Feeling Infectious
[ Angela Townsend ]

If you feel the same thing every time you see someone, they probably felt it first. My mother told me this, and it was not one of the two times since birth that she has been wrong. 

All the angel hairs on the back of my mother’s neck frizz when I say someone “made me feel insecure.” When I was still in the pupa, she attempted to address this by invoking the ancestors. My lunchbox contained index cards quoting Eleanor Roosevelt. I folded them in half. It was easy enough for the First Lady to say, “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” But Churchill did not insert hand-drawn portraits in Mrs. Roosevelt’s locker portraying her with a unibrow and flies swarming her armpits. Eleanor never faced the mockery of Kaylee Winters.

I needed something stronger. My mother let me in on the secret that has been spilling other people’s secrets ever since. If someone makes you feel anxious, that’s because they feel anxious. If your standing date leaves you waist-deep in the bog of sadness, she’s in it up to her earlobes. If someone gets you insecure, it got them first. This is all true even when evidence seems contrary, even when their blonde bangs shine like justice and their name ends with two e’s like a victory whoop.

This has proved more useful than anything you can write on an index card. I am not as strong as Eleanor. I hand over my dignity like a napkin. But when Tracee the receptionist makes me feel inferior, apparently we are in this thing together. If I only think about the lines around my eyes when I expect to see Sheree, I know Sheree has been scared of age since she was an embryo. Somewhere, Kaylee Winters is still scrawling other people’s eyebrows and armpits every time the mirror thumbs its nose at her. 

I am conducting experiments to test whether the reverse is true. I drag strange censers into lobbies and living rooms to see if I can fog the place with unauthorized feelings. If I smell comfortable, will shoulders soften, and jaws unclench? If I am at ease, will people find bread in their purses and think they packed it themselves?

The whole thing feels risky. I have to keep going, to see what happens. No one can make you feel at home in your freckles and bones without your consent, but some lunatic can stand in the foyer and clap. 

Early results are promising. I can’t tell people everything is going to be okay, but I can remain calm in a Dense Fog Advisory or peanut butter shortage. There is a portable peace that decaffeinates the premises. There is a reason the acronym for Non-Anxious Presence is NAP. 

I cannot prove that youth is irrevocable, but I can wear illicit magentas and spur random acts of senior neon. Most days I can’t make it to lunchtime without sniveling, groveling, or sneezing visible globules across the boss’s desk. But I can close the bathroom door, hug my chipped and birdy shoulders until I believe it, and come out swinging a disco ball where Eleanors and Tracees can see their reflections.

If all else fails, I can call my mother. Within ninety seconds of “hello,” I will be infected. The subject may be rye toast, caterpillars, or the need for more songs containing the refrain, “oo shaka laka laka, oo shaka laka.” No matter. The woman is so marbled with hope, there is a full dose in every bite. She is patient zero for something less treatable than optimism. It will not fit on an index card. You will only know it when you feel it. 

Angela Townsend (she/her) is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, seven-time Best of the Net nominee, and the 2024 winner of West Trade Review's 704 Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, Epiphany, Five Points, Indiana Review, The Normal School, The Penn Review, Pleiades, SmokeLong Quarterly, Terrain, Under the Sun, and World Literature Today, among others. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College and writes for a cat sanctuary.