To Breathe Wholly and Free

by Riley Passmore

Featured art: “1” by Dani Preston

On July 20th, 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins took perhaps one of the most profound pictures in all of human history. Using his 16-millimeter Maurer data acquisition camera, he captured the Lunar Module just as it was breaking away from the Columbia, the conical spacecraft that he and his crew called home. The surface of Earth’s gray and only moon shone below, a field of dead and dusty craters, while the Earth itself, with its verdant lands and thriving oceans, glowed deep in the distance over 238,000 miles away.

You are in this picture, and so am I.

We may not have been alive when Collins took it, but because matter cannot be created nor destroyed, every human being who has ever lived, every human being who was alive at the time, and every human being who will ever live, is contained in this single picture.

Every human, except Michael Collins.

In order for the mission to be a success, a lone astronaut would have to remain in lunar orbit while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface. While in orbit, this lone astronaut would wait for the other two to complete their mission, and in that time alone, he would be the most isolated human being in history. Simply by turning his back to the sun, he would be turning his back to the entirety of the human-free universe.

All told, Michael Collins orbited the moon thirty times. In those thirty times, he lost contact with Earth each time his Columbia passed into the dark of the moon. Upon he and his fellow astronauts’ return to Earth, his journals recounted his thoughts the first time he flew into the moon’s shadow and his spacecraft fell into radio silence. He wrote:

“I don’t mean to deny a feeling of solitude. It is there, reinforced by the fact that radio contact with the Earth abruptly cuts off at the instant I disappear behind the moon, I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it.”

 I think about these words a lot, and I think about Michael Collins a lot, too.

Earth’s first mission to the moon could not have succeeded without him, and yet hardly anyone outside the realm of space enthusiasts even knows he existed. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are household names, some of the biggest figures in American history, while Collins is a footnote, an index item. Ask a person off the street who the third person in the mission was, and you’ll get a puzzled look – I didn’t even know there was another person!

And yet, when asked about his place in history, whether he was jealous of Neil and Buzz and their walking on the moon without him, he never seemed to mind. In that same journal entry, he remarked, “This venture has been structured for three men, and I consider my third to be as necessary as either of the other two.” He said he never even felt lonely up there, orbiting his fellow astronauts, dipping into and out of contact with Earth.

“Awareness” and “anticipation,” yes. Even “satisfaction, confidence,” and “almost exultation,” but never loneliness. Alone, but never lonely.

As a person with Avoidant Personality Disorder, or AvPD, I have often daydreamed of becoming an astronaut, of giving up on this whole “writing thing” and shooting off into deep space, away from everyone and everything I have ever known. It’s never been about the science for me, though, or about the exploration or discovery. It’s been about running. About fear.

Out there in that cold, infinite silence, I’d finally be free.

*      *      *

In the second summer of COVID, after finishing my first year of teaching college English at a high school in central Florida, I finally received my diagnosis. I had been teleconferencing with my therapist since November, and at the beginning of that particular session, he said he had some news for me – that was how he phrased it. He had “some news.”

“Riley,” he said, his dark brown hair perfectly coiffed. “I’ve been thinking a lot about our sessions here, about what’s been giving you trouble, and I think I know what you have.”

I remember laughing, nervously, like I always do. “Oh yeah?” I said. “And what’s that?”

He shifted in his chair. “Well, before I say anything else, I just want you to know that sometimes a name can really help someone, but other times it doesn’t. It’s not going to change any of what we do here, so if you don’t want me to tell you, I don’t have to.”

I slumped back in my chair, and weighed my options.

On one hand, I understood what he meant. Names can be dangerous things. As a person already living with one chronic illness – Type 1 Diabetes – I knew how much a diagnosis could change a person’s life. It could forever color how I thought about myself, or even how I thought about the world. How I thought about therapy, and how I thought about my progress.

And yet, my knowing could finally give me something I’ve always wanted: an answer. A reason. Something I could point to, something I could explain. Names can be dangerous things, yes, but there’s a certain power in them, too. About knowing what something is called. There’s a reason nouns are the first part of speech a child learns. Before anything else, they need to know that the world is made not of mother’s milk, but persons, places, and things.

