What happened

The blond 9 year old sits in the condo's modest dining room, finishing up the dinner her lonely single mom has prepared for them. It is the summer of 1986 in the small New England town. The girl is sad too, but isn't old enough to understand how to articulate the confusing swirl of thoughts and emotions. It's like mother and daughter are in two separate worlds. The daughter just having returned from a busy summer filled with camp activities, the mother still struggling to make sense of the husband that had betrayed her. As the bronze tanned and chubby girl scraps off the last few bites off the plate, her mother hurriedly enters the kitchen. Water rushes out of the faucet, dishes colliding and clanging loudly underneath as mom distracts herself with completing the domestic chore. The tired girl isn't paying much attention to whether her mother is speaking to her or not. Mother wonders if her daughter is listening, continuing to raise her voice with a more stern and authoritative tone.

The girl has plopped herself on the couch in the adjacent living room. She couldn't remember what she was thinking at the time. All she remembers is that she felt trapped by the inner confines of her brain, unable to control her body for what seemed like eternity. She was alone in those moments, scared and helpless. Silent screams do no good in dire straits. "Who can believe something is wrong when there is silence?" she could only wonder in retrospect.

Mother storms out of the kitchen yelling at her daughter, furious at what seemed at the time a blatant disrespectful silent response. Time seems to have slowed down for the girl. Her body starts shaking and she can't stop this force that overpowers her being. Mother abruptly stops her disapproving complaints, which are immediately replaced with panic and fear. She was only doing dishes for a few minutes. What could have gone so wrong in such a short span of time? What did she miss and more importantly, what can she do to stop the terror that both mom and daughter are experiencing? It appears as if the girl could be swallowing her own tongue, or choking on something maybe. Mother sticks a finger or two down the girl's mouth near her throat, attempting to see if an object has become lodged there. Nothing. So she calls 9-1-1.

Within minutes an ambulance has arrived. EMT workers are able to get the girl stabilized and lying on a stretcher shortly after her body has stopped shaking. The sun is beginning to go down as surrounding nosy neighbors crowd around to stare and guess as to why this girl is being whisked away in an ambulance on a quiet summer's evening. As they wheel her out the front door of the condo, the girl has somewhat regained enough consciousness to be unexplainably embarrassed and ashamed by the dramatic, scary experience. She justs wants to disappear....herself, them, everything. But making sense of what happened will have to wait. Fatigue weighs heavily on her. It feels like days since she last slept; the intensity of what her body went through sucked all the life energy from her insides.

She awakens hours later in the comfort of her bed. A chunk of what happened to her is a big blur, a blackout triggered by something with far more serious consequences than alcohol or any kind of drug. Tests had been run, diagnoses given. But from that day forward for years to come, the girl felt self-conscious.

Mostly, she felt unsafe with herself and others.