2-61（在线收听）

61.

I expected magic. I thought this challenging, ennobling task of creating an International WarriorGames 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 lethargyand terrifying panic attacks.

My official life was all about being in public, standing up in front of people, giving speechesand talks, doing interviews, and now I found myself nearly incapable of fulfilling these basicfunctions. Hours before a speech or public appearance I’d be soaked with sweat. Then, during theevent 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 Iwouldn’t be able to, when I’d actually sprint off a stage or burst out of a room. Indeed, that dayseemed to be coming fast, and I could already picture the blaring headlines, which always madethe anxiety three times worse.

The panic often started with putting on a suit first thing in the morning. Strange—that was mytrigger: The Suit. As I buttoned up my shirt I could feel my blood pressure soaring. As I knottedmy tie I could feel my throat closing. By the time I was pulling on the jacket, lacing the smartshoes, 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 forthis world, we said. Bloody snowmen. The dining room at Sandringham, for instance, was ourversion of Dante’s Inferno. Much of Sandringham was balmy, but the dining room wassubtropical. 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. Thecool air would make them whimper, and Granny would say: Is there a draft? And then a footmanwould promptly shut the window. (That loud thump, unavoidable because the windows were soold, always felt like the door of a jail cell being slammed.) But now, every time I was about tomake any kind of public appearance, no matter the venue, it felt like the Sandringham diningroom. During one speech I became so overheated that I felt sure everyone was noticing anddiscussing it. During one drinks reception I searched frantically for anyone else who might beexperiencing 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, butall 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 Icouldn’t abide them. The telltale click of a shutter opening and closing… it could knock mesideways for a whole day.

I had no choice: I began staying home. Day after day, night after night, I sat around eatingtakeaway, 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 issome kind of metamorphosis. A new self is emerging, and I’m just going to have to be this newperson, 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, likewater, had found its level.

I ransacked Google for explanations. I plugged my symptoms into various medical searchengines. I kept trying to self-diagnose, to put a name to what was wrong with me…when theanswer was right under my nose. I’d met so many soldiers, so many young men and womensuffering from post-traumatic stress, and I’d heard them describe how hard it was to leave thehouse, how uncomfortable it was to be around other people, how excruciating it was to enter apublic space—especially if it was loud. I’d heard them talk about timing their visit to a shop orsupermarket carefully, making sure to arrive minutes before closing time, to avoid the crowds andnoise. I’d empathized with them, deeply, and yet never made the connection. It never occurred tome that I, too, was suffering from post- traumatic stress. Despite all my work with woundedsoldiers, all my efforts on their behalf, all my struggles to create a games that would spotlight theircondition, it never dawned on me that I was a wounded soldier.

And my war didn’t begin in Afghanistan.

It began in August 1997.