I had an gynecological appointment today – don’t flinch, I’m not going to get gross. In my doctor’s new building there are brand new elevators. The walls of the elevator are dark mahogany and the lighting is recessed. The elevator is carpeted and quiet. A perfect setting for terror.

When I was a child and we lived in the projects on Staten Island, the elevators frequently broke down. They were dark and damp and scared me to death. We lived on the fourth floor. There were wide stairs, right next to the elevator bank, and I insisted we walk up them in the dank humid heat instead of in the cool, dark, dank elevator that lurched and groaned. Because the elevator was a coffin, a sealed coffin riding in a sealed box with no way out if it got stuck between floors. I would dream, and my dreams were full of suffocation and death in that dark, dank place. My mother would allow me to cajole her up the stairs and she would drag my sister Dianna up the stairs one at a time while she slowly progressed up the stairs with Christine in the stroller. I would race up the wide, well-lit, airy stairs to the fourth floor and wait for them to come up. Until one day my mother complained, and my father decided to cure me of my fear. He threw me in the elevator. And of course, you must know what happened. The elevator got stuck between floors.

I found out later I was only in the box for about 45 minutes. There was a fire department nearby and my father worked for the Post Office and knew a guy who knew a guy and they were there very fast, considering it was just the projects and nobody really gave a shit about who got stuck in an elevator in there. Let them rot. I am 39 years old, and I still dream of being stuck in that long metal box, between floors in the dark, with no air and no way out. So I walk a lot of stairs. And no one is ever going to put me in a coffin, dead or alive.

ptsd