As a student, Graham Caveney suffered a severe panic attack while on a coach trip, a terrifying event that changed his life. He writes about the daily challenges of living with a fear of open spaces Thirty-plus years we’ve been together and still I don’t know you. Intimate stranger, phantom limb, as unreachable as you are familiar. You have sculpted my desires, my ambitions, been a mockery of the free will I was always told I had. I cannot think without you. You and me baby; we’re a neurotic two-step. Agoraphobia. I want to write the word in the middle of the page, leave it stranded, surrounded with nothing but icy white space. My attempt at revenge. From the Greek _agora_ meaning “marketplace”, _phobos_ meaning “fear”. The translation doesn’t quite cut it. I balk at its limitations. An insufficient word for a condition of insufficiency. Continue reading...
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