The Sheila Variations

The total dark sublime

I should have booked my flight home for the first thing in the morning. That was my big error. Looking back on it, I am stunned that I would not have realized that I would need to get the hell out of Dodge immediately. But I guess ... even at that late date ... I still had some hope. I thought it would be best to not have a flight out of town at 9 am the next morning, just in case. This seems ridiculous to me now, in light of all that happened, but it is indicative of my mindset at that time.

Of course - if I had had a flight home the first thing in the morning - then that entire excruciating long long LONG day (and night) would never have happened. How do I feel about that? Do I wish that it hadn't happened? Honestly? Yes. But ... but ... there's another part of me that knows that ... it had to happen. Or - Something like that had to happen. It has ended up being an enormously symbolic event in my life - that awful long day and night. I believe that the truly unrelenting awfulness of that one day, where I tried and tried and tried to just GET. TO. MY. HOUSE. speeded up the grieving process I needed to go through. I went through a feckin' FIRE, man, in 24 hours, and I do believe that if my trip home had been easy, glitch-free, a mere 4 hour flight - I would have had a much longer road to go to mental health. But instead: I crammed in most of my sadness into one day. That is truly how it happened.

I told my friend Brooke the whole terrible story and when it was done, she said, "You know why I think that happened, Sheila?" "Why? Cause I'm racking my brains ..." "I think it had to be that bad so that you would never ever forget it."

It's very rare in life that you have an event where you can look and say: Before it, I was one way ... and after it, I was different.

I had gone to Chicago to put to rest some unfinished business. Some LONG-LASTING unfinished business. I did not get the answer that I wanted. I got a "No" where I hoped for a "Yes". I guess somewhere in my heart I knew it would be a "No" but - me being me - I had to hear it. Because it had never been said - clearly, and with no apology. It was always a "No, but ..." and that one little word "but" kept me hanging on. So I finally took my own life seriously, I finally realized: I am not moving on - and ... it is going to take some big GESTURE to finish this thing - I need to initiate a gesture. (This whole experience is why I think the "time heals all" mantra is BULLSHIT, and I will call BULLSHIT on anyone who tries to say it to me. It's too pat, and anyone who says it has obviously not experienced true loss. Time heals all? FUCK. YOU. Time heals SOME ... but all? Time heals ... but it heals RAGGEDLY, it leaves scars, you are marked. If time truly healed "all" then you would not be left with emotional scars, you would be clean and new again. I think I believed the lie 'time heals all' for quite some time ... and I kept waiting for "time" to do its damn work. But ... there was only so much that time could do. Time was truly inadequate to the task at hand. I had to make a GESTURE - I had to go and take my destiny by hand, I had to DEMAND closure.) So that's what I did.

On a dark sidewalk outside a club on Belmont we said goodbye. He looked stricken. I don't think he realized until that very moment what was happening. He said, a dawning realization, "Oh no ... oh no ... so this means ..."

It was awful. I almost wished he had been cold or cruel (even though he doesn't have a cruel bone in his body). It was the stricken look that killed me. I saw what HE was losing - as well as my own loss. For years I had only cared about myself - and what HE had put ME through ... but when I saw that brief look cross his face, I realized his pain, and what I would be depriving HIM of. This was not easy for him either.

I had to be strong. He tried to hug me - I stepped back - a look crossed his face again - he looked at me like I was an animal and he had just run me over. Deep pity and compassion, and guilt. A terrible terrible expression when it is directed at you. Frantic, I ran out into the street to hail a cab which I could see careening across Belmont.

The cab driver waited for me to tell me my destination - but I was staring out the back window - looking at him back on the sidewalk - He stood there, staring at me. Arms fallen to the side, with the worst expression on his face I have ever seen ... It was nothing-ness. I saw nothing-ness on his face. I wasn't crying - but I felt it coming - a massive black wave towering over my head. Oh man, that mother is gonna crash ... it is gonna crash ... and I am not even going to know where I am for a while when that thing hits ... Even now, years later, I can't think about what he looked like on that sidewalk without pain.

I opened my mouth - I knew the second I started to try to make a sound - that black wave would hit ... I had to be very very careful, and concentrate really hard just to say the address. My voice was not my own - it was deep and hard, and it took an enormous effort to tell him where I was going. Then we were off - and somewhere between Belmont and Montrose, the black wave hit. I crouched in the back seat, drowning. Drowning.

Mitchell, of course, was waiting up for me when I walked in. He knew ... of course he knew what the outcome would be ... but he also knew that this man and I had had this date from the beginning. There had been way too much left unsaid, and it created this dying hope in both of us ... and that hope was the very thing that was holding me back. I needed to clear the air. I needed to say what I needed to say. I had some questions I needed to ask - which I did. It was a date we had had for years. The outcome was irrelevant.

But of course - the outcome was all I cared about in the moment of it. I had finally gotten my answer. Clear as a bell.

Mitchell held me on the couch, and I cried myself to sleep in his arms. I cried as I had not cried in years. It was a way of breathing through the tidal wave - I would come up - gasping for breath, trying to make it through - and then it woudl crash over me again. I just had to wait it out, man ... That storm had been coming all along ... I had put off the confrontation with the storm for WAY too long ... and now it was here.

No way to skip around it. You gotta go through it.

