Peeing In The Sink
Many years ago, I moved into a dormitory for female artists. I was so afraid to leave my room, I peed in the sink. Living with social anxiety is like living in a monster movie. I remember that moment like it happened five minutes ago. I cracked opened my door and observed a confident group of young women strolling past my room. They could have been vampires.
They didn’t see me so I backed up and quietly shut my door. I had waited so long to open that door in the first place, waiting for an empty hallway, I could have peed on the floor by exhaling.
It was my grandmother’s idea for me to live in that dorm. It was located in the Gold Coast, an affluent neighborhood in Chicago. My grandmother would have loved to live there as a young woman. She had grown up excessively wealthy until her father lost everything in the depression. Then she married my grandfather, who had made his own wealth. I’m trying to remember her hands. I never saw her clean anything with them. She used them to turn pages, swim, hold wine.
My grandmother lived vicariously. In retrospect, I think she suffered from social anxiety too. Social anxiety wasn’t diagnosed back then. Hysteria…
