A.D. Kramer studied creative writing as an undergraduate at Boston College, where she majored in English and political science. As a compulsive and aspiring writer, she has continued to pursue that education in her day-to-day life ever since. In her free time (between the hours of nine in the morning and five in the evening), she writes for clients as a speechwriter and corporate communications professional.  

An American in Aisle Six

May 1

I had a panic attack at the grocery store. It was a Trader Joe’s, I was picking out which cereal I’d have for dinner, and Katy Perry’s “Roar” was playing over the store’s crackling loudspeaker. I’m not sure how these details affect the story I’m about to write. Probably not at all.

I’d love to say that this incident was the result of some kind of terrible, meaningful trauma in my life, like maybe I was once attacked by a man wearing a red hoodie, and the Trader Joe’s uniforms of that same bloody hue just sent my mind spinning, and suddenly I was back in that alleyway on that dark, rainy night, this hooded devil of a stranger catching my eye and then stalking toward me slowly, faster, faster still, until he was sprinting and… yeah. If I could attribute my collapsing into the fetal position in front of the High Fiber O’s to something like that, maybe I wouldn’t feel so stupid.

Unfortunately, I’m just your average twenty-something trying to put her phone down long enough to get her shit together at some point in this life. Still, when someone in the next aisle dropped a gallon of milk from the top shelf of the refrigerated section and let out a sharp yelp as it burst at their feet, I assumed someone had been shot and that my life was moments from ending.

I’d also love to say that Trader Joe’s is the first place I’ve felt panic-stricken in the face of the mundane, but it isn’t. Central Park on a crowded Sunday, the train station at rush hour, that expansive puffy huddle around the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree – all of it makes me feel like a fish in a barrel, just waiting for one of those terrible, proliferating headlines to get a little too close.

I don’t know if other people feel this way, mostly because I spend all of my time pretending I don’t.

When I came to in Aisle Six, a small audience surrounded me: skinny girls in sleek workout gear, store management in those big red shirts, a blobby blue police officer carrying a carton of eggs, a portly man claiming to be a doctor with thick fingers that grabbed at my shoulders and needled my neck. I waved them all away, my cheeks hot. “I just need a minute,” I said. “I’m okay.” I stumbled to my feet and everyone dispersed just in time for Katy’s final declaration that we’re all going to hear her roar. I left the store without any cereal, keeping my head down until I felt the sticky night air on my skin.

Jess came home from work to find me in bed before dark, cocooned in my gravity blanket and watching my fifth consecutive episode of Friends. To me, this is my happy place. To Jess, this is a flare gun, a signal that her intervention is needed.

She barged into my room and plopped her bony body onto my bed. I told her what happened – kind of – and she threw her arms around my neck, told me to wait one sec, and ran to her room. She returned with this notebook and a mauve business card with the name “Dr. Diane Seahorn” pressed elegantly into the cardstock. Dr. Diane Seahorn is Jess’s therapist. I know this because Jess talks about her therapist more than she talks about her mother, her girlfriend, or anyone else in her life.

“Isn’t it weird for roommates to go to the same doctor?” I asked her. “Isn’t that like dating the same person, or your gyno showing up to your birthday party?”

“Shut up, “she said, twirling a lock of honey-colored hair around a freshly manicured fingertip. “No way. Di’s the best.”

It kind of bothers me that Jess refers to this Board-certified specialist who probably spent half of Jess’s life waist-deep in debt and textbooks as “Di,” but I keep this to myself because Jess always means well. She said Dr. Seahorn loves telling her patients to journal, and swears it really helps. “I should start by writing down how I’m feeling,” she said, “whenever I’m feeling anything at all – good, sad, scared, happy. The more detail, the better.”

I wondered to myself how this could be at all physically possible. Shouldn’t we always be feeling something? I started to ask the question out loud, then thought better of it and thanked her instead.

