Life Unbothered Read online

  Turn around. I scanned the median between the westbound and eastbound lanes on the interstate looking for a clear area to turn around and head back to Phoenix—to Scottsdale, to my safety zone.

  The phone was secured snugly between my legs with the map app engaged as I toggled my head every couple of seconds from watching the straight road out the windshield to gazing down at the crawling blue dot on the phone’s GPS. With the map not zoomed in enough, it seemed I was progressing at an agonizingly slow pace. To disperse some nervous energy after I passed Exit 94, I yanked open the glove compartment and fumbled for the Arizona roadmap, thinking a paper map would somehow give the illusion of a shorter trip. After unfolding the map frantically and crinkling it into an erratic shape, I pushed it against the middle of the steering wheel and traced my route. The next exit wasn’t for thirteen miles. I rammed my foot on the accelerator. The car downshifted then lurched forward, pushing the speedometer to just over a hundred. I attempted a mental calculation to determine how long it would take to arrive at the next exit at that speed. The numbers became a jumbled puzzle in my head as I extrapolated the less than ten-minute arrival time to Exit 81, the next exit. My lungs filled with air, but there was no comfort in it. I was not confident I could hold on that long. But what if Exit 81 doesn’t have a turnaround?

  Some exits in the middle of the desert didn’t have a bridge allowing drivers to cross the interstate and head in the opposite direction. In all the times I had driven the route, I failed to memorize every exit—I would have to sink Exit 81 into my subconscious so I’d know next time if it had a bridge to reverse my course.

  I psychotically blazed along the interstate playing this game with each exit. I passed Exit 81 thinking I could probably make it to the next exit, constantly scanning the hundred-foot-wide sparsely vegetated median for safe places to turn around—just in case. Exit 69, Exit 53, Exit 45, Exit 31, all their characteristics memorized now.

  I did this mental dance all the way to Exit 17, the town of Quartzsite. Illuminating the now darkened desert sky, a lone gas station glimmered like some alien structure transmitting a welcome message.

  As I put my credit card into the pay-at-the-pump slot and removed the gas cap, I worried about how I was going to make the trip all the way to Los Angeles without losing my mind completely. I could still turn around. I wasn’t quite at the halfway point of the trip, which in my scabbed psyche was the scariest leg. It was the farthest point away from heading back to the safety of my home in Scottsdale, while also making it just as far to Los Angeles, a journey I didn’t think I could bear to make in the first place. I felt stuck in the middle, hands cold and sweaty as I pumped gas into my car.

  I drove over the bridge spanning the Colorado River into California, making my way to the mandatory stop at the California Inspection Station just a few miles past the border.

  “Why are you traveling to California tonight?” the inspection clerk asked.

  “For a visit with my family,” I said, trying to collect upon myself a somewhat casual demeanor.

  “Pleasure,” he noted. “Are you carrying any fruits or vegetables with you?”

  “Just a roast beef sandwich I packed with lettuce on it. Do you want me to throw out the lettuce?”

  He scrutinized me for a moment before saying, “No, that’s okay. Go ahead.”

  About twenty miles past the small town of Blythe, the back of my head began tingling. I looked apprehensively at the dark scenery looming around me. I started feeling like I was not real, just a floating molecule not grounded to anything. My eyes scanned the interior of the car in an attempt to produce some sort of comfort. Here it goes again. I glanced down at my legs and forced my tight grip on the steering wheel to slacken enough to inspect my left hand, putting the palm in front of my face and moving my fingers. I rolled my head around to study the car interior again in a desperate act to confirm I was really there.

  There was a chilled bottle of spring water in one of the cup holders. I lifted the half-empty plastic bottle and poured the remaining clear liquid down my back, trying to feel the cold sensation. The water chugged out of the mouth of the bottle and soaked into my shirt fabric before slowing to a trickle at the bottom of my spine, but I registered no frigid reflex or sensation. Skin had somehow turned to tarp, an inanimate husk.

