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The World as I Know It- Chapter 1
Folder:
Prose/Short Stories Before
Chapter 1
June 2005
Every morning, my feet hit the carpet in the same way—with a thud. I scurry to accomplish my morning routine. I do everything in a similar order each day from when I first open my eyes until I rest my head at night.
Life for me is nothing but ordinary. And I like it that way. Change is something I try to steer away from. Admittedly, some minor things have changed over the years from the friends I retain to the complexity of activities I chose to fill my days with.
I was born into an ordinary American family: my father is a professor at a local college, my mother a psychologist. My older sister is studying to be a lawyer and she certainly has that lawyer personality- persuasive and strong-willed. I am anything but.
As the younger child, my parents definitely coddled me. In fact, everyone in our small town treated me like I was breakable. You see, I was diagnosed at the age of 6 with a condition called avoidant personality disorder which might as well be called hypersensitive disorder.
It basically means I am about as shy as one can get.
My mom, being the noted psychologist she is, has studied me like a lab rat trying to cure me. In 10 years, she has had no luck. She’s come to believe that any attention given to me is good enough. But she doesn’t see me. She just observes me like I exist in a Petri dish, which is much different. With a microscope, she looks at every tiny cell knowing that if she places just a bit too much pressure on me, I will crack.
I wasn’t always like this though. It was not a slow progression either. I literally woke up one day and it was like the cat caught my tongue. They say there should have been some traumatic event to cause it. But hours of therapy with my mother have not uncovered where all this began.