And so that is why I say my big error was not having booked my flight for first thing in the morning. I did what I had come to do. Time to go HOME and meet the beginning of the rest of my life. My life without that hope I had been carrying around. I had to get HOME, to see who I would be in this new world ... I had to get home immediately. But like an idiot - I had booked the flight for 4 pm - to give myself a little leeway, just in case the outcome would be ... what I hoped for.

Mitchell woke up and had to go to work. Which left me alone in his apartment. Still in the wave. It was a nightmare. The sun was blinding that day. I wished it would rain. The sun was an insult. I was out of my mind.

Kate called. Everyone knew why I had come to Chicago. She and I got together at Einstein's Bagels on Southport. She listened to me talk. I was ranting and raving, trying to keep it together because I was in public. I had a mound of napkins on the table, and I kept breaking down - Kate kept handing me another napkin. She just listened. She said what I have now come to realize is the truth: "You needed to do this, Sheila. It had to happen. Now maybe you can go on. Now maybe you can be happy." In the moment, those were terrible terrible words. They cut through me like a sword. Happy? Without him? No, no, no ... I kept seeing that one brief stricken look on his face.

Then there was a crazy moment when Kate realized she needed to be downtown in like 10 minutes and so she had to hurriedly say goodbye to me and race off to the L. Hilariously, it turned out that she had just been back East and had changed her watch - and hadn't changed it back - so she actually had another hour. But in that moment, she raced off - and I left Einstein's Bagels - I had nowhere to go. My flight didn't leave for FIVE HOURS. Oh man, I so just wanted to get the hell out of there ... I wandered up Southport. Mitchell worked on Southport, so I stopped in to talk to him at work. I had on dark sunglasses, and I was not in control of myself. Everything grated. The sun, people's laughter, people strolling by with coffees ... normal life going on, everyday life continuing ... it was unbelievable to me that I would not always feel the way I was feeling in that moment. Mitchell was busy so I figured - okay. I'll walk back to his apartment. That will kill some time.

I started back up Southport, and another wave hit. I sat down in a doorstep, out of the sun, a blessed spot of shade - put my head in my hands - and ... well. You know. Wailed.

At one point I became aware, dimly, of someone screaming my name. It didn't seem real ... who would be calling me from 2 blocks away, shouting, "SHEILA! SHEILA!" I stepped out of the doorstep, and racing towards me was my beautiful friend Kate - who had realized, while standing on the L platform, that her watch was wrong - and, bless her, bless her, raced back up the street to find her friend in need. I can't even tell you how good it was to see her. Even though we had just left each other. And the hilarity of it - the hilarity of her literally RACING off to make it downtown ... when all the time it was that her watch was wrong - made the big wave recede a bit. My tears vanished. We went back to Einstein's Bagels and sat there, howling with laughter about Kate's watch, and the insanity of her suddenly saying to me, her friend who was surrounded by a mound of tear-soaked napkins: "I'm so sorry - but I have to go! Right now!!!"

I love that she came back to find me and knew I couldn't be far off - so she just started screaming my name up and down Southport. hahahaha To quote Yeats: "Think where man's glory most begins and ends/And say my glory was I had such friends."

So now I was closer to my departure time ... much closer ... Kate and I said a hearty and emotional goodbye - she telling me to hang in there ... that now maybe I could be happy ... now maybe I could really get on with my life ... and off I went, walking back to Mitchell's.

By the time I arrived - it was nearly time to leave for the airport. I was a bit cried out for the moment ... so I packed up my things - feeling pale and translucent, almost see-through actually, and called a cab. It's half an hour out to O'Hare. I sat in the back, slumped down, staring at the familiar streets and buildings zoom by, looking back over my shoulder to the glorious skyline of downtown Chicago ... wondering when I would see it again ... Occasionally, I would feel a random stab of pain - somewhere in the solar plexus area - but I was a bit more in control now - I was able to say: "Okay. Stop. No more for the moment."

I arrived at O'Hare. If I had been conscious of my surroundings, or in an analytical frame of mind, I would have immediately discerned that something bad was going on. I walked by all the gates - and I did see all the red-lit-up signs: "FLIGHT CANCELLED" "FLIGHT DELAYED" "CANCELLED" "DELAYED" - but I didn't really put it together. I was in my own private Idaho, just trying to put one foot in front of the other. The wave was still there - battering at me - but for the time being, I was fighting it. If I had been able to see clearly, I would have seen: the long long lines at every gate. I would have seen: the throngs of people on their cell phones, pacing around. I would have felt that something was going on here ... something bad ...

I remember that at that time Mitchell was reading (and LOVING) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and I had read a little bit of it during my brief stay and thought: Okay. I need to read this book NOW. NOW.

