantha said,“here’s what you’re going to do: you’re going to run up the hill and then roll down it. And then you’re going to run back up the hill and then roll back down it. You’ll do that until I say stop.”

I looked at all the college kids, so full of youth and virility. And then there was me, about to be making a complete fool of myself in front of all of them.

“This has to be a joke. There are people everywhere,” I tried pleading.

“Do you want to get better?” Samantha said. “Now, get up that hill.”

I sighed, ran up the hill, then rolled down. I was a little dizzy but felt better than I thought I would. I ran up again and rolled down a second time. I noticed I had started attracting some attention from the college kids.

“Dude, people are staring at me. Can we please stop?” I tried reasoning.

“Up the hill,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “Now.”

I rolled my eyes and ran up the hill. Aside from the fact that this was humiliating as fuck, I noticed it was a beautiful day out. The grass was a bright emerald green, the sky, a welcoming blue. I think that was probably one of the first times I had noticed and appreciated my surroundings for a long time.  

I rolled down the hill and stood up. I was starting to get dizzy. Then, a really hot college guy walked up to us.

“Dude!” he said as he approached. “Is this, like, some kind of workout or something? I bet it’s a killer full-body exercise, huh?”

I just stared at him, mouth dropped. He had amazing blond hair and the sharpest jaw-line ever. He looked like those hot guys from 80s slasher movies. I had no idea what to say. I couldn’t have been more embarrassed. I looked at Samantha, and she looked back at me.

“Ugh, yeah,” she said. “I’m helping him train for track and field.”

I was impressed that she jumped in to help.

The guy seemed impressed as well. “Damn, that’s awesome!” he said, nodding his head. “Hey, my frat is going to have a party this weekend. We’re calling it pancakes and booze. We’re gonna, like, make a bunch of pancakes and drink beer. It’s gonna be sweet! You both should totally come!”

Was I seriously just invited to a party? The first party I’d ever been invited to in my entire life? While I was in the middle of a therapy session?

“Sounds great!” Samantha said, patting my back. “We have to get back to training, but we’ll be there this weekend. Hey, buddy,” she said to me cheerfully. “Do another run up the hill for me.”

I glared at her. She knew damn well I couldn’t fight her about running up the hill when there was a cute boy standing there. She knew I’d play the part. She was a crafty bitch. I ran up the hill. As I got to the top and turned to roll down, I could see the frat guy had begun walking away. Thank god. I couldn’t keep doing this for much longer. I rolled down the hill and stood up next to Samantha.

“We’re not going to that party,” she said. “That would be inappropriate.”

I brushed the grass off my elbows. “I figured.”

“How are you feeling?” she asked. “You seem to be holding up pretty well.”

And she was right. I was so busy focusing on a pancake-eating frat boy that I had somehow forgotten about the normal anxieties that swirled around inside the walls of my inner-world.

“I’m kind of dizzy, and I sort of feel like I could throw up,” I said.

Samantha shook her head. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to keep running this hill until you get more exhausted. Up the hill!”

I had learned by this point that fighting her was pointless. I went to go run up the hill, but before I did I slipped in a little “Bitch” under my breath.

I could hear Samantha yell, “I heard that!”

Because of my insubordination, she made me run the hill another few times. Finally, I rolled to the bottom and collapsed. I was going to throw up. I could feel the bile rising.

I laid on the grass, facing the sky. “I’m done! I can’t do it another time! I’m gonna throw up.”

Samantha stood over me. “It’s pretty hard rolling around on a full stomach isn’t it?” she said, pointing to the chocolate bar poking out of my pocket. “Have we been using a new safety mechanism?”

 I rolled on my side. “I’m gonna throw up. Don’t yell at me.”

Samantha sat down in the grass. “You’ve been making good progress. Even if you have been cheating with sugar. You’re actually making quicker progress than almost anyone who comes into our office. I need you to believe in yourself. I need you to see that you can easily overcome this.”

It felt good when she was nice to me.

