Let's Pretend This Never Happened (23 page)

My doctor was extremely tactful when she diagnosed me with anxiety disorder.
So
tactful, actually, that it wasn’t until several visits later that I finally realized that that was what I had. She was blathering on about a patient who sounded to me like a total nutcase. I wasn’t really paying attention to her talking about anxiety disorders because I was too busy wondering whether she’d consider it a step back in my therapy if I hid under the couch while we had our sessions. Then I suddenly realized that the crazy person she was talking about was me. I assume she was hesitant to give my condition a name before then out of fear that I’d be ashamed of having a genuine mental disorder. But in all honesty, I felt relieved. Now instead of being “weird,” my inability to carry on an appropriate conversation was suddenly labeled a
“painfully devastating and incurable medical disability that torments both the victim and those around her.”
By me, that is. My doctor, on the other hand, refers to it as a
“minor disorder easily treated with medication.”
I suspect, however, that if she were ever forced to have a conversation with me at a dinner party she would agree that my definition is far more accurate than hers.

During dinner parties or social events I usually say hello to the hostess and then hide in the bathroom until the party’s over. It’s usually best for everyone involved. I used to read books about people who were naturally good conversationalists, and I’d wonder why
I
couldn’t just be innately confident and charming while relating humorous anecdotes about my time spent with Jacques Cousteau. Frankly, I suspected that even if I
had
ever met Jacques Cousteau, I would still be a bad conversationalist. Most party
conversations start with me safely nodding along to whatever dull bit of nonsense someone is talking about, and then a few minutes later I panic because the same person asks me what I think about whatever I wasn’t paying attention to, and I hear myself blurting out the story of the time I accidentally swallowed a needle. Then I explain how it probably
wasn’t
actually a needle, but that I’d thought it was at the time, and then the silence gets louder and louder and I can’t stop talking about how terrible it is to
not
know whether you’ve swallowed a needle or not. And that’s when I notice that the room has gone completely silent except for the now-slightly-hysterical sound of me trying to find an end to a story
that doesn’t even fucking have one.
Then I just physically
force
myself to stop talking, and (after several awkwardly painful seconds of silence) someone else will change the subject and I can slink away to hide in the bathroom until it’s time to leave. And this is the best-case scenario.

On more than one occasion my panicked ramblings were so horrific that everyone was rendered speechless, and the silence got more and more palpable, and in desperation I just blurted out my credit card number and ran to the bathroom. I did this both because I hoped that yelling random numbers would make the baffled spectators suspect that I must be one of those eccentric mathematical geniuses who is just too brilliant for them to understand, and also because I felt a bit guilty for making them have to listen to the whole
“I may or may not swallow needles”
story, and if they wanted to charge their wasted time to my credit card then they now had that option. Except that I’m not actually good with numbers at all, so I can never remember my real credit card number and instead I just make up a random string of numbers. In short, some random strangers are paying for my shortcomings because I have a bad memory.
And
because I can’t carry on a conversation like a normal human being.
And
because identity fraud is so lucrative. So basically, we
all
lose.

I assume this must be quite confusing for people whom I’ve communicated with only via e-mail and texts, since I
can
actually come across as reasonably witty and coherent in e-mail, because I have time to think about
what a normal, filtered, mentally stable adult would write before I press “Send.” This is why I prefer to talk to people only electronically. I’ll write up an e-mail and then ask myself whether normal people would bring up the fact that Lincoln died from a lot of people sticking unwashed fingers into his bullet hole, and then I’ll convince myself that they don’t, and I’ll also take out the part about how vegetarians are allowed to eat human placenta because no animal died for it, and then I’ll be left with a tight little e-mail that just says, “Congratulations on your baby!” which is much more bland, but is also something I’ve totally heard normal people say before, so it seems safe.

A lot of people assume I’m comically exaggerating this point, but the only people who really think that are the people who don’t have an anxiety disorder. The rest of you are nodding your head in agreement because you, too, have been stricken by this rather shitty disorder that makes an e-mail conversation (which should take only minutes) stretch on for hours of rewrites.

For example, here’s a reenactment of the work that went into a simple e-mail conversation with my coworker Jon this morning:

Jon: I just wanted to email all of you to let you know I won’t be into work today because we have to put our beloved dog to sleep.

Me: Jon, my heart is with you today. Attached is a copy of Rainbow Bridge, and a small poem by Maya Angelou.

Jon: This is exactly what I needed. How did you know?

Me: I know how hard it is to say goodbye.

