We spend the rest of the day on the beach
and the night at the hostel bar.
There are people here
from all over the world.
There is one guy
who keeps looking at me
and when I go over toward him
he motions for me to sit down.
He is French and deaf.
I know the sign language alphabet
so we sign our names to each other.
We sit together for the rest of the night.
He reads lips,
and we draw pictures
and make gestures to communicate.
It takes so much energy and concentration to be with him
and understand what he is trying to say
that I forget
what is wrong with me.
vi.
After a week in Paris
I go back to normal.
I ride the metro to class,
wander the city,
feel trapped in my body,
eat dinner with my family,
spend all my money on clothes.
My parents are here.
They are staying at a fancy hotel
across from the Louvre.
I take the elevator up to their room
and follow the flowers on the carpet
to their door.
I feel like I am going to explode.
I am so happy to see them,
but I am scared
it will make me crack.
Everything I have been holding in—
everything they don’t want to know—
will come gushing out
and never stop.
My father opens the door.
For the first time in my life
he has grown a beard
and I’m surprised
at how gray it is.
He looks so different
that it’s hard to focus on him.
My mother is on the bed.
The first thing she says is,
“Why did you do that to your hair?”
The gates break
and I am crying.
Why would she say that first?
How will saying that
do anything but hurt my feelings?
My father tells me it looks cute
and runs his hand over the back of my head
where it’s really short.
We spend the week together.
During the day we go to museums.
We go shopping.
We go out to dinner.
My mother speaks a little French,
but I am our navigator.
I can feel their pride
as I order our food
and talk to salespeople in French.
Robyn is also in town
and she’s staying at my apartment.
I spend my nights with her
going to bars and clubs.
I am constantly exhausted
and on the edge of panic.
At the end of the week
my parents and I are in a restaurant
and my stomach is a mess.
I stare down at my full plate
and think, I have never been this tired.
I cannot even chew.
My body is empty
and no matter what I give it,
it is not enough.
I tell my parents I am sick.
I need to leave.
When the proprietor clears my untouched plate
she is confused and offended.
She wants to know
why I didn’t eat anything
and it takes all my energy to reassure her
that I’m not leaving because of her food.
My last week in Paris
I get mail.
The envelope is small
and the handwriting is perfect,
yet masculine.
I turn it over.
There is no return address—
only a New York post office stamp
and my parents’ zip code on the front.
It is from Jason
or Nate.
I hold it in my hands,
weigh it,
trying to figure out who it is from—
who I want it to be from.
I sit down
and open it.
Folded up into a neat square
are three notebook pages
filled, front and back.
I take in the handwriting.
My heart sinks.
I wanted it to be from Nate.
But when I flip it over to see the signature
I see I am wrong.
I read the letter
over and over
and over
and don’t even tell Rebecca
what was written in it.
It is mine.
I’m leaving France before everyone else.
Most people are going to travel
or at least spend their last days in Paris partying.
As soon as classes are over
I am getting on a plane.
I can’t stay here anymore.
I need to go home.
I need to go to sleep.
I need to sit still.
Ann found an apartment for us
for the summer by school.
Each day I am going to ride my bike
for a half mile, past all the mansions
and lawn jockeys, to work at school
in the Events Department.
Everything about this summer
is going to be quiet
and slow.
vii.
I am at my parents’ for a week
before I move to school.
It is strange to be back in the States
and to have everything change so quickly.
Life was so frenetic in Paris
and as soon as I walked in my parents’ door
everything came to a full stop.
Back in my own country,
with my own language,
I still feel alone,
like no one understands me.
I spent so much time in Paris
wishing I were home,
in a safe place,
but now that I am here,
it is as hard as being away.
I don’t know what to do with myself.
It is hard to sit down and do nothing.
I watch TV, do errands,
but this pace makes me feel
like my heart is going to stop.
I sit in my room
and reread my journals from high school
and cry because my biggest problem then was Jason.
How did I get so far from that
and so close to this feeling in my belly—
the feeling that this skin isn’t good enough,
that it doesn’t quite fit,
that anyplace is better than here?
My parents see how battered I am.
It is hard to miss.
I tell them that the change of pace is too hard on me.
That coming back was a shock to my system.
My mother takes me to a family doctor
to get a new prescription
and tries to convince me
not to move to school for the summer.
But I have to go.
I can’t stay here.
Klonopin 0.5 mg.
This orange bottle
and these yellow pills
are so familiar.
In return for the prescription
the doctor makes me promise
that I will see a therapist
at school.
Thinking about Provence scares me.
To me, walking up and down that path,
bending over, grasping my head, crying
because I couldn’t make it stop
is the face of insanity—
uncontrollable panic and fear,
the nonstop rush and no way out.
All I could think about
was how I didn’t deserve this,
and that I was a good person,
and how much it hurt.
I feel like a different person
compared to that girl.
I can barely recall the way it felt—
a blessing, I suppose.
Why would I want to remember it vividly?
I have only a general sense of the pain,
of not being able to control my body
and my thoughts.
All I ever wanted
was to have control—
to be in charge of myself
and the rest of the world.
When I look back at my pictures from Europe
will I forget how much everything hurt?
Will it all not seem so bad?
Will the attacks be shorter?
Will there be fewer?
Will I have them at all?
When I see a picture of me
standing in front of a canal in Venice
or waving at the camera in the markets of Florence
and my color is a little off
and I have only a half a smile
or the camera caught me
just before I could smile?
I have to be careful what I remember.
It wasn’t all good.
Things are already so different.
My memory cannot be trusted.