Anyway, that’s why I’m here, writing about Trader Joe’s. Because Jess said that “Di” said it would help. I made an appointment to see Dr. Seahorn while Jess peered at the computer screen over my shoulder. Maybe I’ll be back with more feelings – good, sad, scared, or happy?

Until then, I’m feeling hungry.

May 5

Aesthetically speaking, Dr. Seahorn’s office was exactly how I pictured it. Plush surfaces, pastel walls, spa music tinkling through the air, which also smelled like a four-star hotel lobby. Within three minutes a young receptionist with gold-rimmed glasses whispered my name like a question, then told me the doctor will see me now.

Dr. “Di” Seahorn, though, was a surprise. Where I anticipated a sinewy yogi with long necklaces and a strong vocal fry stood a woman who looked… kind of like me. Her frizzy brown hair matched my own. She dressed in jeans and a white button-down T-shirt – professional, but not uptight. Her voice was smooth and steady, almost soothing. Like my mom’s.

She glanced at her clipboard and asked me to sit down. When I did, she didn’t ask me why the hell I had a panic attack in Trader Joe’s, which I immediately felt embarrassed about writing — a little flippantly, if I’m honest — in the Reason for appointment box on her intake form.

Instead, she asked me to tell her about myself. When I hesitated, she asked me where I live, whether the commute to her office took me long. I told her I’m not too far, just a few stops on the Q train into Brooklyn. She told me she used to live in Brooklyn with a roommate, and that’s how I started talking about Jess and what we like to do together. This segued into the topic of sushi, and how Jess and I love to eat it but sometimes — most times —  I can’t really afford it, which makes things kind of awkward between us, because in those cases I’ll tell Jess to just go ahead and order the sushi without me, but then she says no, and the way she says it is pitying, you know, like she knows exactly why I’m not ordering the sushi even when I say I’m just not in the mood for spicy tuna anymore, and all of this makes me embarrassed. I told her how my sister hates sushi, which is ironic because she’s making, like, twice my salary even though she’s three years younger than me – probably because she knows how to speak her mind without fear that her opinions will raise eyebrows or be incorrect in some way – and could certainly buy herself all the sushi she can stomach, which is weird because in my mind my sister is still ten years old, running around our childhood house and belting the lyrics to the High School Musical soundtrack as loudly as her little lungs will let her. I talked about my mom, too. How she’d say she hated it when we sang so loud, but then she’d also always giggle when we promised her we’d stop, but then kept on starting again. She likes sushi, my mom, but whenever we get it, all she talks about is how many carbs are in the rice and how she wishes there were a rice-free option, which always makes me angry because what’s sushi without rice? Sashimi? I think even that has rice. So maybe she could just not order the sushi and get plain old fish from the supermarket instead, if she hates rice so much? And why can’t mothers ever just be happy with a plate of food and let it feed them, you know? Then they wonder why we’re so fucked up when we look in the mirror. This brought me back to Jess, and how even though I love her and she’s an unwaveringly good friend, I hate the way she makes me feel sometimes, when her mascara never smudges and she loses weight without trying and then doesn’t stop talking about it even as I’m silently struggling with the same twelve hulking pounds I piled on during our freshman year and can’t seem to get rid of, no matter how many meals I swap for dinky bowls of cardboard-tasting cereal or how many miles I pant through. “But I don’t want to reduce our friendship to that,” I said. I told her about that one weekend we stayed on the couch and just watched these stupid nature documentaries starring cute monkeys and flamingos, and how we laughed and drank wine until the sky was almost bright again, and that to this day it was one of my favorite weekends of my entire life because I felt so safe and sure and happy, just spending time with her like that. It’s hard for me to have a good time when I go out, I admitted. And then I stopped talking. 

“Why do you think that is?” Dr. Seahorn asked me.

I told her it’s because I’m never… relaxed, really, anywhere but home. But I don’t know why because there’s no real reason for me to feel that way. Still, it’s always there.

Dr. Seahorn asked me what “it” is.

