Fifteen
Work holds a monthly event, an open mic night for creatives. I fill in for BEST FRIEND (who used to emcee) to the best of my ability – work was her business, she was the boss, and the host of all functions. As an event, participants feel the warmth of the occasion – not just the physical warmth of the work studio, but also the emotional and spiritual warmth that was so much the foundation of what BEST FRIEND (and her husband) built for their business. But there’s this irreconcilable reality that exists: what was (when she was emcee) and what is (not so much me as emcee, but the…
Fourteen
When I think about being nineteen, I remember suffering clusters of panic attacks. I remember hospital visits and having far too many meds thrown at me. I remember that first idiot psychiatrist. And, in remembering all that, I wonder why I had to live that part of my life that way, why I endured such debilitating anxiety while navigating ignorance and contending fears that everything was a precursor to something much, much, much worse. Behind that are the shards of my teenage development. I could masquerade with peers that I was one of them (and still do), but there were always weird things I never quite understood. Periods of manic…