Why Is That White Lady Screaming at Me?
Maybe it’s a black-man-walking-around-a-European-city thing.
Last Sunday, I was about one-quarter of the way through a brisk early morning walk around Kiev, Ukraine, when the strangest interruption interrupted the scariest one. I’d just ascended to the top of a challenging incline when, suddenly, anxiety grabbed me by the chest and started dragging me to the brink of emotional, if not quite physical, collapse.
I’ve been having panic attacks for decades, but every so often I have a particularly brutal bout that I’m certain must be The Big One, i.e., a sure-to-be-fatal heart attack.
If anxiety had fingers, its prints would be all over the body parts where it tends to fester, from my temples to the bottom of my sternum, minus my arms from shoulders to wrists. That morning, my hands were clammier than they’d been during any panic episode since 2006, which surely must have meant danger dead ahead.
Dead. The word lingered in the air over my shaved head, which was covered by beads of dripping sweat. Were…