“I don’t know,” I told her. “It’s hard to describe. It’s like this heaviness that sits in my stomach and won’t leave me alone. Like an awareness, I think.”

“An awareness of what?” Dr. Seahorn’s face was blank, but not in a bored way. Just calm, open. Listening.

I looked down at the pink shag carpet beneath my sneakers; I never realize how dirty my shoes are until they’re up against something pristine. I tucked my legs beneath my chair and told her that sometimes I think it’s a fear of bad things. Violence, mostly. Mass shootings, specifically.

I’d never admitted that aloud before, not to anybody.

Before Dr. Seahorn could speak, I continued, unable to keep my lips from attempting to cover their tracks. I told her I feel guilty for feeling this way when it’s not like anything even remotely devastating has ever actually happened to me. Like, what right do I have to be so afraid? I’m lucky, and I should feel lucky. Sometimes, I think I’m just a coward, or that I’m crazy or something. But then it’s just… I look anywhere – the newspapers, TV, my phone, anywhere – and it’s just everywhere. Every day. All over the place. And sometimes I wonder how everyone else isn’t scared like me, you know? And nobody seems to care enough to do anything about it, either. For a few days, maybe, they’ll lend these illusory thoughts and prayers, but then people just, like, move on. Especially the people who could change things if they wanted to. They get up and go to work and make-believe that nothing bad could ever happen to them just because it hasn’t. Part of me is jealous of the people who feel okay like that, I admitted, but at the same time, I sort of wish everybody would just snap out of their okayness, just for one second, because then maybe things would get better and one day actually be okay. You know?

My face was an oven when my word vomit stopped. Dr. Seahorn’s voice wrapped around me like a blanket. “Don’t put yourself down for feeling this way,” she said. “Lots of other people do too. One-third of American adults, in fact.”

Tears stung my eyes. “Is that true?” I asked.

Dr. Seahorn nodded.

“Are we crazy? The one-third? Or is everyone else?”

She gave me a few exercises, some ways to cope with sudden stress. Like breathing deep, and — yes — journaling. Dr. Seahorn said that scary thoughts lose their power when we pull them into the light. I wasn’t sure what that meant at first, but right now, writing this, I think I’m starting to understand.

Back in the plush pastel lobby, I got my receipt. “Is there a problem?” Gold Glasses asked.

“Is this with insurance factored in?” I asked. It was. So I signed my name with an unsteady hand, and paying off my credit card became a problem for another day.

Maybe I’m in some kind of daze, but I’m not that upset about the money. It’s true, I can’t go back to Dr. Seahorn, and I’ll have to watch that sushi-grade pity seep into Jess’s face when I tell her I’ll need to find another doctor. But now I know this can work. I can feel better, I think.

I left that office feeling lighter. Like my feet were on the ground instead of beneath it for the first time in a while.

May 7

There was another shooting yesterday. It happened in a subway car, on the very same train I take on my daily commute. It’s strange, the idea that my life might have been saved by just a couple of hours. Circumstance. Nothing more.

Now, six people – six people who, like me, were simply trying their best to get from one place to the next – are dead.

I tried to write last night, but I couldn’t move. I could only pour over pictures of the aftermath, nightmares captured in two-dimensional frames: grown-ups sobbing, holding each other; maroon blood stains left on sidewalks I’ve walked on before and will traverse again tomorrow; babies with pigtails and band-aided knees carrying the misplaced expressions of war veterans, empty eyes peering over parents’ shoulders, contemplating something unknowable. Maybe remembering? Maybe trying to forget?

I can’t help but wonder what the people in these photographs are doing right now, what they got up to once the camera’s shutter clicked, fixing them forever in the midst of their most hellish moments. Are they in their beds? Are they able to sleep? Have they eaten, sipped water, spoken aloud? Or are they still there, where they’re shown in the pictures? Trapped forever, frozen as the rest of the world keeps turning?