It seemed very important. It had to do with grief. Or something. Whatever it was - the book called to me. But Mitchell was in the middle of it so he could not lend me his copy. I walked into one of the little book stores in O'Hare - before getting to my gate - and looked for the book - which had just come out and was a HUGE best-seller. Everyone was talking about it, it was everywhere. If you pay attention to the literary world at all, then you heard about that book. But the bookstore didn't have it. I want to make clear, here, that I was not really "myself" at this point - in case that wasn't clear already. I was like a teeny just-born ameoba creature or something ... I had very simple needs ... breathe ... get on the flight ...... get home where you can lick your wounds in private ... Also: buy Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I asked the cashier, "Do you have Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius?" Cashier looked at me like I was nuts (the title is, of course, very bizarre - and if you haven't heard of it, then the person asking for it does sound a bit crazy). I had on dark sunglasses. I was probably pale as death warmed over. I was barely holding it together. He said, "What?" And suddenly - out of nowhere - rage. Rage so huge it exploded within me, fully realized and enormous. I said, "It's # 1 on the New York Times bestseller list right now. You work in a bookstore. You haven't heard of it?" "What's it called again?" I thought I was going to lose control of myself. I turned around and walked out of the store - literally trembling with rage.

I got to my gate, where a line was already forming. I was so angry that I didn't have Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius that I could have eaten nails at that moment. Every time I thought about it, and every time I thought about the cashier not even knowing about it - this rage would explode again. I wanted to throttle someone. I wanted to kick SOME SERIOUS ASS. I wanted to get into a fight. A knock down drag out physical fight. I had so much adrenaline and rage in my veins that I felt dangerous - like something awful was going to happen.

The line was not moving. But I was so self-involved that I didn't notice. Then - came the shouted announcement from the gate - and it was so ... incomprehensible to me ... that I didn't even understand it at first.

What follows is, I realize, just part of traveling. Flights get delayed, canceled - and it's always annoying, inconvenient, irritating, what have you. It's a part of life. I have been in this situation a gazillion times before and handled it with aplomb. But this time? No. I had no reserves. And also: it wasn't just a flight to me. It was like an escape. I had to get out of there. For years I had lived with one foot back in Chicago. But that was going to stop NOW. I lived in New York. No more looking back. It was symbolic: I had to leave Chicago in order for that to be complete.

The flight attendant at the gate called out to the crowd: "Okay, I have an announcement to make! This flight has been canceled! All flights into JFK have been canceled!" This was horrible - people were like: what? what? I believe there was a big thunderstorm or something - no idea - but there were no flights going into New York OR into Newark. "You have a couple of options - you can try to get yourself onto the next flight which is tomorrow at 6 am ..." this was getting worse and worse ... "Or - you can try to get onto a flight that is going into White Plains - and that plane leaves in 15 minutes from Terminal C." Which was all the way across the airport. 15 minutes? White Plains? How do you get from White Plains into New York? How ... what ... what was I to do ...

I had no time to dilly-dally either - I had to decide NOW what to do. The thought of going back into the city ... and back to Mitchell's ... and then ... spending ANOTHER night ... only to wake up at 4 a.m. to TRY to get onto another flight ... and I might not even get on that flight! - was unthinkable ... But also unthinkable (especially in my shattered frame of mind - where I had almost started SHOUTING at a poor cashier in a book shop in O'Hare) was RACING across three terminals with all my bags ... to TRY to get on a flight to ... White Plains?

This is when things started breaking down. This is when I started breaking down. And I'm not just talking about crying. I mean - SHEILA as I knew her started disappearing. I did not know WHO this new creature was - but I had never met her before. She was terrifying. Truly terrifying to me.

The next 30 or 40 seconds where I was unable to make a decision were psychically shattering. My breath started rising, higher and higher and higher ... until I started to have a panic attack. I had never had one before - so - to anyone who's had one, you know what I am talking about. I thought I was dying. First of all - I could not catch my breath - and every time I started to realize it - it started getting worse - until I was literally panting. Second of all - along with the physical side of panic - you get the psychological side. Andn psychologically, during a panic attack, you start to feel all the walls closing in around you, pressing in ... you have no way out ... there is no escape ... and that sensation brings with it such a feeling of overwhelming doom that I don't know how to write about it.

Since I had never had one before, I couldn't talk myself off the ledge, I couldn't say, "Okay, this is a panic attack ... you know this ..."

To me - it was all totally real. I could not breathe. And I felt overwhelmed by a bad feeling of such a deep dark magnitude that it was like something out of Melville. It was psychic doom.

And I don't know what it was - it certainly wasn't an intellectual decision - because there was no BRAIN working here - I decided to run to the White Plains gate. I decided to take my chances because ... it was just unthinkable to contemplate staying in Chicago any longer.

I started RUNNING to make it to the gate on time.

I ran and ran and ran ... in the throes of the panic attack - I can't describe it. I was heaving my breath in, but it just stayed way up there in my throat ... I never could get a nice full breath ... It was truly frightening. I thought I would die at O'Hare. I thought this was it.

Once at the White Plains gate, I was faced with yet another line - and now I started feeling really ... well, way too out of control to be in public. I was not just on the edge, I was over it. I still could not breathe, and I still felt this portentous overshadowing (I probably sensed the long long road still ahead of me to get my ass to my apartment). Not to mention the fact that I still was battling the big black wave from the night before - THAT was still there as well. Nothing was easy. There was no subsiding. I was in the maelstrom.

