I pounced on the handle the instant the doorbell rang.
“Oh. It’s you.” I turned and walked back toward the window.
“Sorry I’m late for brunch, but is that any way to greet one of your best friends? I kind of lose track of time while I’m studying for the GMATs.” Pamela removed her scarf and scanned Prakash’s loft. “Where is everyone?”
“Huh?” I looked behind her for signs of Nick coming down the hallway. “I dunno. Cristy’s on her way. Chris and Prakash are fighting or screwing in the kitchen. I’m not sure which, but I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.”
“What else is new? And Nick?” she asked, pausing amid the process of mixing herself a mimosa.
I headed back to the door, knowing she wouldn’t have thought to lock it behind her. “Oh, he should be here any…”
And just before I could lock the door, it pushed back.
“Here it is, babe.” Nick scooped me up into a hug and twirled me around before setting me down.
“Here what is?” Pam asked.
“My baby’s been published in the New York Times,” Nick announced triumphantly, handing each of us a copy from his pile of at least thirty. “Here. Take a copy.”
“Bullshit!” Prakash came running out from the kitchen, having overheard us. “Okay, this means we’re gonna use the good champagne for a toast. Not the crap we put out for the mimosas.”
“It was not crap.” Christopher came out, wiping his hands on his Breakfast Included apron and frowning at his husband.
“Oh, come on. Be serious.” Prakash went for their liquor cabinet.
Cristy was the next one through the door, and she nearly knocked me over. “Why didn’t you tell me? This is incredible! Chica, congratulations!”
“Thanks.” I blushed. Even though the newspaper was spread out before me, it was still hard to believe, especially since the last time the Times paid me any attention was such a disaster. My thoughts, in print, for the pleasure and dissection of millions of people the world over. I dropped backward onto the new camel suede sofa that Christopher had forbidden any of us to sit on.
“Okay, but we can’t get too drunk,” Nick admonished. “I need my Vina to be coherent tonight. We’ll be celebrating her debut!”
“Where are you going?” Cristy asked, handing me a champagne flute.
“It’s a surprise.” Nick kissed the top of my head. “Oh, that reminds me. I have to confirm our dinner reservation.”
He disappeared into the kitchen, and Pam and Cristina slid onto either side of the couch beside me.
“Well?” Cristina whispered.
“Well what?” I slurped and then swished the champagne around in my mouth.
“Is tonight a big night?” Pam asked.
“Yeah, sure.” I blinked, still fixated on my name in print.
“Don’t play dumb,” Cristy said. “It’s not convincing.”
I looked at her, and then back at the miracle in my hands, willing time to stand still.
“Do you think he’s going to propose tonight?” her voice climbed about three octaves.
“I don’t know.” I propped my feet up on the marble coffee table. “I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Haven’t you even looked for the ring while he’s in the shower?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?” Christopher asked, coming to sit on the coffee table after kicking my feet off it.
“Because I’m usually in there with him?”
“Stop avoiding the topic,” Cristina commanded.
“Look guys, I love him, yes. But life’s good. And I’m just enjoying watching it unfold.”
Brrrring! For once, I was saved by a phone call from my parents. I f lipped open my cell phone, rose to my feet and stepped toward the window, still clutching my newspaper.
“Darling, we did not believe it when we saw our daughter’s name in the New York Times this morning,” my mother gushed before I could say hello. “Our daughter!”
“Really, Vina. Kamaal keeya,” my father said. I turned away from the others and leaned against the windowsill. “You have made us very proud. I cannot imagine that my daughter can even think this way, much less write this way. This is truly something noble.”
“It’s not that big of a deal, Dad.” I blushed, watching Nick come toward me with a champagne f lute in one hand and a bottle in the other. Behind him, my friends were assembling for the toast they knew he was about to make.
“We are so proud of you,” my mother told me. “Now hold on, your Nani is grabbing at the telephone.”
So am I, I thought, lifting my glass for a refill as I awaited for my grandmother’s voice. So am I.
My Postscript
On the shape of panic, the closet of claustrophobia and the liberation of falling apart
There are an estimated six million claustrophobics in the naked city. I’m one of them. And thank God for that. Until recently I lacked the courage to share that fact with even the closest members of my inner circle. But I’m not writing this piece to come out of my proverbial closet; my closet spat me out by force. I’m writing it to help many of you come out of your own, by choice. Because facing my disorder meant facing some other, more important things about myself. Myself, and adult life in general. Allow me to explain.
I woke up one day a few months ago feeling so disappointed in myself. No, I was not alone in a Dumpster in Connecticut, and no, I was not lying next to a naked stranger wearing a tool belt and covered in raspberry jam. You New Yorkers, with your dirty imaginations. I was disappointed because I finally had to admit that the origin of my problems was staring back at me in the mirror. In the months preceding that afternoon, I had lost nearly everything that mattered to me.
My moment of revelation occurred on the cold, hard floor of a midtown elevator where I found myself in the fetal position after a full-f ledged nervous breakdown. I was on my way to a deposition with the SEC. And clarity came in the form of admitting to myself that my career, my relationship, and ultimately my faith in my own judgment paid the price for trying to be perfect as others defined it. I had spent twenty-seven years setting myself up to fail. And I began to wonder, in the weeks and months that followed, why I would have done that to myself, and if it were possible that I could be the only one. Somehow, I didn’t think so.
