I lay there in the quiet dark and became intently aware of my forearms. The pale skin from wrist to elbow and everything underneath. I bolted up, heart pulsing, making noises like a panicked animal. Something was wrong with my arms. I held them out in horror and watched them disappear. It wasn’t like a flickering light. It was more like someone came along and hollowed them out, removing all the pulpy flesh and blood and bone. I felt like a gutted fish. I could not feel my arms, and it was pants-shittingly scary.
Maybe I yelled to Sarah for help. I don’t remember. All I know is she was suddenly there, wild-eyed and frantic at my bedside. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”
I held my arms up, teeth chattering, trying to show her that they were hollow. That they were gone.
She ran for Mum, and I bit down hard on my left wrist, hyperventilating until the room spun in dizzying circles. I bit until I drew blood. And finally, I felt it. Yes, I could feel it. My arms were still there. Then what the fuck was all that about?
Mum arrived, bleary-eyed and annoyed, at the doorway, knotting her bathrobe with a vicious twist. And I held my bleeding arms out, palms facing up like a waiter balancing plates.
Days later, it happened again.
I was sitting quietly in the passenger seat, Mum blowing cigarette smoke out her window. My right forearm lay on my thigh, and the buttery sunlight lit it up until my arm glowed golden.
But I couldn’t feel a thing.
I yanked my arm back, and there it was again. That scooped-out feeling, like I’d been gutted. The panic roared again, and the next thing I remember, Mum was standing over me, smoke on her breath, hissing, “Calm down, for heaven’s sake!”
It got worse. These episodes were unpredictable and resulted in public freak-outs I could not control.
Sometimes I would bite down hard on my wrist to make certain it was really there. It didn’t matter if this happened during the quiet time in class or on the school bus. So, you can imagine how kind the kids at school were about it.
And the teachers. They used to shove me in the bag room when I started “acting up.” I’d sit on the floor, knees pulled up to my chest, arms thrust out in front of me. I was terrified that if I placed my forearms on my knees, they would fall straight through. I would sit like that until my arms shook. Sometimes the teachers forgot I was even there.
One day, I was sitting like that in the bag room when the lunch bell rang. My teacher, Mrs. Dryley, finally wandered in and stood at the doorway, clicking her tongue. “I’ve called your mum,” she said flatly. When Mum showed up, she and Mrs. Dryley stood at the bag room door, staring down at me like I was a pile of laundry they’d been putting off doing. They talked about me like I wasn’t even there.
Don’t know what’s wrong with her.
Her father’s no help. Her sister never gives me any trouble.
Needs to see a doctor.
Disrupting the class…
Mum apologized to Mrs. Dryley, promised her she’d take me to see a doctor, then yanked me to my feet. To her credit, she took an hour off work to take me to the appointment.
Depersonalization, the doctor called it, doling out this information like I had a clue what to do with it.
“You need to find something to care about very quickly,” he said sternly.
“Or what?” I asked, but he didn’t answer.
He tapped his pen on his thigh. “What are you interested in?”
I had no interests other than getting safely through each day until I could crawl into bed.
“Reading?” I suggested.
But he shook his head like I’d given the wrong answer.
“I think you need something a bit moresocial.”
I thought of Sarah, the social butterfly, welcome in any house on our street. She cycled through hobbies the same way she cycled through boys. Last year she’d harassed the neighborhood kids into starting a band. She practiced piano for a week but lost interest quickly.
I was thinking of her when I said, “Maybe I’ll learn piano and join a band?”
Maybe I’d become popular like my sister, and maybe Mum would look at me with something other than her usual revulsion.
He nodded like I’d finally given the right answer. “You know what?” he said approvingly. “I think that’s going to be the key for you.”
