Night Sweats
November 1, 2009
Today was the worst. I had a dream this morning where I was sitting in class, and she came in with a baby in a stroller. I took one look at her, and a wave of sadness came over me. Without saying a word, I got up and stumbled out into the hallway where I wandered aimlessly against the lockers like a drunken madman. It’s funny how nightmares can make you sweat even when you’re asleep. But usually the horrors of the night are forgotten with the dawn. I ended up having Nell on my mind the entire day. I would have called her if I hadn’t dialed the wrong number. Instead, I left her an email, though now I wish I hadn’t. I’m terrified of the reply. When she will, what she’ll say, if she will at all.
I guess I’m so used to being ignored that it’s just easier sometimes not to bother trying to be noticed or try getting someone’s attention. More often than not I find myself assuming the worst and then adopting a “who cares, fuck you” attitude toward whatever I’m faced with.
But it’s different with Nell. She’s the only person on earth who matters to me at all. Everything I do is done only so that I won’t fall any lower in her eyes. So that’s the thing… I think somewhere in the back of my mind I’m still clinging to the hope that I’ll be good enough for her one day. The danger is that if I lose her before I get to that point, then the one person that I care about will be gone, and I won’t have any reasons left for life.
Though my real life was now Nell-free, I’d spent so much time conceptualizing her and putting her on a pedestal that the just the idea of her was now out of control in my head. I was still clinging to the hope that maybe one day I’d have a chance with her.
But to do that, I had to improve as a person first. I felt like I wasn’t good enough for Nell, so I did everything I could to figure out how I could become that person for her.
I hated being stagnant. She was out there somewhere living her life while I was piddling around not doing anything productive or meaningful. And my nightmare was that someday I would achieve what I wanted, but she would already be with someone else.
What I told myself I needed to do was to improve my social skills. I was happy that I could sort of function a little bit now in normal society. Because of my selective mutism, for example, it used to be impossible for me to order food at fast food restaurants. I had to practice this many times in order to become comfortable with doing it.
Typically, I would keep a good distance behind the cash register counter. After deciding what I wanted, I’d spend ages figuring out the best way to say it with the least amount of anxiety-inducing effort.
“French fries” … no, it wasn’t clear how many. “One french fries, please” … somehow that didn’t make sense grammatically. “One french fry, please” … just one fry? I didn’t want them to hand me one fry as a joke. “One order of french fries, please” … better, but they’d ask what size I want. “One small order of french fries, please” … shit, an extra six syllables compared to just “french fries.”
Next, I’d have to rehearse this phrase in my mind enough times to be sure I wouldn’t get tongue tied in the middle of saying it. Often I’d get tongue tied saying it in my own head, simultaneously trying to clear my throat, which seemed to have constricted at the worst possible time. Eventually I’d go away for a while, retreating to my car to practice to myself out loud in the comfort of an insulated automobile.
If I couldn’t even order fries, how on earth could I become someone who Nell could love?
An answer came from an unlikely source.