I am afraid of everything. Airplanes, roller coasters, food dyes, poultry (alive or dead), improperly repaired chairs. I am probably afraid of beach balls. I like to blame it on my children, because once you have children you are never fearless again. They are walking aneurysms; my life could blow at any time. But the truth is, this fear has always been with me and I just never recognized it as fear until I had my children.

Long before children, I thought the corset inside my chest, reconfiguring bones and organs, was normal. I thought everybody wore one. Even so, I raged against it, fought to loosen the strings. President of the drama club in high school, because if I was going to have perpetual stage fright, I might as well be on an actual stage. Later, a lecturing educator. A singer and songwriter. Every day, an endurance test. Every completed task, evidence that I would not be choked breathless, or compressed into something lesser. Life as manifesto.

Relief would come in spurts. There were whole years – glorious, productive years – when I almost took breathing for granted. Oh, the corset was still there, on a dressmaker’s dummy in an ill-lit corner. And on a random day, I’d wake, look to the dummy, find her naked, pat my sides and feel the stays. Always hidden under clothes and smiles. Surely, no one can tell.

When my daughter was thirteen, I took her to camp in North Carolina. One of those camps where they separate into Indian tribes, and the camp traditions and songs go back nearly five generations. Which is impressively historic if you aren’t an actual American Indian. Being adopted, I wanted that history for my daughter, generational roots. It seemed a fertile place. The drive up there had already been difficult (the actual drive, the abandonment of my own rooms, the safe boundaries of my neighborhood, hometown and state). Leaving her there, driving home without her, was unthinkable.

We unloaded her trunk at her assigned cabin, and it came time for her to choose a bunk. I surveyed the room, eyed the rows of bunk beds awaiting summer orphans. "You take a top bunk," I told her.

My daughter said, "You’re afraid the bed will collapse, aren’t you?"

Yes, there in that godly place of luscious green hills, gurgling streams, mountain vistas and children’s tribal whoops, I was imagining the bunk beds pancaked. Piles of beams and springs. Worse, in this mind-made disaster, I was offering up someone else’s child as a substitute for my own. The bottom bunk.

Arriving home, I called my doctor and said, "I’m ready for the medicine." She wrote a prescription for Lexapro.

I have no Lexapro horror stories. Lexapro was good to me. On Lexapro, I waved two children off to college with only a few tears; feathered my empty nest with industry; weathered a son’s ill-advised, long distance sailing trip on a battered boat named Sugaree; braved unexpected goodbyes to two dear women – one I had chosen as a sister, another I had chosen as a mother. I slept and ate and breathed deeply. My face plumped with good health. And I was happy.

Except, I couldn’t write. Well, I could write shelter adoption policy and procedure manuals, dog training and behavior handouts, articles for the two non profit newsletters I put out bi monthly, but I couldn’t write anything joyful, tragic, poignant or funny. Nothing true. As a singer/songwriter (of absolutely no renown), I could perform with cool confidence, but I couldn’t any longer put into words the feelings that drove me to perform. With no new material, my guitar idled, my voice rusted. So I decided to stop taking the medicine. I wanted to write again.

There are foreseeable tragedies in my future. My parents won’t live forever. My husband is ten years my senior. I will almost certainly outlive my dogs. Then, there are the ordinary, unforeseeable (but still imaginable) tragedies -- accidents, illness, random crime. And, always, those aneurysms. I don’t know if I’ll be able to face any of those as myself, or if I’ll wake one morning tightly laced. For now, I am grateful that the words come. They come so forcefully they need editing. Whole paragraphs cut for being too much. Forgive me if I’m giddy. I look back at a song I wrote during one of my years of reprieve. The bridge goes like this:

I’ve got a black and white dog in a red bandana./ Nothing’s cuter than that./ I’ve got a brown hound in a purple bed./ I’ve got two big orange cats./ I’ve got a lover, with kind blue eyes,/ says he’ll love me when I’m old./ My life’s so full of riches, even my fish are gold./ Hell, even my fish are gold.

 I feel that way again. It’s good to be back.