#little panic

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Little Panic, Amanda Stern

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And on it goes, and the nearer it draws to me, the more horrified I become. I have an extended and confusing family, but it's obvious how lucky I am by comparison. Although my parents divorced when I was a baby, and they don't truly seem to see or understand me, and are constantly trying to fix me, I still have them. I may feel rejected by my father in favour of his new, holiday-card-perfect kids whom he takes on separate vacations, has celebratory family dinners with that don't include us, and absentmindedly refers to as "his children," even when telling Kara, Eddie, and me about them - but he's still alive. Sure there are screaming and yelling fights at my house, and my mom and stepsiblings are at one another's throats. There are eight people in my house, and though we barricade ourselves in our rooms and barely interact, the house is big enough for eight people to have their own rooms, and there's always food in the refrigerator. My family is every dysfunctional family. I feel alone and desperate for recognition and deep connection, but that's because I'm broken, not because my family is broken.

Little Panic by Amanda Stern

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He doesn't want to see anyone else, just me, and don't I want that also? I do not. Yet it's also unthinkable that I would tell him anything other than what he wants to hear. I am convinced that any rejection, no matter how small, will catalyze in others the same thing it sets off in me, a pain so deeply personal that it sends me to bed for days. I say yes because I am terrified to hurt someone else so profoundly. My hyperaccommodation of other people's feelings is a deeply wired reflex that feels impossible to unlearn. Separation anxiety fills me with such grief that I am pained on behalf of other; I refuse to cause someone else anxiety. And so, when Javier asks to be exclusive, although neither of us knows to whom we're committing, I say yes when I really mean "I have no idea." I was taught it's charitable to protect people from their feelings rather than help them face them.

Little Panic by Amanda Stern

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But I know my pattern and it's this: Out of the scraps of information I have before we even meet, I create a person who is perfect for me - and then when we do meet and he doesn't match my unrealistic expectations, my disappointment unglues and debilitates me. In other words, I do to others what was done to me all my life - I expect the person I've imagined, rather than getting to know the person who arrives.

Little Panic by Amanda Stern

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Although she's not leaving for two more months, the air already feels buckled and warped. Who will I be without Kara? When Mom is mad at me, Kara talks to her and makes things better. I don't want Kara to leave me. I don't know why she even wants to go to college. The terrible wrongs inside my body feel embossed onto the atmosphere. Maybe every error  or mistake I've made in my life stained the world, and each dent and divot I try not to fall into is a piece of old me, a pockmarked reminder of my difference and abnormality. Is this how I'll leave my mark?

Little Panic by Amanda Stern 

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But somehow, while I'm no longer in grade school, I've yet to outgrow my fears. Maybe I got stuck, like a clock that broke at noon; I can't move forward until someone restores me, takes me apart and rewires my interior, which I know they won't do and never will because all anyone's done is focus on my exterior: resanding and repainting the outside, never going farther than my stuckness, never finding out the why of me.

Little Panic by Amanda Stern

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I sift each word carefully before saying anything, and even when I say it, I float away from myself just in case it's wrong. I am constantly floating away.

Little Panic by Amanda Stern

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A burning clot of dread develops under my rib cage. One hundred radios are trapped in my head, all playing different stations at once. Not even Magda is speaking to me anymore. I am invisible because no one will look at me, no one will listen to me, and no one will answer me. I want to yell and scream I TOLD YOU SO at my mom - people do disappear! People go away and they don't return, just the way I'm still afraid I'll never return from a weekend away at my dad's. My friends disappeared into thin air. Just like Melissa and Baba. I don't exist because I don't matter. I am a terrible person. I called Tatum a horrible name and I lied to Amelia and I gave my brother the present she gave me and I was caught, and I lied about it, and I deserve to be invisible because someone like me should not count.

Little Panic by Amanda Stern