She picked a blade of grass and started making knots with it. “Next time we do an exercise, you can’t eat beforehand. Not even breakfast. I want you to come on an empty stomach. I’ll be checking your pockets.”

She said these things as if they were easy. But, I was starting to feel better. Being out in public was slowly becoming less daunting. Getting through the day at work was getting easier, and getting out of the house didn’t feel so awful anymore. I noticed the changes but didn’t want to give her any credit.

EXPOSURE EXERCISE 3

Another month passed. Samantha and I had spent the past few sessions talking about anxiety and depression, and how the two fed into each other. It was now late June and time for another session of exposure therapy. It was a beautiful, warm, and sunny morning. Toledo is a shithole, but we have some amazing summer weather. Sam had called me the night before and told me this was the day, so come without having breakfast or snacking on anything. I had a banana on the drive over.

I sat down in her office. She was smiling. I should have been immediately alarmed.

“I have something special planned for today,” she said.

I gulped.

“Let’s walk,” she said.

We started walking through campus and I could hear loud music blasting from somewhere. It was Ozzy Osbourne, “Crazy Train.”

The University of Toledo has a shitty football team. But even though the team sucks, the school is still Division One, so the campus has a huge football stadium, the very stadium we were now walking towards. A stadium that I soon learned was responsible for blasting Ozzy.

As we walked closer to UT’s stadium, known as the Glass Bowl, I started getting nervous. There was something nefarious in the air, made obvious by Sam’s giant smile.

“Sam,” I asked sheepishly, “what are we doing?” If she had chosen to feel my palms, she would have noticed that they were drenched.

“You’ll see,” she said with summery cheer.

We entered the stadium through the team entrance. As we made our way through the building, I could see the bright light of the outside world ahead of us. It was the football field. We were about to walk directly onto the field. I could hear a commotion from outside, the yells and grunts of hyper-masculinity. “Crazy Train” ended and AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” began.

We walked out onto the turf, and I could see what was happening. The football team was in the middle of summer training.

“Sam, what the fuck? Are we even allowed to be here?”

We walked right up to the team as they practiced in their navy and yellow uniforms. I could smell Under Armour, sweat, and manhood. I was horny and I was scared. Sam knew from our therapy sessions that I had a fear of straight men. She knew how ugly I felt around them. How small, how insecure, how intimidated they made me feel. Especially the alpha-male jocks.

She walked up to the coach and started speaking to him. She was an athlete and she studied sports medicine. She must have known both the coach and the team. That must have been how we were able to get access to the stadium during training.   

As she spoke to the coach, I stood awkwardly off to the side. The team was having a huddle. I stared at them, sweating. They stared at me, drinking Gatorade. Sam walked over to me after shaking the coach’s hand and laughing with him. She was having a blast.

“Alright, so here’s the deal,” she said, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. “You’re going to run up the bleachers, then down the bleachers, and onto the field. When you get to the field, you’ll spin in circles until I tell you to stop, then you’ll run back up the bleachers. We’ll do that until you feel like you might collapse.”

I wanted the ISS to explode and de-orbit, slamming into her at terminal velocity. I wanted a school shooting. I wanted anything that could keep this from happening.

“You want me to run onto the football field while the team practices?” I was frantic.

“Yes!” she said with glee. “Come on, this will be fun!”

“You fucking planned this. This entire moment was planned out. I fucking hate you!” I was done being nice.

Sam smiled. “The more you yell at me, the more energy you’re going to waste. You wouldn’t want a blood sugar crash would you?”

That’s when I said it. I looked her in the eye and said, “Fuck you, cunt.”

She was unfazed. “Run the bleachers, now.”

I bolted up the bleachers. I was over it. I wanted to collapse and get this over with as quickly as possible. I was running in the blaring sun, without being able to have breakfast, as a D1 football team watched. I would have preferred death.

I ran down the bleachers and onto the field.

“Alright, now spin!” Samantha cheered on.

I started twirling around, screaming “Fuck you!”

“Alright, stop!” Sam ordered. “Now, back up the bleachers! Go! Go! Go!”