  My visual acuity felt projector-like, my eyes playing a movie through me. It was a feeling of derealization—a disoriented equilibrium stripping away any sense of normal physiology. I put my index finger to my throat and clocked my heartbeat at a hundred-eighty. My body’s bearing began to have the consistency of a lava lamp with my head being the little top blip of goo detaching from its skeletal base. As my lungs clamped tighter, I searched the black landscape hoping to see a hospital sign or a town nearby to comfort me with medical help.

  Slipping slowly into cognizant shock, the overwhelming fears brought about an encircling darkness in my peripheral vision. Unconsciousness forthcoming, I jerked in my seat and slammed on the brakes, leaving a trail of smoking black rubber on the highway as my car came to a skidding stop just inside the reflective white shoulder line. A lone semi’s horn blared as it blew past my car.

  I exited the car and slammed the door. “Shit! Shit shit shit shit shit!” I shouted as I kicked the car’s front fender while swinging my arms like a caffeine-laden jogger doing warm-up exercises. Then a glint of reality came when I looked around the darkness of the barren highway to see if anyone was watching me have a breakdown out in the desert. There were lights approaching from the other side of the interstate, but I was confident they did not see the kicking fit. My breath forced itself out of my mouth as I went to the other side of the car and started walking into the scrub about ten feet off the blacktop. I felt like running into the darkness until I collapsed and died, but I was too scared to venture away from the car and into the unknown.

  I gazed westward, my eyes following the line of the road. My car’s headlights were casting a beam on a large green highway sign sixty feet or so ahead. The exit to Palm Springs was thirty miles ahead. There would be a hospital in the area, but I knew upon arriving at a hospital, any hospital, I would suddenly feel at peace. Doctors would monitor my heart and give me a clean bill of health, sending me along with a bottle of pills and a few sheets of paperwork that would culminate in an outrageously bloated bill later. It had happened many times before. I was almost too scared to move, but in the drip of sanity that remained within me, I knew there was nothing else to do except to keep driving until I felt safe.

  I got back into my car as my heart rate slowed, first looking to see if I had put any dents in the fender from my rapid kicks—I hadn’t, but I did notice a scuff on my shoe. I sat down and ran my hands over the top of my water-dampened pants and shirt to straighten them out from the bottled water curative baptism earlier. I put the car in gear and revved the gas.

  The lane lines of the interstate shot by like dashed clouds from a skywriting plane, and with no resounding pleasant memories to recall to keep me occupied, my focus settled on the origin of my altered life, a brief, seemingly innocuous event seven years ago that I would always remember with a sense of cemented permanence.

  Without any warning, my life changed as a twenty-year-old junior in college on a regular day with a full regimen of morning classes. I was listening to a marketing lecture given by a lanky male professor in an ill-fitted suit whose hair rivaled that of the plasticized wigs worn by the eighties band Devo. As his lecture shifted to a discussion about color schemes on children’s cereal boxes, a jolt sped up my spine and into my head, initiating the first panic attack I had ever experienced. The instant vertigo made me rise halfway out of my chair. Excruciating waves of pressure began pounding through my head like a red hammer. My heart rate doubled instantly, creating a pulsing splash in my ears. It felt as though I had morphed into a computer simulation, but I seemed to be the only one affected. The room started to spin as I
scanned the four walls to see if any other of the thirty or so students felt the same dizziness I did, but their glazed eyes told me that I was in this alone. The girl seated to my left looked curiously at me, her blue eyes both questioning and concerned. Frozen in a half-standing position, I stared back at her. The blue smeared into the black and what had seemed to be concern, now looked more like pity.

  I was dying, suffocating—I was immediately convinced of it. I wanted to run out of the room, but the fear of embarrassment kept me from doing so. I imagined myself collapsing on the carpet, gulping like a fish as my classmates stared at the freak on the floor. Terror becoming pure panic, I stood up, disregarding my lecture notes on the desk, and walked unsteadily into the hallway.

