The Other Me
‘That Same Old Feeling’ i. The next day was my birthday. My friend organised a birthday lunch at a local pub fifteen minutes from home – a local I’d been to a few times, so there should’ve been no fears of unfamiliarity. But I was short of breath and anxious the whole day. The following day, I had a meeting with the editors of a fiction magazine for whom I’d done reading and editing, and again the same problem arose. I felt like the friend I drove up with had to babysit me, and I used all my tricks to avoid panic. I was infuriated. I’d survived for a week…
The Other Me
‘The Lurking Shadow’ vi. Departure was a battle with the fear of shortness of breath. My brother John drove me to the airport. Everybody in my family suspected I was going with Allie, even though we’d been broken up for months. When we got to the airport and she was nowhere to be seen, I found out later my brother rang my sister in-law, Christine, and expressed a fear that maybe I was flying up there to off myself in some way – like Nicholas Cage drinking himself to death in Leaving Las Vegas. My sister in-law checked the award on the net and found out it was for real.…