I bolted back up the bleachers, stood at the top, and took a deep breath. Then, I ran back down onto the football field. Sam had me spin in circles again before sending me back up the bleachers. When I reached the top, I looked out over the field and noticed I had attracted the attention of the entire football team and the coaches. I ran back down onto the field.

“Sam, they’re all staring at me! Can we please go somewhere else?”

She ignored me completely. “Okay, spin!”

I spun around until I was dizzy.

“Now, back up the bleachers!” She loved every moment of it.

As I started running back towards the bleachers, I turned around and screamed, “I hope someone fucking murders you!” Then up the bleachers, I went.

Sam yelled at me from the field, “I’m sorry what did you say?”

I was at the top of the bleachers now, and I no longer had any fucks to give. So I screamed at the top of my lungs, “I said, I hope someone MURDERS you!”

I ran back down the bleachers onto the field, where Sam had me spin again.

“You know, it’s weird,” she said as I spun in circles. “I thought you were convinced you’d have a blood sugar crash? And yet you have the energy to keep yelling at me. How interesting.”

I stopped spinning. “Burn in hell!”

“Does it make you feel better when you say bad things to me?”

“Yes!” I shouted.

“Whatever gets the job done. Carry on.” She couldn’t have cared less.

I started up the bleachers again. “Bastard! Bitch! You’re a fucking bastard bitch dick whore! You dick whore!” I was incoherently stringing together any bad word I could. “Slut! Cock shit bitch!”

Thank god the football team wasn’t able to have cell phones in their uniforms. Because, if they did, there would be some very surreal viral videos on YouTube right now titled “Kid With Tourette’s Goes Crazy At Stadium.“

I was so pumped up with rage and adrenaline, I hadn’t even noticed how tired I was getting. I ran back onto the field. My legs were wobbling so bad it was hard to stand. I was breathing hard.

Sam looked at me, then handed me one of the Gatorades from the team’s cooler. “Alright, take a seat.”

I fell onto the grass and chugged the Gatorade. Sam sat down next to me. The football team kept practicing as if we weren’t even there.

“I want you to think back to a few months ago,” Sam said, “when we first started. Do you think you would have been able to run the bleachers in front of the football team?”

I answered honestly. “There’s no way in hell I would have been able to.” I hadn’t even noticed how much progress I had made until I looked back. Running bleachers without breakfast is something that actual athletes do, not fucked up gay boys with agoraphobia. It was pretty unbelievable to think that I had just done that.

“Alright, let’s go back to the office. I have something to give you,” she said.

We walked back to the office. My legs slowly stabilized on the walk back. My breathing calmed. I was starting to learn that your body can recover on its own. Wobbly legs can stop wobbling. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to collapse. I felt free from something. I had just accomplished a task I didn’t think possible. I felt strong and brave.

Back at her office, Sam handed me my sharps back. “Here,” she said, handing me the glucose kit.

I looked at her confused. “You’re giving this back to me?”

She nodded her head. “The next step is for you to keep these, but to have the confidence that you don’t need them.”

I looked at the glucose kit. That kit had both liberated me, allowing me to go outside, and enslaved me, forcing me to depend on it. I didn’t want it anymore. I didn’t even want to think about going back to that life. I held it in my hand. Unsure of how to feel.

“Alright,” Sam said, “that’s it for this week. I want you to know you did a really great job. Remember this until we meet next week: you don’t need that kit, and you never did. The next time you think you’re going to have a panic attack, just remember screaming that you hoped someone would murder me… in front of an entire football team.”

I laughed. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

Sam smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you next week.”

I walked out of her office, still holding the glucose kit in my hand. I made my way down the hallway, fiddling with it, refamiliarizing myself with its feel. Near the exit, there was a trashcan. I looked at the glucose kit. I took a few seconds, wondering what might happen without it. But then I remembered those hot football players. They probably aren’t slaves to glucose kits. They probably don’t even comprehend the idea of death yet. They’re too young, too healthy.

I wanted to be young and healthy too.

I opened the trashcan and threw the kit in.

I walked out into the bright summer sun.