Award for Best Mask

"It is surprising how many of my songs are about mental health issues," Amber interrupted their cleaning for a moment to brightly note.

I had been having a low-grade panic attack for an hour and a half. I did not tell Amber. I went about my chores. This is what I do now. I try to get through my mental health issues without interfering with anyone, seeing my angst as the temporary inconvenience it tends to be.

Amber talked to their mom with their headphones while doing chores. I did the same, substituting the murder/conspiracy/paranormal podcast I listen to as my constant research.

When they hung up, Amber danced in the doorway, pixie-cut and in a blue V-neck T-shirt I find appealing. They danced in a silly fashion, not seriously. I have not seen them dance sincerely in a while. They did not notice I was having mental issues. They sang along to their songs, not ones I know.

I regret wearing this mask at home, but I know no other way now. What would it be to be open and vulnerable? The commercials on my podcast talked about mental health services, made more affordable with their coupon code. I'm not going to do this. Strangely, Amber did not notice how I couldn't shut my eyes enough. Can other people see my eyes are wider than they should be? I don't know how to stop them from being so. Possibly, I only have the sensation, and it is nothing that can be apparent. If eyes are the windows to the soul, mine are a clunky metaphor.

The inherent nature of mental illness is its subjectivity. I can explain myself until I am out of breath. I can never make anyone--at least no neurotypical--understand the sensation. I lean on analogy, but those have the risk of making it abstract and colorful rather than the nearest I have to articulation. When I tell someone it is a song I enjoy playing on repeat at full volume constantly, I am not being any more poetic than I can afford. I am not saying I have an earworm. I inwardly wince. I do not hear it audibly, but I sense it. It is among the reasons I am sparing in what music I listen to, so "Maps" by Yeah Yeah Yeah doesn't become my litany. My mind cannot put podcasts on repeat, so they are safer distractions.

My memory erodes. I think I recall Amber's instructions for feeding the kitten (who is, to Amber's horror, larger now than his years-older sister), but they are gone when I go to do it. They were frustrated eight hours later and asked why I had done it wrong. This only makes me feel worse. Do the depression and short-term memory loss derive from the same source, and if so, is it a simple cold that I have had for weeks? Why doesn't this seem to happen to other people? There is always a slight feeling that, though it has been temporary before, this time might be permanent. Its waking me hours before dawn only exacerbates this, as though it is a parasite encouraging its longevity at my expense.

The mask comes so easily that one would mistake it for stability. Permitting the vulnerability of letting coworkers and acquaintances know my suffering is so unthinkable that I cannot fathom it. Masking borders on involuntary, like a hormone, like a heartbeat. It is hidden, and no one can tell, but the toxins build and spill out when I am in private. The mask falls, as it eventually must. It is not tailored for all-day use.

And it is so boring, inside and out. All my wonder is caged. I know my value, but I can no longer feel it. I am trapped by my labyrinthine brain as it attaches to pointless annoyances. I know it is nonsense--I try to talk myself out of it, to run through my Cognitive Behavioral Therapy exercises--but I feel no different. Thinking and feeling come from unrelated minds.

In the fall, I wrote to my former therapist in the depths of the bodily sickness that had rooted in my brain. Days after it had left, she wrote back to say she would have to see if she had availability. By then, I was well and normal. It felt like physical therapy when one was no longer limping or in pain.

The former therapist never responded with her availability, and I was not sorry for it.

Amber says they experienced the same. By the time they found a therapist, they had no need but went along with it anyway.

Writing about my mental health is redundant. I have said the generalities all before, so I have only the same Vantablack splashed on a new landscape or crowd, something I love and which deserves better than to be obscured beneath a black so deep it loses definition. Too, it is like whining about a headache (which I did have for a week a month ago) or an ear infection (the antibiotics of which I have just finished). It's tedious and poor conversation.

It's worse when tired, partly because Amber is likely more tired, and my craziness devours their microexpressions for evidence they are annoyed with me, which must be annoying.