I wonder about the six people in the photographs they’ll never show. What they might have done today, tomorrow, next year. Who they might have become.

I wonder about those six clusters of loved ones, the recent recipients of unfathomably terrible news. Are they sitting around their kitchen tables with their heads in their hands, absorbing the impact of this axis shift, praying for reversion? Are their chests heaving as a relentless grief digs its nails into the fragile fibers of their hearts and promises to never let go?

And I can’t help but wonder: were some of these people – these unknown neighbors of mine, these human beings with friends and families and lovers, with favorite movies and favorite colors and favorite stories to tell – part of the one-third, like me?

Were they, too, afraid?

My heart hurts. For the people in the pictures, for those just outside the frame. For all of us living through this unnamed war for which none of us ever enlisted.

Jess knocked on my bedroom door tonight when she got home from work. I had locked it; she called for me, but I didn’t answer. I don’t know if she knew I was in here or not. She left, eventually. Maybe she just assumed I was fine?

I’ll talk to her tomorrow.

After I find a new therapist.

May 7

I wonder if the sidewalk in the photographs will still be stained tomorrow. I can’t decide what it will mean if it isn’t.

May 8

Dr. Sol, my new in-network therapist, is only accessible via a messaging app. The app, PocketPax, promises to democratize mental health by bringing patients affordable care remotely— from anywhere, at any time. I learned about it through an advertisement, in case that isn’t clear.

Upon downloading the app, I was prompted to fill out a short questionnaire relaying my age, gender, marital status, religion, and a few other traits I’m not sure actually have much to do with getting cared for. There was no Reason for appointment box to fill, just a checklist of circumstances that might drive a person to seek therapy: feeling depressed, feeling overwhelmed, having experienced trauma, an inability to find purpose or meaning in life. Realizing I was only allowed to check one box, I declared myself overwhelmed and clicked Submit.  

Almost instantaneously, Dr. Sol sent me a greeting. His thumbnail image featured a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and bright blue eyes. He was handsome, which made me vaguely nervous, but then I read his message and noticed his frequent use of exclamation marks, which made me smile.

We went back and forth a few times in a kind of energetic volley. He asked me what brought me to PocketPax. I wrote about the advertisement. He replied with a smiley-faced emoji that made me blush, then clarified that he’d meant to ask what really brought me to PocketPax. I replied that I think I’m experiencing some anxiety about the state of the world. Dr. Sol typed that he understands, and that we’re living in a tough time right now.

There it was again – a tiny glimmer of that Dr. Seahorn lightness, that epic relief that comes from sharing the parts of yourself that scare you with someone who seems to truly see them. Craving more, I typed again. “I’m afraid of gun violence,” I typed. “It’s hard to leave the house sometimes. I imagine you get a lot of people who feel that way, too.” Send.

Dr. Sol took a little longer to respond this time. When he did, his reply made me want to dig a me-sized hole, bury myself in it, and never emerge again.

“An inability to leave home is a very serious symptom,” he typed.

I started to type back, my fingers flying across the keys. “No,” I wrote. “Not like that – not actually, I mean.” Send. “I’m not like, truly sick or anything, sorry for the confusion.” Send. “I can leave the house if I really want to.” Send. “It’s just – it’s really scary, and understandably, you know. Being the victim of gun violence is a real fear that’s statistically very possible, unfortunately.” Send.  “It’s not like being struck by lightning or being crushed by a falling piano or something.” Send. “Even though it should be.” Send. “So, you know, I just get nervous.” Send.

Dr. Sol’s image stared back at me, his cold blue eyes boring into mine. No dots appeared.

My palms had started to sweat. Despite myself, I tried again. “It’s not just me, either.” Send. “One-third of adults in the United States feel the way I do. If you’ll believe it.” Send.

Dr. Sol’s ellipses reappeared; I held my breath.

“According to my chart, it looks like you might benefit from some anti-anxiety medication,” his message read.

I didn’t know I had a chart already.

