Who Would I Be If I Weren't So Afraid?

What Happened to Me The worst of it, as far as I can recall, was in 1975 when in my own way I thought I had lost a sense of perspective or reality. I thought I had lost a sense of who I really was. In fact, I was so riveted in fear I could no longer focus on any one point or thought or feeling for more than a minute at a time. I lived in fear that racked my body, that gave me chest pains, stomach distress, difficulty in swallowing, and headaches that finally ended in a migraine that lasted for almost three weeks. I was ashen to look at, weak, without rest, unable to eat, and I got to a point where I thought the only alternative was simply not to live. I lost focus of where anything was right or wrong, where there was power, where there was a sense of self that could bring me back to reality. I felt totally disconnected from everything and everyone around me. Perhaps the sharpest irony is that I continued to function... quite normally, according to everyone else... as a high-school English teacher in an inner-city school in Newark called Barringer High School. I remember in between classes having to go into the ladies' room, wash my hands and face, and look in the mirror and say, "You're going to make it. Just two more classes. Just one more class, then you can go home and hide." I'd rinse my face with cold water just o that I coul dhave the sense of touch, so I could know that my body was real and that I was not just a thought. I'd take a deep breath, not knowing if I could exhale. I'd walk out into the hall, face thirty to thirty-five kids, and begin to try to explain the parts of speech.