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My Anxiety | The New Yorker

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She cannot always decide whether what seems to her a sign of disturbance should be counted as such, since it is fairly normal for her, such as talking aloud to herself or eating too much, or whether it should be counted because to someone else it might seem at least somewhat abnormal, and so, after thinking of ten or eleven signs, she wavers between counting five and seven signs as real signs of disturbance and finally settles on five, partly because she cannot accept the idea that there could be as many as seven. I would have thought it’s normal to be weird about a few things, but being confronted with such a perspective always makes me doubt myself. I, too, wonder constantly if the things I do and experience are normal. But I have many more signs of disturbance than ten or eleven. I think. I could say I’m sleeping badly, but it’s worse than that—I’m sleeping incorrectly. When I lie down, I don’t actually rest my head on the pillow; instead, I hold it slightly aloft, so that it touche

Save this story Save this story In her short story “Five Signs of Disturbance,” Lydia Davis writes of a woman who is “frightened”: She cannot always decide whether what seems to her a sign of disturbance should be counted as such, since it is fairly normal for her, such as talking aloud to herself or eating too much, or whether it should be counted because to someone else it might seem at least somewhat abnormal, and so, after thinking of ten or eleven signs, she wavers between counting five and seven signs as real signs of disturbance and finally settles on five, partly because she cannot acc

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