2016 – Day 19

Start writing a story that...

Step 1: takes place: in a hotel

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I stood above the bed and stared at the cream-colored bedspread embellished with a quilted sea wave pattern. I hoped it would bring me a sense of calm in the unfamiliar space of the hotel room. But five minutes later, unable to find ease, I began to pace across the small room, taking four steps each way then having to turn around. My phone was in my hands, my thumb hovering over the number of Dr. Edmunds, my therapist. It was her idea that I use the conversational skills I'd been practicing with her for a year in an actual interaction. We decided that I would find a place close enough to drive to within a day, but still far enough from home that I was unlikely to ever meet any of the same people again.

I picked the Hyatt on Route 9 in Eastborough, which advertised a restaurant and bar along with a pool and cable TV. The nausea and ache in my joints overtook me as I looked at photos of the bar and restaurant on the website, but Dr. Edmunds insisted I was ready. I booked the room during our Tuesday appointment and drove through Friday traffic to reach it by 6:00.

Registration was easy because I'm good at functional exchanges. I can say what I need and respond to information. But I freeze at any small talk beyond the initial greeting. Over the years, I've learned to avoid eye contact because it discourages conversations. My first therapist thought my issue was an inability to make eye contact and ran me through practice drills to teach me that the first part of having conversations is to look people in the eye. I didn't stay with him. I had cultivated that skill of avoiding looking directly at people at just the right time. It wasn't an inability but a talent. If you avoid eye contact entirely, people treat you as if you are mentally challenged or up to something. I'm a white woman who speaks softly and dresses like an old Sears catalog. They always assume the former for me. Dr. Edmunds has shared articles with me about others who have the same issues that I do, and one African-American man described constantly being accused of being up to something. Still, the alternative can be worse.

In fourth grade, kids started calling me "the robot." I looked right at people when they spoke to me and responded to direct questions. But I couldn't respond to jokes or emotions or anything that they considered human. When they cracked a joke while talking with me, they saw that I would look them directly in the eye and...just that. I would continue to stare at them until they said something else or until I thought the exchange was over. At first they found that to be hilarious, until eventually they didn't. Then they declared that it was creepy and took my lack of response to mean I lacked any emotions. I was the robot who felt nothing. They couldn't know how I spent countless hours trying not to be who I was.

The downstairs restaurant and bar area smelled of cologne and fried foods. Two men sat at one end of the shiny black bar and stared at the TV. A bartender handed them beers then kept busy wiping down glasses and shelving boxes of liquor bottles. A man and a woman sat in a booth on the opposite side of the room. Suddenly the woman laughed at something the man said, and they both slapped their palms against their table.

The room began to wobble and I realized I had stopped breathing. I forced air into my lungs and swallowed the bile that had crept up into my throat, then stepped toward the bar.