A is for Angst.

I’m pretty sure I must have had some kind of angst when I was a baby, but I didn’t know very much then so it probably was just a bunch of fussing and crying when I was hungry or bored. A burst of worry or anxiety can’t really be called angst and I don’t know that I had any lingering feelings of any kind way back then. For a very short period of time in my life, when all I possessed was baby awareness, I was fat, wanted and adored.

When I was three I was taken to the hospital to have my tonsils out. This is when I began to have an inkling that my parents must be fucking crazy. They hugged and kissed me and left me in a white iron bed with bars to be cared for by strangers in big white gowns with masks covering their faces. This wasn’t angst. This was terror and for surviving it I was rewarded with a new stuffed toy and ice cream.

As a child of six or seven I had learned to read and I kind of knew everything would be o.k. after that. I also got a metallic blue Raleigh three-speed bicycle with a real leather saddle bag. I put some candy in the bag and rode to a field near my house where I drew floorpans of my fantasy house in the dirt with a stick. My bike sparkled in the sun. I was no longer fat. My legs were skinny and a little bowed and my knees were knobby. I didn’t like school but I had enough friends. I would lie in bed at night and be so aware of my breathing that I thought I would forget how to breathe and die. This was some heavy duty angst of the existential variety. And then I would read a chapter of Strawberry Girl until I forgot about my breathing. 

Angst is a relatively new word. The OED says that Kierkegaard was probably the first person to use the term ‘angst’ to cover an all-around feeling of dread or anxiety and that it was ‘a natural condition of our modern existence.’ If you believed that, then being stricken with occasional angst was inescapable so why fight it?

In my teens I was a metronome of feelings. In my twenties I began to experience a new kind of angst. New York angst. Artist angst. It had a certain level of comfort and familiarity. It felt necessary. I wore it like a sweater. Or maybe even a peacoat. We sort of bonded, my angst and me.

Adult angst comes in phases. You can’t have angst for a minute. It’s not like acid reflux. You think, oh that again. Bring it on. I know what that is and I’ll just ride it out . . . or ride with it. No therapist can relieve you from angst. Anyway they don’t get that it’s become part of your toolbox and you don’t really want to be cured. 

I kept my Raleigh well into my forties. I’m thinking about that bike right now as Warren Zevon is singing Carmelita into my earbuds. I could hop onto it and ride away to design a dream house. I might pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the crusts cut off and a carton of chocolate milk. My balance is a little off these days though. I’m not sure how far I’d get.