Five

Five

I couldn’t breathe.

I felt my anxiety building.

Escalating.

I tried to take some cleansing breaths.

Instead, I started gasping for air.

This wasn’t working.

Think of what your therapist told you.

The little voice inside my brain urged me.

 Which one? I can’t even remember his name.

Focus.

I can’t.

Focus on your breathing.

I breathed in a deep breath, held it for a moment then breathed out. I repeated it four more times. Five was the magic number.

It was working.

I’m not going to die.

My name is Monica. Monica James. I’m a travel writer. A travel writer who doesn’t travel. I’m afraid to travel. The truth is, I’m afraid of just about anything and everything. It started when I was very young, age five to be exact.

My Mum and Dad took me to the carnival for my fifth birthday. I don’t remember much of that day, at least not about the carnival. I suppose there would have been rides, concession stands, maybe clowns, but all I really remember were the crowds pushing in all around us and suddenly not being able to see Mum or Dad. I was moving along, swept along by the masses, I called their names but they didn’t answer.

The people were all so much taller than me, noisy, moving quickly along the row past the rides, past the gaming booths. I finally pushed my way through the throng and managed to make my way to the side and let the herd of people continue on their way, but Mum and Dad were gone. I remember crying, the tears flowing down my cheeks like a torrential downpour. I was right by the parking lot, so far from the Ferris wheel that we had all ridden on just moments ago.

A nice lady came up to me and asked if I was lost. She reached into her purse and handed me a tissue and told me everything was going to be alright, and that she would help me find my parents. She then reached into her purse and pulled out a rainbow-coloured all-day sucker and handed it to me. She looked around at the cars and asked me what kind of car I came in. I told her it was a blue one and that it had a big dent in the back bumper. She told me she remembered seeing it and that she would take me to it and soon my parents would come to the car. She held out her hand and I took it and she led me to the parking lot. The next thing I knew I was locked in the trunk of her car.

It was several days before the police found me tied up, gagged, and locked in a dark dank basement. I was then reunited with my frantic parents. Ever since that time in my life, things have changed. Drastically.

I became a recluse, a hermit. An introvert, a near cenobite, cloistered away like the nuns and monks of yesteryear. I shut out the world, for the sake of safety.

I never wanted to leave the safety of my house. My Dad installed security cameras but I never wanted to leave my property. School was out of the question, I would start to hyperventilate the moment anyone started to even talk about any activities outside the house. Then a full-blown panic attack would ensue.

After that, my mother home-schooled me. My therapist told her that she was just enabling me and that I needed to learn that although I had gone through a horrible experience, the world wouldn't always be a bad place. I spent much of my youth going from therapist to therapist, my file was an inch thick with various diagnoses, and lists of all my mental repetitive rituals. My parents didn’t care about any of the therapist's psycho babble, they just wanted me to be safe. I agreed.

We had a huge backyard and my parents provided me with everything a child could ever wish for. A pool, swing sets, climbers, trampolines, a playhouse, you name it we had it. But best of all was the solid brick fence that surrounded the property, it had razor-shop barbed wire running across the top. I loved that fence.

A year after the kidnapping, my baby sister was born. As time passed, I discovered that we were the antithesis of each other, extreme opposites. Gale was a social butterfly, she wanted to go everywhere and do everything and she did. Swimming lessons, dance classes, birthday parties. Her social calendar was always filled. Luckily my parents were rich enough to pay not only for all her lessons but for a security team just for her to travel to and from all these events. But boy did they earn their keep because Gale lived up to her name and was a very real force of nature. A Gale force we always said, There wasn’t anything she was afraid of or wouldn’t do. 

Of course, there were some occasions when I did have to leave the estate, such as Doctor, Dentist, and Therapist visits, and these events were always accompanied by what my therapist said were excessive apprehension episodes and accompanied by avoidance on my part. I would often hide physical symptoms so as to avoid going to the doctor. Like the time my appendix ruptured because I refused to let my parents know about the pain in my side, in case they would insist that I go to a doctor. I must admit, that particular event did backfire.

 It is said that anxiety is often tied to depression but I can say that I was never a very depressed person. In fact, my emotional compass seemed to undergo a transformation after my kidnapping. Where before, I was told, I was a happy, well-adjusted child, quick to laugh and smile, I quickly became a person with little or no outgoing emotions, be it positive or negative, Unless that is I was building up for one of my anxiety or panic attacks. Most of the time I was just anxious, restless, and tense which would cause an impending sense of doom or panic attacks where my heart would race I would start to hyperventilate, tremble uncontrollably and sweat like a stuck pig, During these episodes I couldn't focus on what I needed to do.