  Breathe.

  It’s a heart attack.

  Vessel popped. Stroke.

  Can’t breathe.

  Keep walking. Get away.

  Getting away. That’s what my life became at that moment. Other episodes ensued as the attacks progressed into an unwelcomed habit. Standing in line in a grocery store, stopping at a red light in traffic, going to a movie, sitting in class. My affliction came with varying degrees of intensity, strengthening and receding like the four seasons. Despite my handicap, I managed to complete college, but when a job offer upon graduation led me to avoid the plane ride to Boston and therefore negating the offer, I knew the panic had taken over my life. I subsequently avoided other solid job offers; any trips that would take me to a career-furthering meeting; the woman or two who could have turned my life around—even the love of other people. I tried to keep it all at arm’s length—anything that could have let me move forward—because that would have meant risk. Risk that I would panic—risk that others would see me panic.

  Instead of going into corporate life, I decided to open an auto detailing business after graduation. Running my own business put me in control, shuttered me away from meetings with others and responsibilities I did not think I could fulfill. That was not the overt reason that I opened a business, but after burning out on cleaning cars and ultimately shutting the company down, I had come to the truth within myself as to why I started the business in the first place. No one knew the deeper truth in my entrepreneurial venture but me—it was all to avoid a normal life.

  The doctors that followed over the years had assured me that no, I hadn’t been having a heart attack or any other type of physical ailment. But they weren’t in this body, hadn’t felt what I had felt that day in the classroom and on thousands of occasions thereafter. The psychiatrists had their chance with me, pinpointing a diagnosis where the cause was undetermined and the cure was nebulous. Notwithstanding all the soft certainties of psychotherapy, for sanity’s sake, I believed that I had no choice in the matter; internal chemistry had won out over contemplation. My theory didn’t help me procure a remedy, it just dulled the pain of what I had become.

  Miles went by on the highway and the Palm Springs area passed by without a thought as I repeatedly assessed my life, from the day in college it started to all the induced misfortunes since. The pavement eventually grew wider as sparseness gave way to the expansive freeways of Los Angeles, but I was still shaken up from the drive through the desert. Mechanically, my body was fine. Changing lanes, applying the brakes, reacting to sudden traffic changes—all tasks I performed as if I were a typical driver. As I merged onto the perpetually busy Artesia Freeway about forty miles from my destination, I looked at other drivers gliding by, wondering what they were thinking about, if they knew the occupant one lane over from them wasn’t thinking about the usual things: kids, bills, what to eat for dinner—rather he was a mere sliver away from leaving reality altogether.

  I arrived in Palos Verdes just before eleven o’clock, astonished I had survived the trip. While I stretched my muscles back to normality in my parents’ driveway, I tried to downplay the five hours of hell I had endured. The anxiety barbs settled back into their little crevices of my brain, resting up for the next opportunity to torture me. I was back in a safe place, the house of my parents, where I was accessible to help if needed. The overactive section of my brain’s limbic system could now relax until the next trip—that’s the testimony of control thoroughly engrained in my mind.

  5. More Doctors

  I stared out at the clear picturesque view of Los Angeles from my parents’ laundry room window. Their house sat a thousand feet above the L.A. basin, providing a panoramic vista of the metropolis. Even the laundry room had a peak of city view that sliced the coast on a clear day all the way past Santa Monica. I was waiting for my travel iron to heat up so I could remove some wrinkles from my packed clothing. Though there was a very nice iron in the laundry room cupboard, I preferred my little fold-up travel iron because I knew exactly how much heat it took to do the job without searing the fabric or having to exert too much muscle to compress even the most subtle wrinkle. My mom entered the room as I flattened a polo shirt on the ironing board.

  “Hi Wade,” Evelyn said. “It’s nice to see you on this surprise trip.” Her voice always had a soothing quality to it, a sincere, friendly tone that came across in any circumstance. “Well, what’s going on over in Arizona?”