I want to be with Nate so badly.
I want to sit down with him
and have him put his arm around me
and tell me that he loves me,
even if he doesn’t.
But I can’t even get him
on the phone long enough
to tell him what’s happening to me
and how awful Paris was
and how awful it is to be home,
to be anywhere.
I sit in the TV room and stare at the phone,
wondering how long it will take
for him to call me back,
wondering how long
before I can call him again.
Like always I cave and call.
I tell him I need him.
I tell him I need him now.
He tells me that he is waiting
for one of his friends to come over—
one of his stupid wasted friends.
I need him.
Why is not disappointing his loser friend
more important than seeing me,
helping me?
He says, “Samantha,
I know you are very angry with me,
but I can’t do anything about it right now.”
There is something about how slowly
and calmly he says it,
how he enunciates every syllable,
that makes me slam the phone down
over and over again.
Now I’m back staring at the phone
thinking how I’ve never hung up on anyone
and how I never even got the chance
to tell him what was wrong.
My first apartment
has thick brown shag carpeting
that traps the heat and smells of cat.
Like other apartments,
we have pots and pans,
but these are my pots and pans.
That is my blender.
This is my room.
We have a balcony
facing the town’s main street.
Ann and I sit up there
and watch the sun set.
I blow bubbles
just to watch the people below
laugh and look around, confused.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about eating,
or how I’m not eating enough.
I don’t think I’m getting enough nutrition.
I bought some dietary supplement shakes,
not the kind to make you lose weight,
but the kind old people drink to stay healthy.
Things are calm.
I set my own pace here.
I swim at the lake with friends,
meet Ann and her boyfriend
for happy hour after work,
go to barbecues that last for hours.
This is my routine.
The only thing I don’t like
is my bike ride home from work.
It’s all downhill
and the speed scares me.
I have an appointment
with a therapist.
I spend the day before the appointment
thinking about the things I am afraid of:
That I will be alone.
That no one will love me.
But are these really the fears I worry about?
What about not succeeding?
Not pleasing my parents?
Being left alone, with no one to help me,
just in case something terrible happens?
The new fear
of not being able to get out
has affected me worse than all the others.
It is much more crippling.
I cannot shake Provence, no matter how hard I try.
But do I really try hard enough
to take down my walls?
I wonder if I am too close
to even see what is written on them.
This close, everything is just a blurry mess.
The session with the new therapist is exhausting.
We start from scratch.
I tell him about myself,
about my sister and my parents,
the names of all the drugs I’ve taken,
how my anxiety is worse at night,
and that Europe was a disaster.
We talk about how I fear
losing control,
how I fear embarrassment,
how I fear fear.
I try to be optimistic,
but I can’t believe that I am back here,
in this chair,
telling all my stories, hoping
that this time
will be the last time
I have to do this.
Part IV
i.
Rebecca, Ann, and Jennifer
and I are living in an off-campus apartment
that’s a converted bed-and-breakfast.
We each pay five hundred dollars a month
and have our own bedroom and bathroom.
I know this is not reality.
My parents pay my rent
and my credit card bills for food.
My only responsibilities are
to write poetry, take pictures,
write papers, and take my medication.
My life is so easy now
and I wonder what it will be like
in the spring when I graduate.
What kind of job do I want?
Where am I going to live?
My parents have spent
so much money on my education
and I don’t have any idea
what I am going to do when I leave here.
I have the dream again.
My sister and I are crossing the Pont Neuf,
a bridge in Paris,
when I realize my mouth is filled
with tiny black rocks.
I sit down and start spitting them out.
I tell my sister not to worry—
that this happens all the time.
My therapist and I work
on relaxation.
He tells me to close my eyes
and imagine I am in a comfortable, safe place.
He wants me to focus on my breathing,
but I can’t do it.
I’m not ready
to shut my eyes again.
We talk and I ask
if he knows any books tha
t would help me.
I am eager to do something tangible
to help my anxiety.
He orders me an anxiety workbook.
It will be filled with exercises
and ways to take control of my anxiety.
When it comes I never use it.
The therapist sends me to a psychiatrist
to manage my meds.
This psychiatrist is not like the others.
He wears faded jeans and black
Converse sneakers
that he puts up on his desk.
He thinks Paxil will be
better than Klonopin
and I am in no position to disagree.
Paxil 10 mg
makes me want to vomit
every hour of every day.
When I brush my teeth,
it makes me gag.
When I put a pencil between my teeth,
it makes me gag.
The psychiatrist tells me to tough it out,
that the side effects will pass.
I give it two weeks.
Serzone 200 mg
is not bad.
The hardest part is remembering
to take it in the morning
since I’ve always taken my meds at night.
None of my friends can understand
how the last three years went so quickly.
It feels like the first day of freshman year
wasn’t that long ago—
like we just met and are still trying
to find our way around campus.
But now we are seniors.
We are at the top of the heap.
Everyone is looking up toward us,
but I am looking back.
I wonder how I could have done things differently—
how I could have done things better.
Did I take the right classes
and have the right major?
Did I choose English because it was easy for me
or could I have pushed myself more
and done something else?
I think about how I never went out enough
and how I should have been more social
and gone to more parties.
I think about girls who found love here,
if only for a little while,
and I feel like I missed out.
Ann and I are home,
alone in the apartment
after a Halloween party,
and I am high.
I haven’t smoked pot in months,
but I took a few cautious hits at the party
since my anxiety has been better.
Ann and I watch a DVD
and eat doughnuts until we are stuffed.
We say good night and go to our rooms
to get ready for bed.