Anxiety is when your brother wants to know if his face has to be wet or dry in order to shave and you've been shaving for two years but suddenly you're unsure. Like, of course I know but... what if I'm wrong.
Like I'm in school again. And I know the answer, but if I'm wrong or the teacher just doesn't feel like agreeing with me I'm gonna be mocked and humiliated. Because that's how our educational system works.
In primary school we were studying the reptiles, and the teacher was asking us to list reptiles that we knew, so I raised my hand and said "varanos" (varanidae, sauropsida squamata). Don't know the English word for them and my browser ain't working. "Like Komodo dragons" I said.
My teacher didn't know what those are. What she knew though was that I was a weird kid, with a weird hyperfixation on dragons (you know the book that gives people autism, right? I have that one, three more of the same collection and then some). So, instead of considering she might not withhold the whole neverending universal wisdom and that, maybe, this one weird kid with no friends who watches wildlife documentaries everyday after lunch knows something she doesn't, what does my teacher, the closest thing to an ally I have in this classroom where my only value as an individual is knowing stuff, do?
Ding, ding ding! Correct! She yells at me. Says those don't exist, that I'm making it up. Tells me to stop mixing fantasy and reality. Mocks "my wild imagination." Encourages my classmates to make fun of me.
This wouldn't be any less horrible if I had been wrong. It's a "funny" memory now, but at that moment I remember wishing she was eaten by a Komodo dragon so she'd find out they were fucking real.
Anyway, my brother has figured out how to shave while I was writing this and now he's got a fancy moustache.
