CW: Depression, sexuality, repression, rejection, rejection sensitive dysphoria

“If you take a child who’s great at math,” my therapist began, “and put him in a room with a stranger who tells him he can’t, you will watch that child close up and lose access to his talent.”

“But if that same child is simply allowed to be, you will watch him flourish.”

Of course. My consciousness freed from the voice of the commentator, I could now apply it simply to executing whatever task was at hand. Performing was no longer applied to my identity. I did not need to “do” in order to “be,” but in simply “being,” I was finally able to “do.”

CW: sexuality, repression, non-affirming religious institutions, dissociation/dysphoria

“It’s as if I’m an athlete on a field,” I explained, “But I’m really the commentator in the box. And I’ve got nothing nice to say about what I’m doing.”

Offhandedly, I mentioned sexuality.

“Are you gay?” He asked, quite simply, and with a matter-of-fact disposition that did not assume it knew the answer. It caught me off guard. I gulped.

“I don’t know.”

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