continuation...

In large part, our relationship and the relationships between me and some of my other friends, were due to the impact of panic attack disorder and major depression.  I was born anxious.  My first memory of life, I believe, was in the womb.  What I remember was seeing my pregnant mother standing on the back steps of a house.  The back door was open.  She was agitated.  It was dark outside and the house was dark inside as well with the exception of a dimly lit light in the hall.  She suffered much of her life with anxiety and depression, as well, but she was a master at disguising it from me.  I wonder if was home alone, and my dad was off in another town refereeing basketball.  I wonder what the scene that I have locked in my memory was all about.  What precipitated it?  Was dad there?  Was she up all night?  I don't know.

The second memory etched in my mind is of me, in a blue tunic and white blouse, sitting against the wall of the living room in Aunt Dorothy's Playhouse.  The other kids were playing.  My eyes were sore from crying, and my breath was coming in short short, jagged bursts of breath.  i was calming down.  I felt weak and exhausted.  I wanted my mother, and I wanted to go home.

Years later, my mother told me that leaving me at Aunt Dorothy's was a mistake.  I was crying when she left, and the staff had assured her that I would stop once she had departed.  It didn't happen that way.  I did stay the year, but the pictures of the activities we engaged in showed a sober little girl.  My experience there certainly didn't bode well for Grade I.  On a few occasions, I ran away from school and made my way home where I hid in the hall closet until lunch time where I magically appeared.  Soon I found myself sitting in the principal's office with my father, a fellow educator, hearing the principal telling me that if I ran away again, he would come after me in his car car.  I remember thinking how silly it was for him to say "car car."  In my memory, he was a tall and heavy man with a formidable presence. Although I continued to hate school, I never ran away or skipped school from then on.