Memoir

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This is a story about identity, class, family ties, and the elusive nature of mental illness.

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Jen Knox is an exceptionally gifted storyteller, who can take the events of the past and craft them invariably into engaging and compelling narratives.
                                                                                       --Phillip Lopate

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Jen Knox is a fiction editor at Our Stories Literary Journal and writing tutor at San Antonio College. She attends The Writing Workshops at Bennington College (graduation date: January 2010).  Jen’s writing has won the John Kessler Memorial Endowment for the Arts Award, and has been published in The Current, Flashquake, Kate, SLAB, Spring Street, Slow Trains, and Quiz & Quill, and she received honorable mention in the 2008 Glimmer Train “Family Matters Competition” and 2009 Glimmer Train “Fiction Open Contest.” Jen lives in San Antonio, Texas.

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 www.allthingsthatmatterpress.com

Excerpt
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Prologue

Throughout the summer of 2003 I repeatedly underwent what psychologists have since diagnosed as post-traumatic stress and panic disorder. A spiritually-inclined friend refers to the same summer as my rebirthing period. Still others, who claim to have had similar experiences, tell me that such episodes were probably a warning, my bodys way of telling me to adopt healthier eating habits, exercise more or quit smoking. At the time, all I knew was that the onset was swift.

I was working at a bookstore in Upper Arlington, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. The store was small, quiet. Gently modulating harmonies, barely audible, filled the vast empty space between customers as I perused the alphabet of author names in front of me, searching for a paperbacks designated spot. I had made it my goal to shelve the last two stacks of romance novels before taking a break, and I was on target, moving industriously until I reached to shelve one of the last titles and my arm went slack, my fingers released. But the book didnt fall.

I could see my hand, pale and bony with soft freckles dotting knuckles, fingers still wrapped around the books yellow spine. I turned the hand over, tracing its outline in my mind, trying to understand why I could no longer feel the silken texture of the cover. The sensation I felt was almost peaceful at first; it was as though I were wandering through my body, haunting and examining but unable to control it. I waited a moment for the cohesion of normalcy, but it wouldnt come and soon my mind turned restless, flooding with possible causation: aneurism, stroke, heart attack, sudden death syndrome. I had visions of collapsing to the ground, of medics trying to resuscitate me. I began to hear pulsing fluids moving inside me. I was overwhelmed by a desire to run in every direction at once.

A stooped woman dressed in gray and light blue approached me slowly, asked me to help her find the history section of the store. Her light eyes, sheathed with experience, seemed to mock me, laugh at my wretched vulnerability, my dispensable life. I wondered at the superiority of her years, what had she done to deserve them? What could she teach me?
Miss? I asked you a question, she said.

I felt the vibration of chords and soft tissue in my neck as my voice directed her to the wall opposite and without waiting for a response, I walked away. I felt as though I were being led by my own body, each step ethereal but swift, limbs moving involuntarily. Two size fives in closed-toe shoes were leading the way—they had navigated this path before. When I was alone in the break room, my body turned its back to a chair and my knees bent slowly until the backs of my legs met the gold and green upholstery. This is when the lack of sensation changed, and suddenly, I became hyperaware.

I squirmed, trying to escape the sounds: the clicks of anothers hand entering a code, the vending machine grumbling beside me and lightly shaking the chair in which I sat. The vent above me thumped inharmoniously with my bodys rhythm as it bucked a miasma of stale air into the room. My mouth seemed overly warm and the contrast of wet tissues and smooth tooth enamel repelled my tongue. The smallness of the room, closing in, suffocated my eyes with artificial light that fell on worn beige walls, a checkered tablecloth that caused my head to spin. My skin prickled as though small needles were entering each pore. Just as the door opened, my eyes closed and the needles all burrowed beneath my epidermis and swam through my body to my chest where they extracted the air from my lungs and stopped my heart.

Co-workers huddled around, asking me what was wrong. I was hunched over in the chair with my head between my legs, shaking now, and unable to explain. All I knew was that my body was failing, and I didnt want this audience. My chest contracted each time I struggled to take a full breath so that I could only gasp when I tried to respond to questions. I tried to ignore the audience, but when I closed my eyes the cold air grip that was suffocating my skin grew stronger, squeezing.

What comes after was akin to a blackout, and I can only see clips of the events that followed. My manager drove me to the emergency room, and I became conscious of her nervous irritation at traffic lights and her tired, worried gaze as it lingered on me. I sat like a nervous child, holding one knee to my chest as I fixed my eyes on the dull burgundy glove compartment in front of me. When we arrived at the emergency room, it was my manager who explained that I might be having a heart or asthma attack; she said this to someone at a desk who immediately had me ushered back to a sterile, semi-private room.

I was rigid, sitting on the edge of a bed, cringing as nurses took samples of my blood, pushing needles into my skin while stating things like You sure have stubborn veins. Try pumping your fist again. They said they were testing for signs of everything from pregnancy to irregular levels of glucose and minerals. I concentrated only on my breath, trying to control it as these nurses entered and left my room in a haze of loud scrubs and soft voices, leaving cups for me to fill with urine and telling me to relax. Surprisingly, in the midst of all the chaos, I did. I became amiable as they asked me questions, passing my chart like a game of tag. I tried my best to answer their questions about my pain.

Anxious to hear my diagnosis, I felt another wave of relief when the doctor finally arrived. I noticed that his posture was impeccable, almost awkward when contrasted to the urgent forward-tilt of the nurse who followed him in. He held a file with my name on it. As he flipped through pages, I sat up straight, bracing myself.

You're in good shape, he began. I waited. Your lungs are clear and you have a rather slow heart rate, which is a good thing. You couldn't ask for better numbers on your blood pressure… He ran down the series of test results. We don't have all your blood work, of course, but it looks like you just had a panic attack.

My displeasure with this answer must have been evident because he immediately defended his diagnosis: We get quite a few cases of panic every day. You'd be surprised what stress can do. Are you under a lot of stress?

No, I said flatly.