Anxiety

When I was younger people thought I was stupid. I wasn’t stupid, I was just anxious, which makes you stupid.


When you’re taking a test, in school, or listening to a lecture, it’s not about you. Nobody is taking time out of their day and focusing just on You. You might as well not even be there. You can dissociate. That is where I was “Smart.” Where I could dissociate. 


Any situation that involved… Me… like my face, and my voice, and my active participation, cut my mental faculties down to about half. I could not detach. Everything was too personal. Any interaction with any person in any context was too personal. Too much.


And then I went to college. And then I discovered drugs: Weed. Alcohol. Psychedelics. Sex. And then I started looking people in the eyes. Slowly, painfully, it became easier to Dissociate and Think in the presence of others. I deliberately, pathetically, forced my way back into being a socially functioning human being. 

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