  I swiped my finger across the face of the iron to test the heat before responding. “Ummm, there’s something I want—”

  “Oh, before I forget, tell Pamela that I did get some purple orchids and gladiolas a little softer in color. I know her favorite colors are yellow and purple, but it nauseated the wedding planner to have those as the dominant color schemes. I have to admit, the liatris she loved looked like big purple pipe cleaners.”

  “Yeah, the colors were sick, unless you’re a Louisiana State fan,” I said.

  “Well, she likes those colors and I want to have some of her favorites in the wedding. Out of the thousand-dozen flowers, she’ll see some purple and yellow in there.”

  “You ordered twelve thousand flowers?”

  “Oh, it’s going to be beautiful,” Evelyn said.

  “Mom, I don’t really want to talk about flowers right now. Where’s Dad?”

  “He’s in his study.”

  “Can you get him? I want to discuss something with the both of you.”

  “Okay, just a minute.”

  I heard her shoes tapping down the long white marble hallway before she called out to Bob. Not knowing how to prepare the explanation of the wedding, I escaped for a moment with the iron, pressing the polo shirt with exacting strength. With each pass, the cloth became like a smooth sheet of fabric glass.

  “He’ll be here in a moment,” Evelyn said upon returning to the laundry room. “Oh, and let Pamela know the gentleman from Colorado can get the white fantail doves to release after the wedding. I know she had her heart set on that.”

  Wedding blues were making a fleeting comeback as I rubbed my brow and closed my eyes.

  “What the hell is the purpose of letting doves loose at a wedding?” I asked.

  “Well… It’s traditionally a sign of unity.”

  I squeezed the handle of the now hot iron and contemplated picking it up and running it across my face. “I don’t see how hundreds of doves scattering in downtown Los Angeles signifies unity. I mean, where do they go?”

  “I don’t know Sweetie, but it will be lovely. Pamela really wants the doves at the wedding. It almost couldn’t be done; we had to get some kind of a special permit to release them. Same thing with the horse and carriage.”

  I had forgotten about the carriage that was going to clog downtown traffic as Pamela and I trotted in our wedding best for an exuberant wee conjugal-exit jaunt around the block.

  “Wade, my son. How are you doing?” Bob said as he walked into the laundry room.

  “Um, not so good.”

  “You’re not feeling well again, Sweetie?” Evelyn asked.

  “Oh, probably just a case of cold feet,” Bob said. “What’s the matter?”<
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  “Well, ummm... Pamela and I got in a little argument. Ultimately, I told her I didn’t want to get married.”

  “Wade, I’m so sorry,” my mom said. “Where is she now?”

  “She found an apartment in Phoenix.”

  “What happened that was so drastic to cause this?” Bob cut in. He was always good at getting to the core issue.

  “This has been brewing for a couple of months, Dad. I know I shut down my business at about the same time, but it really doesn’t have much to do with that. She began to act bitchy about the wedding—how she wanted everything, from that stupid Bel Air dress designer to the limos for all her friends. Then she had the nerve to say after everything was finalized to her specifications, that she thought the reception would be too snooty. I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “She said she wanted a fairytale wedding,” Bob noted. “It’s a shame she feels that way. But let me tell you, it’s better to know now if she’s not the right one rather than going through an unhappy marriage.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve spent all this money, most of it is probably not refundable. I feel like crap about that.”

  “Don’t concern yourself for a second about the money.” Bob’s tone was just a step below irritation. “I’d rather you get away from a relationship that isn’t right. The money spent doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “But I just—”

  “Wade, don’t be troubled with the wedding,” Evelyn interrupted and gently brushed my cheek. Fortunately, Pamela’s morning phone-throwing incident did not leave a black eye or lingering marks. “It can all be canceled. You have enough on your mind right now.”

  “What about the damn doves?” I asked.