The moment reminded me of the famous play where Hellen Keller finally makes the connection between the signs of her teacher’s hands and the water coming out of the farmhouse spout. She had lived her entire life in complete silence, in complete darkness, and yet when she made that leap, when she realized that everything – literally everything – has a name, the power of names set her free. She lived in the abyss no more.

“You know what?” I said, finally. “I wanna know. Tell me.”

He paused, and then looked off camera – checking his notes, maybe. Or trying to find that file cabinet in his head where doctors keep their bedside manner. “Have you ever heard of something called ‘Avoidant Personality Disorder’?” he asked.

I shook my head. I hadn’t. And not many people have.

There’s a lot of disorders out there that get famous, or even infamous, but AvPD isn’t one of them. While patients suffering from Antisocial Personality Disorder or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder offer screenwriters the chance to create compelling villains and eccentric geniuses, there’s nothing captivating about the quiet, internalized suffering of AvPD. Like the people who have it, the disorder is more or less entirely absent from popular culture.

“It’s kind of like this,” he said. “All social anxiety exists on a spectrum. On one end, you have no anxiety at all. In the middle, you have Social Anxiety Disorder. And on the other end, on the opposite extreme, that’s where AvPD lives. That’s where you are.”

He reached for a bookshelf by his desk, and pulled out a hefty red tome: the DSM, or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. He turned to the entry on AvPD, and read to me its diagnostic criteria. I only needed four out of the seven to be officially diagnosed, but I met every single one of them. Seven-out-of-seven. A perfect score.

“Does that sound like you?” he asked.

I pretended to think for a long time, as though I was struggling to process how easily I could map my entire life onto those seven bullet points, a collection of barely one hundred words.

“Yeah,” I said, avoiding the camera. “That’s me.”

*      *      *

The DSM describes people with Avoidant Personality Disorder as people who live lives defined by an intense, pathological fear of rejection, as people who experience pervasive feelings of inadequacy, and persistent, recurring patterns of extreme social isolation.

It says that we see the world through a lens of constant vigilance, that we suffer from an acute suspicion towards others, and that every day we endure a relentless hypersensitivity to negative evaluation. For people with AvPD, the DSM says, there is no fate more terrible than shame, more excruciating than embarrassment or public humiliation.

It is a crushing, debilitating illness, and that’s exactly what it does.

It crushes. It debilitates.

AvPD is a vice the size and shape of a person, a hydraulic press large enough to consume totally any man, woman, or child caught in its grasp. With one ton plates smelted out of solid lead, it will crush every word out of you, every breath that says, “I’m here” and “I belong.” Like a snake the size of the world, it will coil and constrict until its world is the only world you have left.

That’s what the DSM leaves out.

The breathlessness. The claustrophobia.

Relationships become impossible, friendships fade if they were ever there at all, and strangers are nothing but engines of dread and fear. Show me a man with AvPD in the middle of an empty cornfield, and I’ll show you a man who’s still too close to people. Show me the same man on the other side of the moon, and I’ll show you a man who’s about to turn off his radio.

People become obstacles. Roadblocks.

They become weight.

Every new person we meet is either added to the bulk of AvPD’s massive vice, a pile of bodies ten miles high, or made to turn the Herculean screws of its mechanism. It does not matter how nice any one person is, how accommodating nor accepting, every action, every comment and expression, is scrutinized to the atomic and subatomic level, down even to the vast emptiness that swirls between a nucleus and the orbital shells of its electrons. Like a forensic pathologist, we dissect and autopsy and hypothesize until even a phrase as innocuous as “Hey, it’s been while” can only mean one thing: that we deserve the infinite loneliness that we ourselves create.

This, I suppose, is why we’re always so quiet.

This, I suppose, is why we’re only able to say, “I’m fine.”

*      *      *

So, how did all of this begin?

As with most, if not all, personality disorders, there’s no smoking gun.

According to the DSM, personality disorders can arise from a preponderance of factors, including everything from genetic predisposition and innate temperament to childhood environment and attachment style. Dismissive, abusive, or emotionally neglectful parents can also play a role. Everyone’s AvPD origin story is different, and while the nature of the illness makes it difficult for me to share certain details regarding my own origin story, I can tell you that my situation is entirely typical for those diagnosed: I was pathologically shy as a child, and I was bullied relentlessly. I have difficult relationships with both of my parents, and, for as long as I can remember, I have dealt with extreme feelings of alienation and isolation, as though I have never belonged.

