Panic Disorder 411
Hildi

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Hildi was pretty. Her ex-boyfriend once told Jack that she was
the prettiest girl in the tenth grade and added that she was his
girl. He didn't understand that Hildi was a free spirit, and no
one could own her. She probably wouldn't have described herself
as pretty, yet she must have sensed that she was attractive,
alluring, and sophisticated. She had a countenance that lit up
the room.
She was a bit eccentric, not strange, but eccentric in a curious
way, different than the typical girl, due in part to the
influence of her Austrian mother and her visits to Vienna. She
was a bit unconventional, always looking for what life had to
offer beyond the mundane world of a small town. Her singularity
made her exciting and captivating.
She started smoking, briefly, and Jack asked her if she liked it.
"Not really," she said. "What I like is flicking the butt when
I've finished smoking. I'll quit when I can flick it across the
street."
Jack didn't remember how they met or if he'd ever asked her out
on a date. She just appeared in his life one day, like she'd
always been there. She preferred hanging out to dating anyway.
Jack would walk her home after school or visit later in the
evening. Her father was a cop who worked afternoons, and her
mother was either in the kitchen cooking or elsewhere in the
house, leaving the couple to their own devices.
He couldn't remember when they first kissed, but he knew that her
kisses were the sweetest ones he'd ever known. Maybe it was the
wine that she drank occasionally, a single glass, poured into the
finest Viennese crystal stemware. Sometimes, she'd glide her
finger gently around the rim of the glass, creating a vibrant
ringing that hung in the air for a brief moment as it danced
around the eardrums with a haunting resonance.
Hildi and Jack shared a Study Hall, sitting a couple of rows
apart. She slipped a note to him one day that read, "If the
mountain won't come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the
mountain." He smiled. He had an idea what the maxim meant, but
had no idea what the implication was for them. She spoke the
words again one afternoon at the lake as they walked quietly
along the shoreline, hand in hand, the silence broken by the
occasional squawk of sea gulls and the whisper of waves sweeping
onto the shoreline, pulling them together with a kind of promise,
a silent whisper that seemed to say that they alone belonged to
this place under the heavens.
Sometimes they would cruise in her father's convertible,
returning to her house with wind tossed hair to sit in the living
room and listen to a Strauss waltz on the Fischer stereo. They
didn't dance, but it felt like they were in some grand ballroom
in Vienna waltzing, synchronized like swans gliding over a
pond.
One day, they passed by an orthodox Jewish temple, and Hildi said
that she might convert to Judaism. "Would you convert, too?" she
asked. Jack hesitated. He knew he had enough problems trying to
understand his church, without adding another religion to the
mix. Then he said, "Yes." He figured that if she liked it, he
might like it too.
Hildi loved Jack's apartment. It reminded her of the garrets in
Vienna. The apartment was on a magnificent street, lined with
large, historic homes on the banks of the river. The apartment
was encased within the sloping sides of a Mansard roof with a
cupola over his bedroom and a beautiful view of the river and
beyond.
After Hildi met Jack's mother, he was a little amazed that she
liked her so much. He rarely brought a girl home because his
mother always disapproved. And now, the cigarette flicking, wine
drinking girl philosopher, the girl traveling to the mountain,
was her choice in girls for Jack.
It was purely by accident that Hildi discovered the lever that
released the seats to a full reclining position in Jack's
mother's AMC Rambler.
"You could take this car camping," she said.
“Or—"
Jack smiled. "Or what?"
She didn't need to answer. She had a gleam in her eyes. Jack knew
full well what she meant. He could almost hear a band of angels
singing Hallelujah, shaking the firmament, or maybe, it was just
he who was shaking!
So that day, they began to plan their tryst. The plan involved
setting a date, then unfolding maps to look for abandoned country
roads. They decided that a Saturday night would be appropriate,
if there was any propriety in their plan at all. They chose a
time on the following weekend, leaving ten days till launch. They
discovered they couldn't determine the place by looking at a map
and left the location to trial and error.
The next Monday, Hildi slipped a note to Jack in Study Hall that
stated simply, "5 days till nirvana!" She sent a similar note on
Wednesday: "3 days till nirvana—I love you."
They hadn't exchanged the words before. Jack was quite sure that
he loved her, so he passed a note back to her: "I love you, too."
When she looked down to read the note, the Study Hall teacher
reprimanded them.
"Jack and Hildi, you have to quit passing notes to each other, or
I'll have to place you in detention."
Jack walked home with Hildi on Friday after school. They listened
to music and talked. Jack was so nervous about the next night
that he went home early. Before he left, Hildi asked him to call
her the next evening around six. Jack called promptly the next
evening. Hildi told him that she had to break their date because
she was washing the walls in her room.
Washing the walls! So it all came down to this: washing walls
precluded passion for Hildi. Jack was furious. All he could think
was that Spic & Span had replaced him in the bedroom. Or was
the plan contrived with an ulterior motive? Was it a ruse to
tease, to deceive, or to hurt him. Why the grand buildup
promising the heights of passion that were never to be. Why?
The next moment, he was convinced that something else was going
on and that she was lying. But, they had never argued, and he
didn't want to start, so he tersely said "Goodbye." He felt
betrayed, forsaken, and abandoned with a deep and lonely aching
inside that didn't begin to subside until he drove by her house a
couple of hours later.
It was dark when he circled her house and looked up to the second
floor. The curtains had been removed, and he could see Hildi
standing on a ladder, washing the walls. He shrugged his
shoulders and drove home.
He didn't see her again until Friday and asked her if he could
walk home with her.
"No, Jack," she said. "There's something you need to know. I
don't love you anymore. I like Eric."
Jack's world threatened to implode, like an earthquake swallowing
everything in its path, yet miraculously he was able to let go of
Hildi when they departed. Graduation was a month away, then he
would be leaving for university, and he must have known that a
long distance relationship wouldn't work for them.
He called her one last time shortly after the ceremony, and that
was it. He drove by her house a couple of times during semester
breaks and looked for her in a nearby shopping center, but never
saw or spoke to her again.
Time moved on. Jack graduated from college, then moved to New
York City. Years later, when he returned to Ohio, he ran into a
man in a bar who was from his home town, who knew Hildi. Jack
asked him to give her his best if he saw her again.
After the turn of the century, Jack subscribed to his high
school's alumni directory and looked up Hildi in the book. She
hadn't given her address. A couple years later, he did an
internet search and found that she died in 2002 in Baltimore, a
city that she and her family traveled to frequently, a city she
really loved.
Jack loved Hildi, his first real girlfriend. She bought him art
supplies and his first canvas that started his journey on the
road to painting. He valued their time together and was grateful
he had known such a lovely girl—a free spirit who was true
to herself and taught Jack the beauty of breathing in life and
exhaling joy.
In memory of Hildegarde Ernestine Shanaway 1947 – 2002
Story by Michael Jackson Smith - 2015
THE ROAD TO FORT WORTH by Michael Jackson Smith: Very little was known about panic disorder when I had my first panic attack. There was no help available to teach me how to assuage the attacks, but I discovered that alcohol would dissolve my fear instantly. My website contains the kind of information that would have been a tremendous help to me in the early days of my illness as I searched for solutions for the panic disorder, agoraphobia, and alcoholism that incapacitated me. My book is the story of my journey into recovery. Read Chapter 8 | Top of Page↑