Most claustrophobics experience an intense, often socially and professionally debilitating disorder that begins without benefit of emotional stimuli, and prevents them from feeling comfortable in enclosed spaces. In the most severe cases, people will literally begin to hyperventilate at the prospect of even entering a subway, a small room or an elevator, for fear that diminishing oxygen will cause them to suffocate to death. Mercifully, mine was a milder form, which triggered responses only when coupled with mounting external emotional distress. Routinely, my claustrophobia pushed me close enough to peer over what I had come to recognize as my emotional edge. But what I didn’t realize until after the day of my breakdown was how much worse I was making the disorder for myself. Because while I had experienced emotional distress in close quarters many times before, that afternoon in the elevator was the first time that it pushed me over the edge to a panic attack and subsequent breakdown. And now I realize why.
The core of claustrophobia, regardless of its severity, is a fear of losing control. And like many otherwise rational adults, I was carrying around the ridiculous notion that I had some. The idea was that by my late twenties, I ought to have had my life figured out. To know what I was doing, where I was headed, and why the world spun the way that it did. It wasn’t enough to be good at my job, or to try my best with my relationships. I desperately needed to believe that nothing had been left up to chance. That I knew what I was doing, and I made my own destiny.
Like I said, thank God for my claustrophobia, because I had become good at balancing on that high-wire above reality, and I had every intention of staying there on my tippy-toes forever. Alongside many of you. It was a carefully crafted ill
usion that I “had it together,” and it was comforting. Then something wonderful happened. Everything fell apart. Finally, on the floor of that elevator, so did I. After the dust settled on the investigation I was cleared of any wrongdoing. The SEC charges of insider trading were dropped, and those who had deceived me were forced to accept responsibility for their lies.
While I was vindicated, I found that I was far from free. Some nagging questions remained, the loudest one being Why did I miss all the signs?
So I cried, and I hid, and I thought and I meditated, and the only answer that came to me was this: Because I chose to.
That’s when all the pieces began falling into place. The last time I could remember living in a world without anxiety was somewhere around age four. Curly-haired, chubby-cheeked, eating a bowl of chocolate ice cream and wearing a T-shirt claiming Here Comes Trouble, I was usually wiggling to the sound of the tunes in my head, swinging my legs off the side of my chair and completely at peace with a hug and a smile from my mom. Where had that girl gone?
Like the happy child inside of most people, she was buried under years of trying to please everyone around her. Buried under the weight of pressure, age, cynicism and shame, all emotions with which she had been so happily unfamiliar. By subscribing to the notion that I ought to aim for perfection, I chose to internalize the pressure to know everything. I began to hold myself to standards no one would ever have expected of a child. And I became my own worst enemy, once I forgot about that girl entirely. I muted her voice while living my life for all of the others.
And it took my breakdown to show me how far it had gone. After a while, so much was resting on the illusion of my own control, that second-guessing myself was not an option. So consciously or subconsciously or in some vein between the two, I ignored the warning signs. I refused to ask questions or to take a step back. I no longer allowed myself to squint and discern the fine line between my instincts and my defense mechanisms. I was so afraid to have any of my ideas or choices contradicted that I refused to allow dissension even from within.
Sound familiar? I’m sure that it does. Because we all do it, to different degrees. We lie to ourselves all the time, Shhhhhhhing that inner voice until it is no longer even audible above the roar of the lives we build above it. Hence my disappointment in myself. Since then, I’ve discovered something wonderful. It turns out that the inner voice never goes anywhere. It just waits patiently until it can be heard once again.
The calm after my breakdown was palpable, which is why I recommend it to everyone. And as for my claustrophobia, I’m not ashamed anymore. The funny thing is, the minute you try to let go of the delusion of control, without knowing it, you start letting go of your anxieties and your phobias, and you begin to distill what’s important.
My claustrophobia has taught me that I was suffocating as much inside of my own expectations as I was inside of my disorder. That true strength was being humble enough to second-guess myself. That I never had any control to begin with. And knowing that was the most tremendous gift.
I see now that the claustrophobic in me was in large part a manifestation of the phobic in all of us. I don’t mean to imply that claustrophobia in most cases is not a legitimate and clinically diagnosed disorder. All I know for sure is that the last year of my life changed everything because I suffered the kind of crisis that I hope only comes around once. I know that I am fragile, and fallible, and so is everyone else.
So I choose to aim for improvement rather than perfection, and to appreciate the effort as much as the results. Because it’s not about perfection, or ego, or anything else. It’s about that girl I tried so hard to bury. It’s about appreciating that my instincts may be the echoes of her voice. It’s about raising a glass when it’s time, raising an objection when it’s necessary and raising my self-awareness to the point where I will never again fail to do what’s best for me. And it’s about knowing that as long as I live that way, my four-year-old self will be smiling back at me from across the table, ice-cream bowl in hand, innocently rooting me on.
GIRL MOST LIKELY TO
A Red Dress Ink novel
ISBN: 978-1-5525-4932-2
© 2007 by Poonam Sharma.
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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