So, no. I can’t tell you exactly where it started.

But I can tell you the moment I knew I needed help – real, professional, help.

In the spring of 2019, I had the worst panic attack of my life.

(If you’ve never had a panic attack, all I can say is lucky you.)

The literature, as well as everyone else I know who has them, says they mostly feel like heart attacks, but this has never been my experience. To me, they feel like I’m fully engulfed in fire, like every cell in my body has gone nuclear, reached critical mass, and is about to explode:

Short, staccato breaths and tunnel vision.

A pounding heart, and racing thoughts.

Panic attacks are the tornado sirens of the mind, the captain’s klaxon call for “red alert” and “all hands on deck.” Adrenaline floods your central nervous system, and your amygdala – the part of your brain that processes fear, anxiety, and aggression – explodes with activity. “You are under attack,” your body is telling you. “Prepare to fight, run, or die.”

As for what set me off, well, all you need to know is that I fucked up at work, and that I fucked up monumentally. I cost my department money, I made my department look bad, and I got a direct call from the boss of my boss of my boss. Only, I missed the call – this, more than anything else, was the trigger. I missed the call, and when I tried to call them back, they didn’t pick up. The other end just rang and rang and rang. All I had was an angry, scathing voicemail.

My AvPD was already here, I just didn’t know it yet.

Like in a horror movie, the call was coming from inside the house.

You don’t need to have panic attacks to have AvPD; they’re not on the list of diagnostic criteria. But AvPD does increase your chances of getting them. Substantially, even.

When I realized I couldn’t get in touch with my boss, I called my wife at work. On the verge of tears, I choked out every word, my voice barely a whisper, and told her what happened.

“That’s all?” she said, incredulous. She sounded concerned – scared, even – but not for the reasons I thought she’d be. “Riley, you sounded like something happened to the kids.”

*      *      *

What’s most surprising about people with AvPD is how functional we seem – how, on the outside, we don’t raise any red flags. Like any other shy or quiet person, we keep to ourselves. We don’t break any laws; we don’t cause any scenes. We’re forgettable, and that’s by design. We want to be forgotten. Unseen. A permanent acquaintance, or nothing at all.

We survive by being “that guy.”

We survive by being “that girl.”

We live our lives in the spaces that exist between everyone else, the liminal spaces, the places where we can hold our breath without anyone noticing:

The knife-shaped shadow of an empty elevator.

The lone, vacant aisle of a crowded grocery store.

We build our entire lives around people and where they aren’t. We hold our tongues; we keep our peace. We live, and let live. We, like so many, just want to be left alone.

And yet, this is never enough.

The avoidance is never enough.

Instead, we want to push the Big Red Button, the magical button that everyone with AvPD dreams of, the one that sits center stage in the middle of all our thoughts. If you spend enough time in AvPD spaces online (as few and far between as they are, understandably), you’ll come across this button eventually. For some, it’s a lever. For others, it’s a switch. But, regardless of which one of us you ask, it’s either the size of an M&M or the size of the moon.

We want to push this Big Red Button because when we do, our greatest and most beautiful fantasy will come to fruition. The second we push that button, every humiliating moment of our lives, every embarrassing word we have ever said, every shameful memory of ourselves buried deep in the minds of everyone we have ever known, will pop, shrivel, and disappear.

We want to press it and press it and press it, even though we know nothing will ever happen. This dream cannot come true. We know this because the button is not real.

There is no button, no lever, no switch – there is only us.

Here, in the world.

Perfectly seen. Perfectly visible.

*      *      *

About a month after my initial diagnosis, my therapist told me that I had made some great progress, that I had “been doing the work.” He uses this metaphor almost exclusively, this metaphor of work. I want to tell him to leave the metaphors to us professionals, but I never do. This is but one example of how AvPD creeps into my everyday thoughts.

“It doesn’t feel like work,” I said. “It feels like agony.”

“Okay, but still, you asked for help when you needed it. That’s a big deal.”

“It was just a printer,” I said. “That’s not a big deal.”

