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’ vii. I obsessed about everything in Queensland. The worst of the flu cleared over the next couple of days, but I stayed on the antibiotics just in case. My neck and back bothered me. The shortness of breath nagged at me. One night we went to a local pub for dinner. The trip flared my agoraphobia. I told myself I was hundreds of miles from home, I was fine living at the retreat (well, most of the time) and, now, driving another couple of kilometres to get something to eat at a local pub was going to bother me? It’s something that happened whenever we went out.…