The line was moving very slowly. There was a man behind me - who was chomping at the bit to get on the plane. Frankly, he was breathing down my neck. The line wasn't going anywhere, but he just couldn't deal with that. He was right behind me. As we waited in line, I started to feel that rage coming up again. That YEARNING for a big fat FIGHT. Oh, I wanted a fight. I wanted such a big fight that I would be dragged off screaming by the cops. I had to concentrate on my breathing ... to keep the rage down ... "Sheila ... breathe ... breathe ..." Finally, I was next in line. Apparently, the guy behind me felt that I should also breathe down the person's neck in front of me - He didn't like that I left a small space between me and the person being helped at the counter. He thought I should move forward. So he made his fatal error. He nudged me. He didn't TAP me politely. No, he nudged me as though I were a recalcitrant animal in a corral.

I turned around and I said calmly, right at him, "If you touch me again, I will take you out, sir." He saw the look on my face, and got completely terrified and said, flustered, "I just ... want to get on the plane ..." Poor man. He nudged the wrong girl on the wrong day. I said to him, slowly, fearless now, fearless: "Sir, everyone wants to get on the plane. Do you see that someone is already at the counter? Do you have eyeballs? Unlike you, I like to give people space and not breathe down people's necks. And it is not my turn yet. Stop breathing down my neck, I am warning you. Back off." He physically backed away from me. I felt like Hannibal Lecter in that scene in the big cage when he attacks the cops. I felt like I could definitely eat that dude's liver with a nice Chianti if he didn't move away from me.

Then it was my turn. I now felt stricken. I remember. I remember approaching the gate with this stricken feeling all over me. I felt totally helpless. Stricken by my own stymied travel plans. And also stricken by the unfairness. I know life is unfair but on that day - I had had enough. I wanted EASE. I wanted COMFORT. But the universe, categorically, said, "No." to my request.

I got on the flight. I got in my seat. I felt like I was halfway home. (Turns out, I wasn't - but I did have a brief respite of the panic in the time that I DID think I was halfway home). I took the blanket on my seat, put it over my head, and cried quietly for the entire flight. I slept a little bit too - tears still on my cheeks - woke up - would cry some more - go back to sleep ... I was willing myself to just hang on, just hang on ... until I was safe home in my apartment. The world felt jagged to me - broken glass flying through the air - I was too sensitive to be out in the world on that day, definitely too sensitive to be dealing with jostling crowds, harassed flight attendants, and annoyed passengers.

This story just keeps getting longer and longer so if you think I'm about to wrap it up, you are wrong. Like I said way back at the beginning: this day was long, and it felt like forces were conspiring against me. Great and mighty forces. It even trickled down to the weather. The weather reflected my emotions. Everything got so global that there were times, later, when I felt like my own psychic state of mind was creating the weather. I know that some people live in the state I was in on that day, and my heart TRULY goes out to them.

By the time our plane landed in White Plains it was 9 p.m. A rainy night with intermittent flashes of lightning. I have never flown into White Plains. It is in Westchester - I know where it is - but since I don't have a car, I didn't have my bearings AT ALL. I also just was not really in a normal state of mind. I was a live wire. Anything that occurred occurred to me in an extreme state. Grief - rage - panic - nothing modulated or subtle - everything crazy, jagged, to the extreme.

Then came an event which ... well ... basically messed up the rest of my night and took me well into the next morning. If you're not comfortable with bodily functions, then you will want to skip this part. I got off the plane. I hadn't checked bags. I wandered around for a second - completely disoriented - with salt from my tears literally crusted on my face - I felt insane - I was looking for anything, any sign of what to do next - Train? Cab? Metro North? In the middle of this disorientation, I suddenly had to go to the bathroom. So badly and so suddenly that I almost didn't make it. I had no idea where to go - and I honestly could not take the time to go ask someone at the counter for the bathroom - The need to "go" came over me with the suddenness of an alarm bell going off. My body betraying me ... everything completely out of control ... I was running through the tiny White Plains airport - with sweat breaking out on my forehead - in DESPERATE need. Finally - I saw the tell-tale "Women's" sign across the room. Frantically, I raced across the room, only to find they had a bar across the door - whatever, they were cleaning in there or something. It was urgent. I didn't care. I ducked under the bar and raced into the bathroom.

And I was in there for half an hour. HALF AN HOUR. I thought I would never be well. Sick as a dog. Sick sick sick. I know it was my own emotions that made me sick - that was what was going on - but I was AS sick as if I had eaten a bad burrito in a small Guatemalan mountain village. Like - I was THAT sick. I thought it would never end.

This is when I started to think I was dying. I thought ... this is it ... I am not going to make it outta here ... This is the end of the road ...

Later, I would look back on my miserable half-hour in that bathroom in White Plains and remember the end of Catcher in the Rye, and how one of the last moments is Holden, in the museum, having diarrhea in the bathroom stall, and then passing out. That's the second to last scene. It was the only way his body could tell him: YOU NEED TO SLOW DOWN. That was it. But it was also the lowest moment for him. A moment when your body betrays you ... when you need to be strong and resilient and your body will not obey.

The ramifications of my bathroom-emergency were enormous.

-- Because I was in there for half an hour - I missed the next train to New York by ONE MINUTE and had to wait AN HOUR for the next train. An hour might not seem like a lot but in my state of mind it was an eternity. I also was not mentally calm enough to write, or read ... all distractions were closed off to me. And since I missed that train, it was a spiralling comedy of errors or tragedy - mistake piling up on mistake ... until basically, instead of walking into my apartment an hour and a half later - I walked into my apartment FIVE HOURS LATER - That missed train made that much of a difference.