In short?
It is exhausting being me
. Pretending to be normal is draining and requires amazing amounts of energy and Xanax. In fact, I should probably charge money to all the normal people to simply
not
go to your social functions and ruin them. Especially since I end up spending so much money on sedatives to keep my anxiety at least
slightly
in check, and those expenses are not even tax-deductible. Still, it’s worth the personal expense, because being drugged enough to appear semicoherent is preferable to being treated like an unwelcome polar bear at a dinner party.

See that last sentence? A sane, rational person would have written “an unwelcome
guest
at a dinner party,” but not me. I
started
to write “unwelcome
guest,” and then my brain said, “Hang on. What’s even
more
un welcome than an unwelcome guest?
A fucking polar bear
.” Then the normal, slow-to-intercede, good side of my head comes over and says, “
No
. No one is going to get that. Just write
‘guest’
instead.” Then the bad side is all, “
Really?
Because it makes
total
sense to me. If an unwanted guest shows up at your party the worst thing that’ll happen is maybe you’ll run out of Tostitos early. If a
polar bear
shows up at a party there’s going to be blood everywhere. Polar bears aren’t welcome ANYWHERE.” And then the good side would smile patronizingly and sigh, saying, “No one understands your logic, asshole. And also polar bears
are
welcome some places. Like zoos. And Coke commercials.” But the bad side of my mind isn’t having it and he’s yelling,
“The cage at the zoo is there to keep them from us
.
BECAUSE
THEY’RE UNWELCOME,” and then the good side is all, “Well, if you hate polar bears so damn much then why did we go to the zoo on Saturday?” and the bad side is all, “Because you promised me a blow job,
you condescending bitch
,” and then the good side just gasps like she can’t even believe the bad side would even go there, because
that shit’s supposed to be private, bad side
, and she gets all sullen and sanctimonious and maybe we should just leave now because this whole thing is uncomfortable, and why does this feel like domestic violence? And also how can the bad side of my mind even
get
a blow job? Is it a dude? This whole thing is confusing, and feels somehow sexist. See, if I were trying to impress you I would have deleted this whole paragraph and just changed “polar bear” to “unwanted guest,” but I’m leaving it all out there because I’m too lazy to erase it. And also
to show you the difficult truth about the pain of living with a mental illness
. Mostly that first part, though. And basically this entire paragraph is what it’s like in my head all the time.
So, yeah
. It’s a goddamn mess in here.

I thank God, though, that I do at least
possess
the good side of my brain, because I once had a neighbor who lost the impulse-control part of his mind in a car accident and would randomly yell strange things at me when I’d go check the mailbox. Things like “Hi, pretty lady! Your butt is getting
bigger!” and “I’d still plow that ass!” I’d always just force a smile and wave at him, because, yes, it was kind of insulting, but I’m fairly sure he meant it to be complimentary. I mean, that guy didn’t even
have
a good side of the brain to filter his thoughts, so it seems a bit selfish of me to not be thankful for mine, even if it is kind of broken and seems to recognize how fucked up the things that I’m talking about are only after I’ve already said them. It’s like I have a censor in my head, but she works on a seven-second delay . . . well-meaning, but perpetually about seven seconds too late to actually do anything to stop the horrific avalanche of
shit-you-shouldn’t-say-out-loud-but-I-just-did
.

In a way it’s a gift to be able to recognize your faults, but in real life I find myself saying terrible things to people, and the part of me that recognizes how inappropriate what I just said was screams at me, “
No!
We don’t talk about vibrators to clergymen!” Then I get distracted by all the screaming going on in my head, and I panic and here come the credit card numbers again. Or I’ll blurt out something else to fill the awkward silence, but for some reason the part of my mind that doesn’t have a filter can think only about necrophilia, and the part of my brain that recognizes that necrophilia is
never
an appropriate topic yells,
“NECROPHILIA IS BAD,”
and so then I panic and hear myself start talking about
why
necrophilia is bad, and the part of me that is slightly sane is shaking her head at myself as she watches all the people struggle to think of an appropriate way to respond to a girl at a cocktail party who is against necrophilia. I feel sorry for those people. Not just because they have to be there to witness that train wreck, but also because who is going to disagree with the evils of necrophilia?
Nobody, that’s who.
And if you try to change the subject it’s just going to look like you’re a secret proponent of necrophilia who just doesn’t want to admit it in public. That’s probably why, when I’m speaking to groups at dinner parties, those people slowly back away to join any other conversation, and I end up standing alone and talking to myself. Which is awesome. Because if there’s one thing more awkward than a girl talking to strangers
at a cocktail party about sex with dead people, it’s a girl at a cocktail party talking to herself about
the exact same thing
.