thought of the girl who, knowing nothing beyond her junkyard and her
mountain, had stared at a screen, watching as two planes sailed into
strange white pillars. Her classroom was a heap of junk. Her textbooks,
slates of scrap. And yet she had something precious that I—despite all
my opportunities, or maybe because of them—did not.
—I RETURNED TO ENGLAND, where I continued to unravel. My first week
back in Cambridge, I awoke nearly every night in the street, having run
there, shouting, asleep. I developed headaches that lasted for days. My
dentist said I was grinding my teeth. My skin broke out so severely that
twice perfect strangers stopped me in the street and asked if I was
having an allergic reaction. No, I said. I always look like this.
One evening, I got into an argument with a friend about something
trivial, and before I knew what was happening I had pressed myself
into the wall and was hugging my knees to my chest, trying to keep my
heart from leaping out of my body. My friend rushed toward me to
help and I screamed. It was an hour before I could let her touch me,
before I could will myself away from the wall. So that’s a panic attack,
I thought the next morning.
Soon after, I sent a letter to my father. I’m not proud of that letter.
It’s full of rage, a fractious child screaming, “I hate you” at a parent. It’s
filled with words like “thug” and “tyrant,” and it goes on for pages, a
torrent of frustration and abuse.
That is how I told my parents I was cutting off contact with them.
Between insults and fits of temper, I said I needed a year to heal
myself; then perhaps I could return to their mad world to try to make
sense of it.
My mother begged me to find another way. My father said nothing.- The italicized language in the description of the referenced email exchange is paraphrased,
not directly quoted. The meaning has been preserved.