But it was a big deal. It was a very big deal.

Three days prior, the printer in my classroom had been unable to connect to my district-issued laptop. My second year in high school would start in less than a week, and I had a stack of handouts I needed to print before I could take them to the library copy room. I could have either tried solving the issue myself, working in secret to prevent becoming exposed as incompetent, or I could have sent off a quick e-mail to the teacher-in-training at the library’s front desk.

Despite every cell in my body screaming otherwise, I did exactly that.

I sent the email.

“Oh come on,” my therapist said. “This is a huge deal. I wish I could have recorded the way you spoke about this sort of thing when we first started working together. There’s no way that Riley would have done what this week’s Riley did.”

My shoulders slumped. “Yeah. I suppose that’s true.”

My therapist sat up straight, and looked directly into the camera. “Riley,” he said, “this is a real win. Last week, you were telling me about how you survived a faculty meeting, and this week you’re telling me that you reached out to a complete stranger.”

“Yeah. That’s true.”

He tossed up his hands. “Well, these are wins, aren’t they? Why can’t you admit that you’ve made some real progress here?”

I took a deep breath, and looked off-camera. Even through a PC monitor, it is very difficult for me to maintain eye-contact for longer than a moment, even with people I trust.

To be honest, I don’t really have an answer.

I wish I could take pride in my accomplishments like other people; I wish I could accept a kind word or even a compliment, but no matter how true they may be, I just can’t believe them. No matter the circumstance, they always feel hollow. Fake somehow. Suspicious or calculated. The second you tell someone with AvPD they “look nice” or even “sound nice,” we instantly trust you just a bit less. Clearly, your ability to judge the quality of both people and things is all wrong, as jumbled up and broken as we are. You become a threat. Another weight.

That’s the problem with avoidance, really. You come to avoid even yourself after a while, maybe more than anyone else. It becomes the only way you know how to be.

*      *      *

On July 24th, 1969, the Columbia and her crew successfully reentered Earth’s atmosphere and landed safely in the Pacific Ocean. Miraculously, despite reaching speeds of 24,500 miles per hour and arcing like a fireball across the Western hemisphere, all three men were home.

All three men, including Michael Collins.

After two and a half years of weekly therapy, I can’t help but feel like Michael Collins must have felt in that moment, in that snapshot-instant when his spacecraft breached the surface of the Earth and he felt again the pull of his native gravity. In the span of only eight historic days, he and Apollo 11 traveled farther from home than any human being before or since. He had literally left all of humanity behind, become the most isolated person in history, and then returned to become invisible. Forgotten. A third, yet nevertheless important, wheel.

Amazingly, these feelings don’t bother me as much as they used to.

Colleagues can ask me questions about my personal life, and I no longer deflect. I can look waiters in the eye when I order dinner with my wife.

Earlier this year, I even applied for a high-profile writing workshop out west, and for higher-paying jobs in the Northeast, Midwest, and the coasts. I am taking more risks, and the potential of failure no longer burns as it once did. While I still have much work to do – I may not, for example, ever willingly answer my front door – I have rounded a corner. Crested a hill.

I am no longer the Michael Collins on the other side of the moon, his radio as silent as the dead and dusty satellite below him. I am the Michael Collins of Earth, the man who returned home not to the same fame and fortune as his crewmates, but to the people who already knew him.

His friends and his family. His dog, if he had one.

I am the man unclipping the fishbowl helmet from off his spacesuit in the Pacific, taking in that first breath of fresh, Earthling air, wholly, deeply, and free.

Riley Passmore is a speculative fiction writer, essayist, and game designer in Tampa, Florida. His work has appeared in Five on the Fifth and Sweet: A Literary Confection, and has been anthologized in Bodies of Truth: Personal Narratives on Illness, Disability, and Medicine. He teaches college-level English composition and literature in New Port Richey.

Abstract collage artist Dani Preston is a California native currently living in Lyon, France. Using scissors and paper to create psychedelic abstract compositions, her collages spill out tangled amoeba-like guts, spotted orbs and human hands. Titling her works Cosmic Jelly, she is expressing human connectedness as wiggles of life dance across the universe of the paper. You can find more of her art on Instagram at @cosmicjellycollage