You’re just nervous.
You have no reason to worry.
Smart kid like you has nothing to be afraid of.
You practiced the words a million times in your head and each time they gained pressure. The more you practiced, the more you couldn’t do it.
You were a yo-yo stuck at the end of the string, sticky fingers yanking and swinging with hopes that you would wrap yourself back up. Each thought weighed you down until you stopped holding your breath.
“Dad, I think I have anxiety. I-I can’t do things. They really f***ed me up when you were gone.”
“That’s all right. We’ll get you fixed. It’ll be okay.”
You went back to four-years-old, too oblivious to notice anything except the ten soft fingers on the wooden steps. You took the ring off the fifth. You stared at the hunk of fake metal and watched yourself drop it on your tongue. It stuck in the back of your throat, holding onto your tonsils, the same way secondhand smoke makes you gag.
But you walked inside ahead of him so that he couldn’t see your face, and he forgot you needed fixing.
Remember, in class, when you’d have to read something to the class? How you felt obligated to read at the same pace as everyone else? Even though you rehearsed the five line paragraph, the weight returned. You held your breath, trying to find words and form sentences from letters resembling hieroglyphics. When it came time, it wouldn’t matter; your interrupting tongue didn’t care. But it’s nothing, just nerves. So what if you said the words backward? Nobody was really listening.
You got over it anyway, so why does it matter?
They just knew you had it in you.
Turns out, smart kid like you has nothing to be afraid of.