He typed again, and promised that my new prescription would be delivered right to my door by tomorrow morning. Then he shared a few written instructions, namely that I should take two pills a day, one in the morning, and one in the evening, preferably with food.

I closed my app a while ago now. The pills are probably halfway here. But I still don’t know how to feel about them.

My mom always says that magic doesn’t come in a bottle, and that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. She had this epiphany when her doctor made her stop taking those back-alley diet pills she used to pop like breath mints, but there’s some truth to the sentiment, I think. Plus, I’ve read horrible stories online of people who take medications just like these and just… lose themselves. Overnight, they become these zombies that can’t feel anything at all – the sad and the scared or the good and the happy. That thought makes me more afraid than real fear ever could.

I don’t want a cure for feeling. I just want life to be better.

May 9

The pills are here. They are white and large and have a rough texture about them that I can feel traveling down my esophagus before I’ve even taken one.

This morning when I opened their sleek packaging — also white and very smooth  in texture — I decided I didn’t want to take them. As of this morning, I also believed that Dr. Sol was probably a very good doctor, with a fancy-and-important-looking office filled with lots of fancy-and-important-looking medical diplomas hung in heavy frames on every wall. I was sure that Dr. Sol didn’t deserve to have his authority questioned by a girl without any offices and only one unframed diploma loosely rolled in a cardboard box beneath her bed. So I asked him, instead, about my journaling.

“What do you think about journaling as a treatment?” I typed. “I started with my other therapist. It’s been helping me feel better. I wonder if it’s worth a try.” Send. “Before the pills, maybe? Just in case I don’t end up needing them after all?” Send.

In seconds, Dr. Sol’s face appeared alongside a new message. “All advice provided through the PocketPax platform is FDA-approved and recommended by the United States Medical Board,” it read. There were no exclamation marks.

Hot dread filled my cheeks. I needed Dr. Sol to like me. I needed him to be able to see me the way Dr. Seahorn saw me. I thought about Dr. Seahorn, about our afternoon together. About how it felt to speak with her. So easy. So true.

“Do you have to comute to work?” I typed, my fingers clumsy, misspelling. I corrected myself: “Commute*” Send.

“PocketPax is located in Sunnyvale, California. For additional contact information, please visit our website at www.pocketpax.med,” Dr. Sol’s message read.

My stomach dropped. This can’t be, I thought. I tried something else.

“How many years have you been practicing, Dr. Sol? I hope you don’t mind my asking.” Send.

“PocketPax was established in 2021”, the automated message read.

I Googled PocketPax then, something someone smarter would have done a while ago. Countless articles profiled PocketPax’s CEO, raving about his brilliant innovation that would bring traditionally expensive yet essential care to millions at a fraction of the cost.

My handsome doctor with the impressive degrees and the big fancy office vaporized as quickly as he’d appeared.

Now I’m all alone again.

The sidewalks were clean, by the way.

May 11

CNN broke the news tonight that new gun legislation was just passed in the State of New York, effective immediately. As of tomorrow, my home’s notoriously stringent restrictions on concealed carry permits will be lifted.

Still now, writing these words, I can’t believe it.

I’ve been scrolling frantically through pages and pages of news coverage for hours now, searching for a whisper of hope, anything to ease the unbearable heaviness pushing down on my skin, my chest, my lungs. But all I see are quotes from an angry-looking man with an NRA pin on his suit lapel and an astonishingly thick neck about our sacred right to protect ourselves in a dangerous world.

God, I want to scream. I want to reach inside that picture, snatch the pin from the thick-necked man’s suit and scream at him, scream and scream and scream until drops of my spittle ricochet off his flushed, pudgy cheeks.

May 11

Images of tomorrows to come keep materializing in my mind. There I am, wedged into a jam-packed subway train, one stranger’s breath hot on my neck, my nose inches from the ear of another, when a faceless commotion erupts on the other side of the car – a regular Tuesday on the 4 Train – and suddenly Stranger Two reaches for a black handle peeking out of his pocket. His hand brushes mine just before he grabs for it; he whispers a quiet apology.