The night before, I had gone to Queer Board Game Night at Megabrain Comics. A young woman arrived when I did--or she had been around the store waiting for someone to move authoritatively to the back. I turned to her to invite her to help me set up the game I had brought, but she had already retreated to read comics, so I could not be sure she meant to be there. She remained on the periphery for another hour before entering the room and saying in an ironic tone she just wanted to watch--though, of course, she didn't. I wanted her included, but the game only allowed observers now. If I could have abandoned the others to the game--as I was only serving as a teacher of the rules--I would have. Instead, this woman played with a queer tarot deck, only not really. She shuffled cards and looked at them, wanting inclusion I could not readily give.

The rest of the attendees took to the game after 45 minutes, having played its ilk before. The zombies proliferated, blocking and wounding the survivors until a shotgun turned the tide.

I brought Last Night on Earth, but this was not my game that night. I want to befriend new people so I am less lonely. Queer people keen to spend their Friday night playing board games in the back of a comic shop should be promising ground to mine. The difficulty is my inability to judge ages, but I assess most as too young. We can hang out here, but we will not be getting drinks. I don't know how many legally could.

In parting, I awkwardly mentioned my UFO talk at the end of the month. One, Roxy, said she works that day. The others make vague noises, but I am not inclined to press the issue. What I was really saying was, "Wouldn't it be cool if we hung out somewhere else in addition to these game nights? Also if I managed to remember more than three of your names?" (This latter issue was exacerbated by them referring to one another by the names of the Heroes in the game, and my declining to use specific pronouns for them all because maybe they prefer something else.)

Amber was working and, when they got out, did not have the bandwidth to join us, not that I expected any differently.

The next day, Amber held our first Cozy Cafe. Veronica and JP came. Amber's intention was these would be casual ways to have friends over while still getting art (or schoolwork, in their case) done. They derived these cafes from the idea of salons which one hopes existed as well in reality as novels. Veronica and JP, however, have a 3-year-old who became our focus. We did nothing artistic.

Before they arrived, I was emotionally depleted. I came home from grocery shopping to my elderly neighbor telling me he had dropped his low-tech cell phone in a cup of tea, frying it, but had bought a new one. However, it was similarly low-tech and would not allow itself to be connected to his account. Over a literal hour with the phone company, we found out they had yet to cash his check and would not for days. At this point, they might allow it to be connected. I paid the bill to abbreviate the interaction, not wishing to be the reason a cancer sufferer with a new heart murmur could not call for help. Amber avoided this by staying downstairs and cleaning the bathroom, which they had declared my responsibility. I don't know what they said after this, only that dealing with my neighbor and Jitterbug phone bureaurocrocy triggered my oversensitivity. I needed a 10-minute retreat in the bedroom until I could face being a person.

I behaved well at the Cozy Cafe, given this. I doubt Veronica or JP realized I had been doing breathing exercises to pull myself back from the precipice a moment before their arrival. Veronica has had her own mental health struggles, so I assume she would understand if I could have opened up to her about it, but, of course, I could not.

After they left, Amber mentioned the opening of a children's theater in town, but it did not make sense with our schedule. If we had not made reservations to a murder mystery dinner, maybe, but I was already crashing again.

The dinner was as fine as they get. There was bland food we would find unsatisfying for the price and community theater actors feeding us clues. We excelled with the latter, winning certificates for solving the mystery. Mine includes the next dinner free and a $25 gift card. Imagine what I could have done if I had not constantly been fighting to remain human in mixed company.

I want to be my best self. I know when I am not being, which further compounds my emotions when the gulf grows. I want to only give my wife reasons to keep loving me, and I want my false, uncharitable thoughts to leave me. They do not represent who I am or want to be. I want Amber only to remember seeing friends and solving a silly murder mystery, not my restrained sullenness outside these moments. I do not want them to have to average the weekend to decide if it was good.

last watched: Loudermilk
reading: The Illuminatus! Trilogy