THAT DAY

I'm biking across San Francisco in a hurry, hopelessly late for a hypnotherapy session. My intuition keeps telling me to turn onto odd back streets. I make it on time, in 20 minutes instead of 35! I must be eager to face my demons.

Shelley the therapist says "You seem to have amnesia lately. You forget about women and social groups that meant a lot to you just a week before--usually when you were about to take some stressful step." Of course I used to withdraw by getting sick, or phobic--just going blank's an improvement! A new step in recovery.

Going blank may even have an active side. I dreamed this week I met two cute shapeshifters BECAUSE I blanked out and got lost!

Shelly tries hypnosis, asks me to picture threatening things as a test. I stop breathing; image and emotion and physical stress fuse into an imperative to FREEZE. No option to just look...

She leads me back to my worst years, age 10-12, and I flash back to being attacked from behind in the library. They snapped a rib. I'm always a little tense around others even now--I expect to be jumped without warning.

When she suggests "This next week, trust yourself a little more" I blurt like a hurt furious child "I trust myself, it's all of YOU I don't trust! Give me a reason NOT to!" Progress that I can say it, I guess...

Bike home, tired and shaky.

Read Norma Klein's IT'S OK IF YOU DON'T LOVE ME. All her teens are socially and sexually more mature than I am. Chronic illness deprived me of adolescence... and I could forgive that if it was over, if it would just end now and leave me some chance of building a life, starting twenty years after you all.

But if Shelley's right and this illness has an agenda (to keep me alone), it knows it mustn't let up. Once I have fun out there, find decent work and a non-abusive girlfriend, solitude will never be able to compete! Fun, affection and sex are such strong drugs for me.

Drugs? Or nutrients?

In the evening, my housemate Sean has friends over. I hide in my room and play synthesizer and write this. Someone knocks repeatedly on my door, but I'm afraid it's the landlord's crazy son again, and I just can't take any more today. I turn off my light and go to bed so I won't have to answer.

I feel sick. I didn't notice till now. I could blame the stress of writing all this, but the truth is, therapy was already stressful enough to trigger an attack. Maybe it's unavoidable.

THAT NIGHT

Multiple murders in the desert. Two people were killed at nearly the same time some miles apart, so at first the cops assume they're unrelated. But the style is similar, and more bodies appear in days to come...

A tall, slick man in a suit, one of the richest men in the county, deduces "the murderer would have to drive incredibly fast, over 100 mph, or he couldn't have gotten between x and y." Yet here on the empty desert roads, he's right, a good driver in a race car could just manage it.

He smirks, having shown up the sheriff again, and walks out. Gets into his sports car and drives off with a ROAR. God that thing has a big engine! He tears off across the desert at 120-150 MPH leaving a dust plume behind. Thumbing his nose at us. At me--the sheriff didn't come out to see him go, I'm the only one who sees. The sheriff doesn't WANT to see the possibility. The guy's family is too important.

The victims' families were not important.

Some of the victims were my friends.

Rage wells up and I run across the highway to the airstrip and climb into my tiny plane. I start out after him. Unsure what I can do from above, but I want to kill him. Maybe I can drop something on him--if his windshield shattered at two miles a minute he'd probably crash. But I'll have to go low and aim carefully: I don't have many heavy things in the plane. Have to rip out equipment to throw, if I don't get him on the first couple of tries. I'll do that, fly without instruments, if I have to. I intend to get him no matter what the risk.

Not just because he's a serial killer. Because he flaunts his immunity.

NEXT MORNING

• Serial killings = my life taken from me by episodes of illness.
• Smug, rich killer = the "well-adjusted" kids who tortured me and got away with it--teaching me to fear "normal" people so much I get ill around them.
• He's rich, I'm furious = Jo's dad in "It's OK If You Don't Love Me." Cheats her of love, of respect, he even cheats her at tennis. My dad was more honest, but nearly as oblivious. I'm learning how mad I am at him...
• I zoom after him = I zoomed to therapy because I want to defeat this illness.
• Small, low-flying plane = I cope with the abuse on a "higher plane" now... just not much higher.

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