I have a fear of being known. My 10-year high school reunion is scheduled for this summer. I really don't want to go, I don't want to explain myself to anyone or catalogue my accomplishments in the last 10 years. I don't want to put on a happy face about my apathy, depression, fears and non-ambition. I don't want to hear myself putting a glib spin on 10 rather sparse years in which I've done everything possible to avoid failure and success in equal measure.

I don't know if the level of social anxiety I fear in public events, in groups both large and small, is enough to be officially diagnosed, but I do know that it makes social events hugely unejoyable and fraught with anxiety. Because of this, I don't want to go to the reunion, though another part of me urges me to brave, whispering that the only way to get through my discomfort is with courage. Fear that has said it's prayers. And I think I'll regret it, or miss out on practical networking. Of course, I would be attending by myself, so who knows if I'd even have anyone to spend the evening with. I might have to sneak out, or make repeat trips to the bathroom to give the illusion of busyness. Because, really, while I crave human interaction and connection, I equally want to keep people at a distance. I don't want to be probed or examined too closely. These two desires cannot co-exist for long, or an arid vaccuum of a life will result. Has resulted.

Voted: Most Likely to Succeed. That was such a crappy thing to do to me. I don't really want to feel like I need to apologize for being who I am and who I have not been. Surely most people will understand that the promise of adulthood is false and that life is lived on a small scale. But I can already feel the frantic need rising in me to backpedal and dissemble, because I do know it to be true that at the unclothed core of me, I have lived a fearful, shrinking life thus far, when the potential for more is so close beneath my skin.

So I feel unknown, unknowable. I was certainly never really close to my group in high school, not emotionally at least. I kept all discourse on an even keel. It's like trying to step into the vapor of a person who really never existed.