Finally, feeling wrung out to dry after the misery in the bathroom, I limped out into the main room, feeling just like Holden Caulfield describes at the end of Catcher. I felt lightheaded. Dehydrated. My legs were wobbly. My face was drenched in sweat, and yet my teeth were rattling. I did not feel at ALL well. Like ... I had no idea if I was "done" or not. The thought was terrifying. That I could be trapped somewhere - and have THAT come over me again. I considered just sleeping in the airport all night just so I could be near a bathroom.

I knew I looked like hell but something about having diarrhea like that made me not give a CRAP (so to speak) anymore if people saw me at my worst. I had been trying to hide my puffy eyes, and trying to "keep it together". Fuck it. No more. I needed to get home. And I needed HELP. No more "be strong, buck up, be strong". Nope. Enough. I needed HELP.

I walked up to the transportation desk. I am sure the guy behind the desk noticed that I did not look well - I was wearing sunglasses, it was nighttime, I had on a backwards baseball cap. The second I started speaking, the tears started coming back, "I need help. I need to get to New York. How do I do that? I've had a terrible trip. I want to take a cab. How much would that be?" It would be way out of my price range. He told me that there were regular cabs to the Metro North station not far away - and he suggested that I go there and take the train into Manhattan. I couldn't bear the thought of having yet another leg on the journey. I said, "How long will that take?" "The train ride is an hour long." "Is there a bathroom on the train? I'm very ill right now." "Yes."

So. It wasn't even CLOSE to being what I wanted or needed ... what I wanted or needed was a feckin' magic WAND - but I honestly didn't know what else to do. It seemed that I would just have to accept that I would not be home until at least midnight. I stood outside, in the soft rain and the dark, and continued to concentrate on my breathing - keep it even - in, out, in out - It took all my energy just to do that - espeically after the diarrhea debacle which left me feeling weak, shaky, and even more unlike my normal self.

I had to share a cab ride to the Metro North station with three other people. But by this point it was blessedly dark and rainy - which made me feel protected and invisible. I sat in the back seat, staring out at the dark ranks of trees, the quiet wet streets ... I felt a profound sense of dislocation from all the known world. Where was I? Who would I be now? Without him? Where was I?

As I got out of the cab, I heard a tran leaving the station. I immediately got this really really bad feeling all over me. I knew that that was the train to New York. With the way my day was going ... of course it was. I raced up the steps to the outdoor platform - and saw the train flying by. Too late.

I turned to a man sitting on the platform. "Was that to New York?" He nodded. The panic was back, in a FLASH - all it took was another obstacle - and I was RIGHT BACK IN the crazy-zone. I said, knowing the answer would be bad, "When's the next train?" "An hour." A thud inside me. A thud that made a damn echo it was so deep. In my normal life, having an hour to kill is NOTHING, because I can always read. But on this endless night? It was almost more than I could stand.

The rain started to pour down. I stood on the platform, unable to do anything but stand there, and try to breathe through the pain. I kept seeing his stricken face ... his laugh kept coming to my ears ... all this loss, this disappointment, this unbelievable sense of how UNFAIR it all was ... just kept crashing over me. Wave after wave. Thunder rumbled in the sky. And purple lightning flashed in the sky above the shiny darkened office park across the way. I remember seeing the first flash of purple, and thinking to myself, "I should just go find a hotel and check myself in for the night. This is crazy. I need to be in bed." Then - in the next moment - it was like an ice cube was dropped down my back. I felt that the world was very dangerous, and very big, and that I was about to be swallowed up. Nobody knew I was in White Plains. Nobody. Not one person. Mitchell and Kate back in Chicago probably assumed I was home by now. Nobody knew where I was. It suddenly was essential to me that I let SOMEONE know where I was. So that even though I felt all alone out there under the purple lightning - even though I WAS all alone - I would at least have the protection of knowing that there were people out there on the planet who knew where I was. I have never felt so beaten in my whole life.

I did not have a cell phone at this point, but I did have some kind of a phone card. So I went to a payphone on the platform and started making calls. This was surreal - I called all these people - and just told them where I was - which, in retrospect, was probably not a good idea - because I freaked a lot of people out. Many of my friends thought I had finally snapped when they heard the messages. Of course I tried to be totally calm in the messages - which made them even worse. My friend and roommate Jen later played me the message so I could hear what she heard and I was shocked. Even 5 days later, that time on the train platform with the purple lightning felt like a million light years away. My voice had this high floaty unhinged sound - I couldn't catch my breath - everything sounded very detached - but on the edge of complete disarray - It was alarming. I heard the message and said, "Jesus, Jen, I am so sorry. You must have heard that and freaked out."

I was trying to calm myself down and remain calm and I ended up freaking everybody out. I called Kate - back in Chicago - which was TRULY unfair because even if I were really in trouble - there was nothing she could do from where she was. So I left this unearthly-eerie-high-voiced message on her machine: "Hi, Kate ... I'm standing on the train platform in White Plains and there's purple lightning and I can't seem to get home ..." Ahem. Lots of apologies to all of my patient friends.