Of course, I had been seeing a therapist or in my case a slew of them in hopes of instilling a balance or harmony in my life, all to no avail.

Panic attacks became a way of life and during the first few years after what my parents like to refer to as, “the Incident,” I had difficulty on a daily basis when my father went off to work. Another box for my therapists to check off on my long list of phobias, syndromes, and disorders. Separation anxiety.

I had trouble sleeping. I would go around the house each night and personally check all the locks on all the windows and every door. Check the security system. Once that chore had been accomplished I would then re-do my route and check everything a second time. Then a third, a fourth, and finally the fifth time. At that point, I would lock myself in my room and after checking the lock exactly five times to make sure it was truly locked, I might be able to sleep for a short while.

Generalized anxiety disorder and persistent worry about the most ordinary routines and events was just an everyday occurrence but sometimes the panic attacks would reach epic proportions. These generally occurred when my mother would have to leave the house. I gradually became able to accept the fact that my father had to leave the house to go to work at his job as a CEO of a large international firm. If he didn’t work then we couldn’t eat or have a nice secure house with a barbed wire fence around it. When he was ready to leave for work I would hug him and kiss him goodbye and then repeat the ritual four more times. Five times seemed to be the magic charm for me.

My poor mother on the other hand became almost as much of a recluse as I was. Separation anxiety would occur every time she needed to leave the house.

For some strange reason, it never bothered me when Gale left the house. With my parents I guess I remembered the stress that they went through after the “incident. The tears, the long hugs, and the anxiety. With Gale, well she wasn’t even alive yet when “the Incident” happened. Also, Gale was so…well so Gale, that it was somehow almost impossible to believe anything could happen to her. And I guess I always thought even if someone did take Gale, like they took me, they would send her back after five minutes.

My little sister Gale was my rock, I don't know how many countless times she has saved me. All my jobs, which were hybrid jobs, were jobs where ninety-five percent of the time I worked from home and just dropped by the office when I had completed an assignment. I had never actually met any of my bosses. It was Gale who, pretending to be me, delivered the assignments and picked up new work. It was Gale who traveled to exotic lands and brought me hundreds of pictures and videos and stories, after which I would write about them. Writing was my passion, my solace, my therapy, and so were music and art. It was my way to deal with my self-imposed isolation and emotional detachment.

I remember that I cried for days when I was in captivity, but once rescued and returned to the bosom of my loving family I never cried again. It's like all the tears that had been allotted to me during my lifetime had been used up during this one horrendous time. My normal emotional compass had somehow ceased to exist. There was no balance, no harmony, no tears, no smiles, no love for mankind. My whole world revolved around my Mother, my Father, and of course Gale. The servants were never allowed in my rooms, and I rarely, if ever, saw them. I put up an emotional barricade between myself and the outside world to stop the chaos in my brain.

The servants moved freely throughout the house when I was in my rooms, a reinforced steel door between us. There was a studio beside my bedroom where I played my piano and painted at my easel. The servants left sharply at five o’clock and at that point, I would unlock my door and then relock it five times in total and descend to the main floor of the house.

For twenty years now I had lived my solitary life, basically seeing only my immediate family and of course the therapists. I had seen enough therapists to know that mine was a bizarre case, and I was truly cognisant of this fact. I was aware of my foibles, idiosyncrasies, eccentricities, my failings, my flaws, my quirks. Although Gale was my rock and strongest ally, she was also my harshest critic. We all know what younger siblings can be like. Honest to the point of cruelty, annoying as all get out. Disrespectful of your personal space. How many times had Gale rushed into my rooms like a whirling dervish, laughingly picking up my personal items without thought, moving them around out of their precise position? How many times had she moved my sheet music, or paints around in my studio so that when she departed I had to spend so much time sanitizing everything she touched and putting everything back in their precise allocated spot? Picking up my hairbrush, and brushing her hair with it, knowing I would have to discard it afterwards. I sometimes wondered if she did it all on purpose. I loved to see her come with a sense of overwhelming love and anxiety, and I loved to see her go with an overwhelming sense of love and relief. She was my rock and also one of my triggers.

Gale was carefree, fun-loving, easygoing, laidback and I lived my life vicariously through her. She was my portal to the outside world, she was the one to gather experiences and life and bring it back to me on my island where I stand rock solid against the rest of the world. After Gale had regaled me with her latest events, she would flit off like the butterfly she was and I would close the door and lock it. Five times.

                                *****

“I am a rock, I am an island and a rock feels no pain and an island never cries,” Simon and Garfunkle.