Brown Paper Bags

One time, when I was seven or eight, my stepfather got me out of bed late at night because he had to take Mom to the emergency room. I remember her trembling, and snuggling up to her in the waiting room in my pajamas. It turned out she was having a panic attack. She was prone to those, and I guess maybe it's hereditary, though I don't get anything so severe: just, once in a while, a sickening sense of impending doom, a nasty case of the screaming heebie-jeebies in the middle of the night.

You know how people tend to establish balanced roles in their relationships? I mean, not just "relationship" relationships but any kind of ongoing interpersonal interaction. Anyway, for the last year or so I've been dealing with the panicmonger boss on a daily basis; but ever since Friday she's been calm and relaxed and cheerful. I don't know if she found another job or is just on some good drugs - or both - but maybe I'm picking up the slack, panicwise.

Or it's Robbie leaving, which will constitute a major upheaval in my daily life and is setting off some ass-kicking abandonment issues. Ugh, that terrible fear of rejection and loss and loneliness, of being left behind and unloved and unwanted... And even aside from missing him, it's just a big change, and change is scary.

Or perhaps it's a creeping terror of overwrought armchair psychology. Or it's Slappy White washing his unmentionable bits upwind of me on the bed. Or the lasagna I had for dinner.

Whatever it is, I can't sleep.