2002-10-19 - 7:55 p.m.
As I surfed the web, out of boredom and distraction, reading information on social anxiety disorders, I wondered why I didn’t get around to seeking psychiatric help, as it was a high priority on my list of things to do over break. That list, with a few items crossed off, now is an unpleasant list of things I didn’t do. Then suddenly the answer was in front of me, in an example describing a symptomatic fear of making telephone calls: Every time I’d thought about dealing with it, moving forward to find the insurance information that lies somewhere in the morass of papers on my desk, I was dissuaded by visions of awkward conversations with secretaries, doctors, and psychiatrists, and the project inevitably falling through. I even knew these thoughts were self-defeating (through not entirely irrational, as it was what happened the last time I attempted it) yet I still allowed them to stop me. Dejected at this introspection, I left my computer and wandered out to the porch to have a cigarette.
The irony is killing me. Literally.
One phone call I did manage to make, although it took me until Wednesday to get over my trepidation, was to Massachusetts to the eminent MV to talk more about the problems. Her reassuring comments availed my twitching discomfort at disturbing her vacation, to call it that, but one touching aspect was that when I called the phone was answered by a child. After identifying myself asking for MV, the phone was apparently taken by a slightly older child, who heard my request again and then yelled, “Grandma, it’s for you!” A pause. “I don’t know but it’s a boy.” During our conversation she continued to interact with them, which they apparently demanded, and near the end of the conversation, during which she had been gently telling one of the children to not do something, she then said forcefully, “Alex—No. [Then to me:] Sorry about that.” It’s no problem, I said, and besides, I said, “I think I’ve heard that tone of voice before.” To which she gave a response with no words, but I think I’ve seen the facial expression I know she used—one of no words.
