When I was nine, I discovered I had a superpower. Two classmates and I were playing in the playground, probably some horse-themed game, until one of them choked me in an assassin-style throat hold. It was one of those stupid things children do, perhaps copying something she’d seen on TV, not realising how dangerous it was.
I simultaneously dropped to my knees, feeling as if I was floating out of my body, in tremendous pain, unable to breathe or speak. She let go just as a black curtain drew across my view of clouds and sky. It was not my best playtime.
I wasn’t able to speak for several minutes. I felt upset, confused, isolated: where were the adults? Who was looking after me? In order to self-soothe, I took myself out of the moment and thought ahead to the afternoon. My favourite programme, Kizzy, would be on the television when I got home, where I would be safe on the sofa with my afternoon coffee (I was a sophisticated nine-year-old with Italian parents).
I immediately got this warm fuzzy feeling in my chest and felt better. It was going to be all right. For years afterwards, I’d use this technique to take myself out of a not-so-great moment and soothe myself.
And long after Kizzy was the lure, I’d call them my “Kizzy moments” and get that same warm, fuzzy feeling in my chest. Kizzy moments were never about anything big, they were about small, real, joys to come. But it worked.
It was my superpower. Woody Allen’s film Annie Hall was almost called Anhedonia, a.