Can I propose an addendum to the rules?
ChaosQueen
Depends what it is.
RenegadeRush
If I don’t want to answer, tomorrow you can ask two questions, and I don’t get to skip either of them.
ChaosQueen
You really don’t want to tell me what happened, do you?
RenegadeRush
Chaos, I don’t even want to tell myself what happened, and I lived it.
ChaosQueen
Fair. How about instead of doubling my questions tomorrow, you tell me something true right now. Anything.
Before I can even think about what to say, my truest thing leaps into my head, and suddenly all I want to do is tell this anonymous woman on the internet about it. The one thing about me I’ve never told anyone else. Not Sophie. Not my parents. No one. I don’t know this woman and she doesn’t know me. Not really. But somehow it feels like we’ve been talking forever. Like I’ve known her for way longer than the three conversations we’ve had.
RenegadeRush
I have anxiety. Not all the time but sometimes, and sometimes it gets pretty bad.
I’ve never told anyone.
I set my phone down on the island and take a long, slow breath, the elation of finally telling someone—anyone—my secret mixing with the shame that comes from dealing with this in the first place. The fact that I have almost everything I’ve ever wanted and still can’t get my brain to cooperate with me. Letting out the breath, I pick my phone back up and see the new message.
ChaosQueen
Until now.
RenegadeRush
Until now.
ChaosQueen
Thank you for telling me. I’m sure it wasn’t easy.
Can I ask you why you’ve never told anyone before?
RenegadeRush
I guess it’s mostly because of my job. I think maybe in the kind of job I have, a brain that tends to catastrophize and spin out of control isn’t something they let you have.
ChaosQueen
Well, whether they let you or not, you have it. It can’t be easy to keep it a secret.
Pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes, I think about the exhaustion that comes from pretending to be cheerful when I’m not. How hard it sometimes is to be the happiest, most unaffectedguy on the football field when the truth is the opposite. Not always, but enough. All the times I hide in the bathroom before games. The way I open and close my hands on the field before plays, or rock back and forth on my feet when I’m waiting for the snap. I’ve heard the commentators talk about those motions before, how they’re signs I’m dialed in on the field—a bundle of energy waiting to spring into action. They have no idea what’s really going on under my surface, and I like to keep it that way.
RenegadeRush
It really, really isn’t.
