I went into a fast-casual restaurant for lunch wearing my covid mask. It’s been two weeks since the mask mandate was lifted, but, habits. When I realized I was the only one wearing a mask, I became very anxious because I thought they would think I wasn’t vaccinated. So I looked around like a creep, and then sneakily removed it. Then I walked up to the cashier and said, “Nice seeing your whole face after all this time!” And she responded, “What can I get for you.” Obviously I can’t go back there.
I tried therapy once - 5 sessions or so. One day I walked in and she asked how I was. I said, “Good! No complaints! Super great! How are you doing!” And she told me that we weren’t here to discuss how SHE was doing. Then we sat there in silence for an entire minute while I freaked out inside my head and she sat there staring at me. That was my 5th and final session.
For my job I started going to fancy dinners with Very Important Humans. My very first one ever was at a steakhouse, and lucky me - I got to order first! I ordered a steak because, well, it was a steakhouse. Just the steak. Trying to be fiscally responsible, right? When everyone else ordered, they each requested starter salads, a side, and a protein - some chicken, some fish, very few steaks. Shortly thereafter, the waiter brought out my steak (a huge slab of meat on a plate with literally nothing else) alongside everyone’s starter salads. Everyone looked at my plate with raised eyebrows. I decided I’d pretend I was on the keto diet, which was trending at the time. Except nobody actually discussed my situation, they just stopped making eye contact and any conversation with me. And I couldn’t just be like “yeah so anyway keto keto keto…” so I just ATE like I was on the keto diet, which in my mind is voraciously and unapologetically.
A few years later I was at a new dinner with other VIH’s. While eating, a dollop of liquid from my meal, which going forward I’ll refer to as “meat juice”, splashed directly into my eye. The meat juice was spicy and scalding hot. What did I do? Pretended like it didn’t happen. What did my eye do? Seeped copious amounts of tears and meat juice. And then it turned fire red. Soon people started noticing. “Are you okay?” they asked. “Yes, totally fine, everything is fine,” I responded. The eye seeped and wept and burned for the rest of dinner, and then eventually swelled and partially closed, and I pretended like everything was fine for the duration of the dinner like a goddamn champion.
Side note: did you know women are more likely to choke and die during meals because they pretend like everything is fine so as to not make a scene??? The moral of this story is that I would surely die if I was choking. But at least I wouldn’t be making a scene at dinner.
At my first job out of college I started becoming self-conscious about the fact that I was eating lunch alone outside. One day I decided I’d try out the break room on my floor, and heck, maybe make some new friends. When it was time, I gathered my lunch and headed for what I thought was the break room. It was a mid-sized room, filled with a table and several chairs. “Weird that it’s empty at lunchtime, but oh well,” I thought. I sat down and began eating. After a while, some people in suits entered the room, without lunches. After exchanging nervous glances with one another, their leader asked, “How much longer are you going to be in here? We have a meeting starting.” It turned out that I was eating lunch in the executive conference room.
Once, on a run, I thought I saw my father laying in the grass in a park. “Dad??” I asked timidly. The man sat up and looked at me sadly. “No, I’m sorry,” he said. I realized in that moment that he was simply a man, not my father, enjoying a nap in a park. Onward I ran.
Early in my career, I was asked to file some papers into a five foot tall filing cabinet. I did so eagerly, opening all of the drawers at once for efficiency purposes. And then the entire filing cabinet fell on top of me, trapping me against the wall. A man had to rescue me. On that day I learned that fully-functioning filing cabinets only allow one drawer to be open at once.