I left a message for Kate. I left a message for Mitchell. I left a message for Jen. The rain was now sweeping sideways across the platform. The world felt brutal and comfortless. II then called my friend David. Who was the first one to pick up. The second I heard his voice say, "Hello?" I broke out into stormy sobs. The second he heard the sound of stormy sobs across the line, he said, "Sheila?" He just knew it was me. And what then followed is one of those extraordinary moments of friendship that is truly breathtaking. David has a busy life. He has two young children. He has a home life. His time is not always his own. But he cleared the deck for me that night. I was able to tell him, once I was able to talk, that I was stranded in White Plains and I had an hour to wait for the next train, and I had diarrhea and I was afraid that nobody on the planet knew I was alive and the lightning was purple and "he said No" - ... etc. So David stayed on the phone with me until the next train pulled into the station. That was 50 minutes later. David would not let me get off the phone until he knew I was safely on my way home and not buffeted about in the winds of White Plains. I will always always love David for that. I honestly don't know what I would have done without him that night.

He talked to me. I cried and cried and cried. I have tears in my eyes. Weird. This was so long ago and I really am over it - but writing it all down brings back the desolate mood I was in. He listened to me talk. He kept saying, "You are going to be fine. You blow me away. You are so courageous. You are so courageous. Do you know how many people would have flown back to Chicago just to get the answer? You did. You're courageous. You are going to be fine."

By the time the train pulled in, I was cried out for the 10th time of the day - the tide receding - and suddenly I was so exhausted that I was almost asleep standing up. David said, gently, "Okay. So go on the train now ... try to get some sleep ... you'll be home before you know it ... call me tomorrow ..." "Okay ..." "You are going to be okay, Sheila. Not tonight. But you will be okay."

I shuffled onto the Metro North train. The fluorescent lights completely insulted me, burning into my ravaged skin - but I did find the deep leathery seats unbelievably soothing. To sit ... to be able to sit ... to know I was almost home ... I was actually able to do a little bit of a crossword puzzle on the journey - which was definite progress. And then I passed out, waking up when we pulled into Grand Central.

Ahhh ... Grand Central ... all I need to do is grab a cab home - it was a splurge, yes - it would be 40 bucks probably - but I was not taking any more chances. I wanted no more delays. Cab - door to door. It was now 12:30 at night. I couldn't believe I had been traveling since 3 pm the day before - a trip from Chicago to New York had, so far, taken me 9 and a half hours. This was outrageous.

Delirious from:
1. sobbing
2. panic attacks
3. emotional exhaustion
4. diarrhea ...

I hailed a cab in the rain outside of the majestic Grand Central - a building that is surreal even on a bright sunny day. The cyclorama above the main concourse, the glittering constellations, the marble statues with billowing marble robes ... Surreal. A pre-Christian environment - pagan - grandiose - classical. I walked through that echo chamber to get to the street, aware of the apt-ness of my surroundings. I again felt like the outside environment was somehow being created by my inner turmoil. I was "going back". I was re-claiming something. I was "moving through" something. And it hurt like hell. But like the Auden poem says:

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now i see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

That's what the walk through the concourse at Grand Central, with the dimly glittering constellations painted on the ceiling, reminds me of now.

At least I was off that scary train platform in White Plains, with the purple lightning. That was the nadir.

A cab pulled over. I climbed in and negotiated the price, always kind of difficult when you're going to Hoboken. A lot of times you immediately get aggressive angry attitudes from drivers about prices to Hoboken but I lucked out with this driver (in more ways than one, as will be apparent shortly). He said, "What do you normally pay?" I told him. We agreed on a flat fee, as opposed to having the meter running. (This will be important later). Then we were off - shrieking across 42nd Street to get to the Holland Tunnel. The rain came down, making the city look surreal, like a smudged Edward Hopper. The neon flashed, up, down, over my head - but the streets were practically empty. New York looked like a ghost town. This took on symbolic meaning to me, at that moment, like everything else did. My world right now felt uninhabited because he would no longer be in it. What would I do without him in the landscape? But there was the neon - still flashing - above the empty streets, the empty sidewalks ... the neon a sign that there were still people on this planet, that my life was NOT a ghost town. There were still people out there. I would not be alone. My life was just now beginning. The streets were empty now but they would fill up tomorrow.

I settled back into my seat, passive at last. I no longer needed to propel myself forward, make any decisions ... I was almost there.

We rounded the corner to get into Lincoln Tunnel, and hit a spot of traffic. No big deal. It usually happens there. I was zoned out in my seat, wallowing in the blessed waters of Lethe for just a moment ... I actually believed that I might be able to sleep - which was unbelievable. I know what I'm like when I'm on a crying jag. I cry for days on end, writhing about in my bed at 3 in the morning. It is completely exhausting and you really have to gear up for it. But at least now, sunken in the back seat of the cab, with the rain on the window, I felt like I would have a respite - at least this first night of my new life. 5 minutes of no movement go by. I don't notice. Again, because of Lethean dreams. 10 minutes go by. This was when my radar started to perk up. Uhm... why haven't we moved? We were not in stop-and-go traffic, we were at a complete standstill. I sat up and looked around. I saw the traffic stretching out before me, around the corner into the tunnel, and I saw the traffic stretching off behind us - endlessly up the avenue.

What the hell ... why are we not moving. No. No. Do not tell me ... what is going on ... No ... no ... no ... No ...

