Jennifer Lopez titled her album On the 6. She would ride the 6 train from the Bronx into the city (if not from NYC, the city is what everyone calls Manhattan). Well, I live in the city and the train that I use to ride to go everywhere was the 1 train.
At fourteen, I rode it uptown to Washington Heights to see my friends. At sixteen, I rode to 137 street to see my boyfriend. In winter, my boyfriend and I would ride the length of it from South Ferry to Van Cortlandt Park. We would ride for hours, talking and sharing secrets and deepest thoughts while I did homework or most times not.
That was all the past. When I was a different person, one I remember with both laughter, fondness, groans, and embarrassment.
Now, the person I am is a person who cannot even walk past the entrance of a train station without having a panic attack. I cannot ride the trains. I freak out. I’ve come close to blacking out. Hell, I cannot even think or talk about the trains with anxiety.
The logical side of me knows that my irrational fear is stupid. That I have nothing to fear. That I had done it hundreds, thousands of times.
My emotional side laughs in my face and I panic. My life is very different. My anxiety changed how I live my life. I do not meet up with long distant friends or attend my Romance Writers of America local chapter. I don’t take part in functions that I would have been the first to show up.
I am a person that now has to figure that I go somewhere I have to see if I have a ride back or money for a taxi. My life exists just where my feet can take me. I have sought help for it, taking prescribed medication and do therapy.
One day, maybe, I might be on the 1.
Or most likely not.
Mageela Troche 