I EXPECTED MAGIC. I thought this challenging, ennobling task of creating an International Warrior Games would propel me into the next phase of my postwar life. It didn’t work out like that. Instead, day by day, I felt more
sluggish. More hopeless. More lost.
By the late summer of 2013 I was in trouble, toggling between bouts of debilitating lethargy and terrifying panic attacks.
My official life was all about being in public, standing up in front of people, giving speeches and talks, doing interviews, and now I found myself nearly incapable of fulfilling these basic functions. Hours before a speech or public appearance I’d be soaked with sweat. Then, during the event itself, I’d be unable to think, my mind buzzing with fear and fantasies of running away.
Time and again I just managed to stave off the urge to flee. But I could envisage a day when I wouldn’t be able to, when I’d actually sprint off a stage or burst out of a room. Indeed, that day seemed to be coming fast, and I could already picture the blaring headlines, which always made the anxiety three times worse.
The panic often started with putting on a suit first thing in the morning. Strange—that was my trigger: The Suit. As I buttoned up my shirt I could feel my blood pressure soaring. As I knotted my tie I could feel my throat
closing. By the time I was pulling on the jacket, lacing the smart shoes, sweat was running down my cheeks and back.
I’d always been sensitive to heat. Like Pa. He and I would joke about it. We’re not made for this world, we said. Bloody snowmen. The dining room at Sandringham, for instance, was our version of Dante’s Inferno. Much of Sandringham was balmy, but the dining room was subtropical. Pa and I would always wait for Granny to look away, then one of us would jump up, sprint to a window, crack it an inch. Ah, blessed cool air. But the corgis always betrayed us. The cool air would make them whimper, and Granny would say: Is there a draft? And then a footman would promptly shut the window. (That loud thump, unavoidable because the windows were so old, always felt like the door of a jail cell being slammed.) But now, every time I was about to make any kind of public appearance, no matter the venue, it felt like the Sandringham dining room. During one speech I became so overheated that I felt sure everyone was noticing and discussing it. During one drinks reception I searched frantically for anyone else who might be experiencing the same heatstroke. I needed some assurance that it wasn’t just me.
But it was.
As is so often true of fear, mine metastasized. Soon it wasn’t merely public appearances, but all public venues. All crowds. I came to fear simply being around other human beings.
More than anything else I feared cameras. I’d never liked cameras, of course, but now I couldn’t abide them. The telltale click of a shutter opening and closing…it could knock me sideways for a whole day.
I had no choice: I began staying home. Day after day, night after night, I sat around eating takeaway, watching 24. Or Friends. I think I might’ve watched every episode of Friends in 2013.
I decided I was a Chandler.
My actual friends would comment in passing that I didn’t seem myself. As if I had flu. Sometimes I’d think, Maybe I’m not myself. Maybe that’s what’s going on here. Maybe this is some kind of metamorphosis. A new
self is emerging, and I’m just going to have to be this new person, this frightened person, for the rest of my days.
Or maybe this had always been me, and it was only now becoming evident? My psyche, like water, had found its level.
I ransacked Google for explanations. I plugged my symptoms into various medical search engines. I kept trying to self-diagnose, to put a name to what was wrong with me…when the answer was right under my nose. I’d met so many soldiers, so many young men and women suffering from post-traumatic stress, and I’d heard them describe how hard it was to leave the house, how uncomfortable it was to be around other people, how excruciating it was to enter a public space—especially if it was loud. I’d heard them talk about timing their visit to a shop or supermarket carefully, making sure to arrive minutes before closing time, to avoid the crowds and noise. I’d empathized with them, deeply, and yet never made the connection. It never occurred to me that I, too, was suffering from post-traumatic stress. Despite all my work with wounded soldiers, all my efforts on their behalf, all my struggles to create a games that would spotlight their condition, it never dawned on me that I was a wounded soldier.
And my war didn’t begin in Afghanistan. It began in August 1997.
