Please Talk about Me When I'm Gone

Left Alone

(1978)

I'm scared, I said.

"It's okay," she said. "You know I'll never leave you, right? I would never leave this place without you."

How many times did she tell me that? How many places did she need to remind me that even if I couldn't see her, she was still there? In the grocery store, the shopping mall, a swim meet, even a restaurant. Parents typically didn't use words like agoraphobia back in the late '70s. Maybe they don't use them today, at least around eight-year-olds.

"It's okay," she would say. "You know I would never leave you."

And I did know it. I believed her. It wasn't the fear of being left alone (even an eight-year-old knows it's irrational, even if he can't explain it); it was the fear itself. It's the fear itself, I didn't say, because how can an eight-year-old articulate a concept he can't understand? How do you convey the dread, bubbling up like blood from a scraped knee, brought on without warning or reason-the inexplicable consequence of chemistry? Only once it's become established, a pattern, do you remember to expect it, even if you still don't understand it. Anticipation of a word you haven't yet learned and a sensation you can't yet articulate: anxiety.

I'll never leave you, she said.

And I believed her. It was never quite enough-in that moment-but it was all she could do, other than never leaving my sight. Even I could understand that. Years and too many close calls to count later, I finally figured out that I had to go through that moment, alone, and then it would never be the same. The fear disappeared and everything would be okay. It was the dread of not knowing, yet being aware it was always inside, that made those moments so difficult to deal with. I had to experience it, get past it, and then this ineradicable fear would subside.