That was basically my thought-process over my growing sense of alarm.

"Why are we stopped?" I asked the driver.

Thick accent: "I do not know, miss."

15 minutes passed. Now we're into 20. 25. People are now getting out of their cars and walking forward to see if they can see what's going on. I am starting to lose control again. So close ... I am almost in the Tunnel ...

The unrelenting quality of my journey started to hit me - and instead of getting sad about it - I started to get mad. Mad like Incredible Hulk mad. I wanted to see God and punch him in his big fat nose. I started to feel like I wanted to crawl out of my own skin. I was literally twitching in the back seat of the cab, plucking at my coat collar, rolling up my sleeves, rolling them back down ... I was beside myself. Half an hour had now passed. No movement. Not even an inch forward. We were in complete gridlock, too. We couldn't escape the line - we were hemmed in on all sides.

I wasn't thinking straight. We were half a block from Port Authority - so I said, "I'm gonna go grab a bus - this is crazy ..." Not thinking that it was the TUNNEL that was the problem, not the CAB. And in that moment I saw the causeways - which lead down from the various levels of Port Authority - down to street level - and every single causeway was CRAMMED with stalled busses. Busses all the way back into the Port Authority building. So obviously - something terrible had happened in the Tunnel - it had probably just happened - and it was affecting EVERYONE. That damn diarrhea. That diarrhea in White Plains was the cause of it all. If I had been on that first train - then I would have hit New York an hour earlier - which meant I would miss whatever horrible-ness happened in the Tunnel ... but the diarrhea put me into New York at juuuuust the right moment for me to get all FREAKED OUT again. Just when I was starting to get calm ...here come the line of backed-up busses, all of us on the road to nowhere.

The feeling of being trapped was unbearable. I could not think my way out of this one. I could not negotiate my way out of it. Shit happens, right? Shit happens in the Tunnel. But I couldn't ... sidle around it ... or leap over it ... I just had to go through it.

At some point, during this excruciating wait, it became apparent to the driver that I was having ... shall we say ... a hard time. I felt obliged to explain myself. "I'm sorry ... I'm obviously having a bad day ... it's totally not your fault ... I'm having some sort of panic episode right now ... I'm sorry ..." He let me get out of the cab and walk around for a while in the rain. He was a kindly man from Nigeria, with the blackest skin you have ever seen, his eyes gleaming out of the blackness of the skin. I will NEVER forget his kindness to me that night. EVER. We somehow ended up being in this whole thing together. I wandered around, amongst the stalled cars, in the rain ... feeling like at any moment I would start to scream wildly, or claw at my hair, or ... something. Some HUGE gesture of outrage. Not just because of the current delay, but because of everything. ANGRY. I am ANGRY that it didn't work out with that man. I am ANGRY that I have to let him go. I am ANGRY that I would meet such a man and then have to let him go. Everything felt like TOO MUCH TO ASK on that horrible night.

The driver started talking with some other drivers and let me know that about 10 minutes before we hit the traffic - right around the time I hailed the cab - there had been a horrible accidnet in the Tunnel, with multiple casualties. So we knew we were looking at a huge wait - ambulances, fire trucks, EMTs, the works.

I was now in tears. "This trip ... I can't even tell you ... I have been trying to get home for 10 hours now ..."

40 minutes now. No movement. NO MOVEMENT. Finally - a car to our right obviously decided: The hell with this. And he drove up onto the sidewalk, there were cop cars everywhere, he didn't care - and drove on the sidewalk to freedom - at 9th Avenue. At least that's what we assumed. There was not a moment to lose. Before the space that car left closed up, my fabulous driver from Nigeria screeched the wheel to the side to get us out of our lane, and got us up on the sidewalk - and we then proceeded to pass by all the traffic, driving by on the sidewalk. Oh God. Even if we got arrested, I totally did not care, it felt so good to be MOVING again.

My driver said, "I will go to Holland Tunnel."

Once we got to 9th, everything was clear and open. We bounced off the sidewalk, turned right, and then there we were - driving down the avenue at 75 miles an hour. I kept the window open - the rain and wind slapping me in the face - just reveling in MOVEMENT. MOVEMENT. My driver was AMAZING. He knew he had to get us out of that gridlock - and he DID. Oh man. I loved him. I loved how fast he drove once we were free. I felt like I was shedding skins as we drove, leaving the "old selves, old whore petticoats" behind me on the street ... I wasn't dressed yet, I was still vulnerable and I would need to protect myself for a while until I got good at being this new self ... but I could FEEL that it was happening - in that speedy careen down 9th. There was no traffic going into the Holland. As we shrieked around the corner into the white-tile Tunnel, I shouted, "WHOO-HOO!!!!" I felt like we were parasailing or something.

The tunnel was a blinding white, the tiles blurring by my eyes - almost there ... almost there ...

The panic attack in O'Hare dissolving, the ice-cube-down-the-back in White Plains dissolving, everything dissolving at the prospect of getting to my apartment and locking the door behind me ... getting OUT of the public world ... and back into the private ... where I could fucking HEAL, for God's sake!!!

