Page 77 of Tilly in Technicolor
“I take it that was a decent way of explaining it?” he asks against my mouth.
I laugh. “What gave you that idea?” I ask, kissing him again.
Chapter 32Avoidance and Other Healthy Coping Mechanisms
TILLY
I made the mistake of blinking, and now it’s August. Which is terrifying, because that means my life-changing trip is getting closer and closer to being over, the real world sitting like a hungry wolf at the door, ready to devour me the second my summer in Europe is up.
And I don’t know what to do. About, like, anything.
I don’t know how to search for a job or create a résumé or figure out where I’ll live or even what I want to do with my life and every time I try to make a plan my overeager brain twists itself into knots and shoots toxic darts of anxiety and confusion up and down my spine.
How am I supposed to have a future figured out? How am I supposed to know what I want to do every single day for the rest of my life when I don’t even have a firm grasp on who I am? What if the next step I take is an awful one? A total disaster? And I literally ruin the rest of my life because I didn’t know anything?
I finish typing the draft of my newest Babble post, wondering if anyone will understand how overwhelmingly unprepared I am for my own reality.
It was hard to write—each word forced out of me—but at least I finally got something down. The stress of being clueless has left my brain drier than a desert lately, and I can’t get my fingers and my brain and my keyboard to work together.
I’ve never had the problem of not having ideas before—my mind is usually so flooded with them that I don’t know where to start. But lately, it’s felt like squeezing my brain through a meat grinder anytime I sit at my laptop and try to think of things to post.
I glance across the café table at Oliver. He’s biting his lip as he stares intently at his computer, a wave of hair falling across his forehead. It makes me something close to furious that one person is allowed to be so obscenely cute. But then I remember that he’s also sort of… mine, and then my heart feels fit to burst. Wonderful, lovely, ridiculous boy.
The surge of bubbly feelings is popped by an unwanted reminder: not only does August signal the conclusion of the trip, but it also leaves a big giant question mark on what happens with Oliver when summer ends.
And that question mark is wrapped around my neck and weighs a metric ton, dragging me down.
But, if ADHD has made me an expert in anything, it’s avoidance, and I am pretending not to see my problems like a champ. Sure, the problems nag and gnaw at the back of my mind, slowly devouring me until I’m nothing but a flesh bag of subconscious anxiety, but it’s better than actively sending myself into a meltdown by imagining literally every single rancid potential outcome. Such as me being a directionless loser back at home living thousands of miles away from the guy I really like and never seeing him and maybe having to…
No. Nope. Not today.
Ollie doesn’t seem to operate on the same avoidance philosophy that I do, and he’s regularly trying to talk about the future like it isn’t the scariest damn thing in the world. But any time he tries to bring up what happens when summer ends, I distract him by asking about the impact of the first random color I see or I kiss his ridiculously cute face until his cheeks are flushed and his eyes are hazed.
Both methods are extremely effective.
I give my Babble piece another once-over, then hitpublish,closing my laptop. Glancing his way, I find Ollie staring at me with a soft expression.
“I like that smile,” he says, eyes tracing my mouth. “It’s your writing smile. I think it’s your broadest.”
I touch my lips, giggling like a fool. “I didn’t even realize I was smiling.”
“You always smile when you finish writing something. Even when you slam your laptop shut and groan that you hate what you wrote, you still end up smiling. I find it incredibly fascinating.”
I flap my hands in some wild attempt at self-preservation before I start squealing in public. Ollie smiles back, then his look turns thoughtful.
“Have you thought about trying to write for publications?” he asks. “Pitching stories or article ideas or whatever it is writers do? Or applying for, uh, writerly… jobs… if you’d rather not do freelancing? Maybe you could earn some money with your writing.”
I choke on my iced coffee, some of it shooting out of my nose as I splutter. “No way,” I say, hacking up a lung into a napkin. “I’m not good enough for that. I’m…”
“You’re…?” Ollie says, eyebrows furrowed as anotherwheezy coughing fit hits me. He reaches over and gives me a firm pat on the back.
I wave my hand, trying to figure out the words to describe the bizarre mix of inadequacy that constantly swamps me and the willingness to fling my words out into the ether or the internet regardless. Writing silly little descriptions and newsletter emails for Ruhe is a detached albeit fun exercise in playing with words. Writing on Babble is terrifying and vulnerable, but I’m in control of it. I can blast any feeling into a text box and chuck it at random online strangers without anything hinging on it. No boss critiquing it. No livelihood depending on it. I love writing, but that doesn’t mean I’m worthy of calling myself a writer like professionals do.
I never heard back about that job withIvythat Cubby and Darcy told me to apply for, and the silence has been crushing. The gaping feeling of inadequacy is only just now scarring over.
“I’m not good enough for someone topublishmy stuff, let alone pay me for it,” I say, dragging the pad of my thumb through the condensation on my glass. “The stuff I write is just silly nonsense and emo rants.”
And that’s fine. It’s enough. When the world is over and I’m long gone, I’ll always have created those words and shared them with whoever wanted to read them.
