My Body Is Screaming Right Now

My body doesn’t speak English, it speaks Plagues. The first time I hear it I am twenty-two. I’m in my bedroom and on the verge of sleep, that in-between time when reality and the subconscious are spooning. A commercial for the 10 o’clock news fuses with a dream about my cat, who won’t get out of my backpack and into a carrier and I’m freaking because we have a flight to catch (hadn’t flown in ten years, no cat). And suddenly, I’m scratching at the sand-dollars that have formed on my skin. I see one on my arm, then two. They’re on my stomach now, three-four-five. My face. I wake up my roommate and ask if this is normal, she says probably not. I call my mom, my dad gets on the line. “Oh, those are probably hives. We get them when we’re stressed out.” We? Like all of us? “Just be careful, because if you get them in your throat you might stop breathing. Go to the doctor and get an allergen test, maybe it’s your sheets. And just… stay alert, okay?” my dad says, although I’m pretty sure you have to *be* alert to *stay* alert, and I’d been blowing through the lights, asleep at the wheel.

I wanted to say that something happens to girls when they reach a certain age, but it most assuredly happens regardless of gender, so maybe it just happens to people with anxiety (but perhaps not all of us — I don’t want to generalize).