May 11 12

Do I need to buy a gun, too?

May 12

I started to type a message to Dr. Sol, asking for an actual person to speak to, if they even have one of those, but then the hot tears from my cheeks dropped onto the screen and deleted the message before I could send it.

May 12

I called my mom, just now. I woke her up – her raspy tone made me certain of it – but she insisted I hadn’t, that my call relieved her of some kind of phony late-night boredom.

We talked for a few minutes. She told a joke that made me laugh, and the laughter rippled through me like sunshine on seawater. I wouldn’t trade that feeling for the world.

I feel bad for telling Dr. Seahorn about the sushi rice thing.

Anyway, it’s nearly five in the morning now. I have work soon. I should try, at least, to sleep. 

May 13

I read an article this morning. It was written by a cosmologist who says that the eventual end of the universe as we know it is guaranteed. Reading this initially reminded me of that day in elementary school when they told us — a room full of fourth graders — that the sun is a star and this meant that the sun would eventually die one day, like all stars do. But the ending this cosmologist describes is more than darkness. It’s an ending of nothingness, a void not just of light but of energy, a vacuum that will eventually make it impossible for any sentient being to conjure even a single thought.

It’s a horrible idea, this great end. But I can’t tell if I find it only horrible, or a little bit… comforting? Can both of those things be true?

I mean, it’s kind of a relief, isn’t it?

Because if the world has to end by design, what does it matter if it all burns up in another great war, or if guns of all shapes and sizes leak from our convenience stores into our streets, flooding our hands and our hearts and our peace?

And what does it matter if the planet gets hotter, or if the flamingos in those nature documentaries with blocks of salt dried onto their tiny, webbed feet can’t walk anymore, and the cameramen watch them stumble and fall without helping in the name of journalistic integrity? Because we’re all headed for the same black hole anyway, right?

Right?

Maybe we don’t have to worry so much.

May 13

The office building next to my apartment has all of its lights on, even though nobody has passed through its windows for hours. Not just a desk lamp or two, either, but those big rows of cylindrical lights embedded into the ceiling. Even if it doesn’t really matter, I still wish they’d turn those lights off. So the flamingos can have a few more good steps. A few more happy days.

And even if it doesn’t matter, I still hope we don’t have a nuclear war, and that discount retailers stop selling mass murder weapons, and that one day I get to be an old lady who cradles her grandchild in her old lady arms, and that the grandchild in question can have a few happy days, too.

And even if this journal will disappear into a deep and final dark one day, right alongside all of Elvis’s platinum records and every iconic drawing of Mickey Mouse and even the very last copy of the Holy Bible, I hope I still get to write in it so I can keep bringing my thoughts into the light while it’s here. While we’re here.

The cosmologist concluded the article by saying that no matter what happens in however many millions of years, at least we’re here right now, together. And that’s worth something.

I think I agree.

May 14

Jess slid a note under my door today. She hopes I’m okay, she said, and she’d love to have a girls’ night with wine and documentaries again this weekend, if I’m up for it. The sight of her handwriting and the tiny hearts she doodled at the bottom of the page squeezed my heart tight.

For the first time in what feels like forever, I’m excited. I love to be excited.

I slid a note back that said, “Yes, thanks, that’d be nice.”

I really hope I’m up for it.

May 15

I’ve been staring at the little white package of pills on my desk for a couple of days now.

What if Dr. Sol – or the internet – is right? What if I really am sick?

“All advice provided through the PocketPax platform is FDA-approved and recommended by the United States Medical Board,” the message read.

I wonder if I should take one pill. Only one. Just to try.

Shopping list

●      Turkey burgers

●      Buns

●      Cheese

●      Popsicles (for Jess's 4th party)

●      High-fiber O’s

●      Milk