At some point during this careen underneath the Hudson I realized something. Driver and I had agreed on a flat fee. If the meter had been running that whole time, he would have made WAY more than the flat fee - and it just seemed important to me - he had been so patient with me, so kind ... I cried in the backseat of his cab, I clawed at my coat collar, I had sudden outbursts that involved addressing God in an angry manner ... He deserved way more than the flat fee. So I asked him if he could stop at a bank first so I could get some money out. He said fine.

We stopped at a bank on Washington. I took out a wad of cash and then directed him to my apartment. I had called Jen - my roommate - one of the calls I made on the scary platform - so she knew the deal - and knew that I would be home late. It was now 2:30 in the morning, 3 a.m. I had left Mitchell's apartment, in Chicago, to get to the airport, at 2:30 p.m. the day before.

I had been put through the wringer. Every. Single. Step. of the way there was an obstacle. It would take me days to recover from this trip.

And wouldn't ya know. There was one last thing thrown in my path. What would be my last step? The goal I had been straining towards for the past 12 hours? To walk into my apartment. That was it. But even that ... nope. Had to be harder on that night of nights.

I gave the cab driver a HUGE amount of money. I said, "I know that you got a sore deal here - cause the meter wasn't running - so please take this -" I think I gave him a 100% tip.

He looked at me, astonished. "Oh, miss ..."

I said, and the second I started talking - waterworks: "I am obviously having sort of a breakdown right now ... having to do with something else in my life ... and you have been nothing but kind and accommodating to me ... and honestly ... I cannot thank you enough."

Now he was touched. Or moved. Or something. He said, compassion in his voice, "Oh, miss ..."

Then I hauled my sorry exhausted ravaged (literally) ass out of the cab - and started climbing the stairs. I was home ... I had made it ...

I put my key in the door and pushed - only to find that my roommate had forgotten I was coming in and put the chain on. Now - she and I were never big door-chain girls. We lived in a small house with 2 apartments and we knew the other tenants. So ... why did she chain the door that night? Because the universe told her to!! "Let's throw just one more thing in Sheila's way, shall we?" My last step.

I was shocked - the chain thing was so out of my expectation (even after everything that happened) that I couldn't believe it. It would have been weird on any OTHER night as well - we never put the chain on - but it was even MORE weird that night. Everything came back - and the semi-calmness I had found in the back of the cab during the catapult down 9th Avenue - vanished. I had HAD it. I started SCREAMING. I don't remember what I was screaming. I am not a screamer. Or a tantrum-thrower. But I threw my bags down on the ground and started SCREAMING. The rage ... the rage ... In the next second, I would have slammed the door open - which would have broken not only the chain but the side of the door - but my roommate was up, working on her computer, and she heard me start screaming - and I heard her. I heard her in the apartment call out, "Oh my God - Sheila ... Sheila ... I forgot ... I forgot ..." with her slippered feet padding to the door to let me in. She opened the door - and her face - her eyes - Oh. It felt like I had been away from kind eyes for a lifetime. She knew. She said, "I totally forgot - I put the chain on without thinking ..."

I came into our apartment - AT LAST - and - everything started just reverberating - it was like when you have been roller skating for a while, and then you stop - and your feet can still feel the movement - it takes a while for everything to settle down - I was still going on that endless awful journey for the next 5 days. It took me that long to shake the effects. It's not that I was mad at Jen for chaining the door - it was more global than that. I was mad at the universe. At God. So I came into our foyer - dropped my bags - I was out of my mind - I threw my coat off - I started throwing the pillows off the couch - I picked stuff up and hucked it across the room - I tore off my shirt and threw it into the corner like a lunatic - I needed to get out of the clothes that had just made that journey - I was screaming at the top of my lungs. I can't really describe what I was feeling because it's beyond words. All I can say is is that I was screaming and tearing off my own clothes. And demolishing our foyer. Jen let me do that for a while. She just stood back - she was in tears - I kept going - picking up an afghan blanket and throwing it across the room - I was screaming about "flight canceled' and "panic attack" and "White Plains" and "diarrhea" and "traffic jam" ... I was out of my mind. My voice was unrecognizable to me. Harsh, jagged, furious.

Finally Jen said, "Hey." I remember just how she said it. It was a gentle scolding. Not because I was wrecking our room, or because I was screaming at 3 in the morning, or because I was out of control. It was a scold because I hadn't given her a hug. She said, "Hey" in a gentle scold - and sort of held out her arms.

She's a healer, folks.

It was a slap in the face - but with love - and I went to give her a hug - and once I was in her arms, that was it. We ended up on the futon couch, and I lay with my head in her lap, and I cried like I had been waiting to cry for 12 hours. She smoothed my hair, and listened to me rant and rave, and asked me questions, and she didn't judge or analyze or try to show me a different side of things - Not yet. I wasn't ready for that yet. In a couple days maybe, but that night? No. She was just right there with me.

The trip itself had been so AWFUL that it sort of wiped away, for the time being, the REAL reaons for all this emotional tumult - and that was reason I had gone to Chicago, etc. In looking back on this - again - I see that the universe might have had other plans for me. The ENERGY that it took JUST to get my ass home was so intense and so unrelenting - that it jump-started me back into life.

There were no more glittering constellations in the sky, and I wasn't yet ready to declare the 'total dark sublime', but I was ready to admit the possibility that someday I would be. Not now. But someday.

Posted by sheila