How to Play Pretend (Chapter One)

I stare down into the unfathomable depth of my dresser drawer, feeling a sense of dread wash over me. There’s a blue shirt, a green sweater, and a gray hoodie. Then underneath there are jeans and leggings and skirts and oh dear God, it’s all so overwhelming that I can’t stand to look at it all anymore.
Starting from the day of the diagnosis up until the day I left for college, my parents would pick out every outfit for me, along with taking care of literally everything else, up to the point where I wasn’t even brushing my teeth by myself. Now, a million miles away from them, I barely know how to do anything.
Cooking food? Yeah, right. I’d probably end up eating a charred brick, and anyway, my knowledge of stoves is limited. Takeout and microwavable meals for me!
Going to lectures? I’d always had my parents to fix things if I skipped class or bombed a paper. Now if my grades slip, it’s my job to figure it out. Plus, I stayed at home most of the time. I have pretty bad social anxiety.
Doing the wash, cleaning my dorm, setting my bed? Basic things that seem so easy but I can’t do. The first week of college, I had to get a teacher to show me how to work the washing machine. I basically died of embarrassment.
Even now, needing to pick out my outfit is so hard. I don’t know what matches and what doesn’t, and every time I go on Pinterest to look at ideas, my mind sees the thousands of pictures and comes knocking at my door to remind me of everything I forgot, screaming didn’t you need to send an email to your professor? Oh, wait, did you do last night’s homework? Wasn’t there a YouTube video that someone said was funny? and I end up doing something else. Most of the time I roll up to class in a black sweater and navy sweats.
“God,” I say aloud, wrenching my gaze away from the drawers. “God, this is too much.” There are a lot of days where I say this. When I was little, and let’s be honest, when I was older too, if I said this, all my problems would go away just like that. But now there’s only me to make it better. And I don’t really excel in that department.
I sigh, then force myself to look at the clothing once more and try to assemble a decent match of tops and bottoms. I end up with a pair of skinny jeans and a sweater, because even though both make me very aware of my skin and the way it itches, that’s what the girl who sits next to me in Creative Writing wore yesterday and it looked okay. I yank at the wooly gray sleeve unhappily. It’s going to be a miserable day.
My brain yells at me as I walk to the lecture hall, things like God you idiot you forgot to do the dishes and oh boy, did you finish that chapter you were supposed to read? ADHD strikes again. It’s like a radio, except you can’t change the station and it never switches off.
I get a sudden urge to cry, but of course I can’t, because I have Literary Theory and Criticism in five minutes and that would be really embarrassing, walking in sobbing.
I slip into a seat a few minutes before the lecture starts, set up my Macbook, and open my inbox, which is a graveyard where emails go to die. Some people are psychopaths when it comes to their email and they check it every minute of every hour of every day. Yeah. Not me. Too many things to see at once, and each one gives me a mini-migraine when I think of a response. So if you email me, don’t expect a response, like, ever.
Already I’m getting a headache just looking at my screen. Junk mail and school spirit events and late assignments and changes of schedules and that’s when I stop reading and close the tab. I scroll through TikTok for a second, which is easier because it’s only one video at a time, and then class starts.
I shut off my phone, open Google Docs to take notes, and look up at the professor, hands poised above the keyboard. I may seem like the perfect student now, but it’ll only last two minutes before the information gets to be too much and I close my computer.


After ninety minutes of trying to participate in discussions that I barely understand, class is over and I’m setting a reminder on my phone for an assignment I probably won’t do.
People around me are chattering and laughing and saying, “Let’s go to Starbucks! Let’s take a walk! Let’s be normal, perfect people and do everything that you can’t figure out!”


I should have friends. It’s not healthy to spend as much time alone as I do, probably why my social anxiety and depression exist, but there’s a reason behind the hours in my dorm by myself. I just don’t have friends.
I want friends. Oh, I do. But I’m too awkward and weird to attract possible candidates. So I remain lonely.
Boys are a sometimes thing, like when Matthew from International Fiction invited me over and I had my first kiss with him, but it never lasts. They realize how broken I am and they desert me. If I were normal, I might have a boyfriend. I’m somewhat attractive. I just never learned dating in middle school and high school like everyone else, always shadowed by my parents. I never had friends either. My mother was my best friend, and my dad was the only boy I needed.
Only now, away from them, do I realize how wrong I was.


It’s been an hour since I’ve gone to bed and sleep still hasn’t found me. I’ve taken two sleeping pills, but they won’t work their magic for another hour or so. I swallow another one just to be sure.
I know it’s not good to take multiple pills every night, especially when the bottle says to only have one, but recently it’s the only way I can seem to find rest. My mind keeps running even after I lie down, churning out thoughts and questions that keep me awake all night. I’m on prescription medication for my ADHD, and I usually have a few more of those than I should too, but it’s only when I take several too many of each that my brain finally stops racing.
Turn off, I beg silently to my thoughts. Please. And after another half hour, along with another magical sleeping tablet, I sink into sleep.


I’m standing in the middle of a white, clean office. The shining neatness of it all makes my eyes burn and my head hurt.
A man wearing a button-down shirt and a scruffy beard comes in and smiles at me. “I’m George,” he says gently, reaching out for my hand.
What are you doing? I think. Who are you? I didn’t ask for this.
“You might be scared,” he adds. “But trust me, I’m here to help. Therapy seems daunting, but really it’s just a way to help you feel better.”
Therapy? Yes, I have social anxiety and ADHD, and a touch of depression, and yes, my parents always talked about it as a possibility, but… therapy is for people who are crazy. I’m not crazy.
George just stands there, smiling, still holding out his hand. I want to run. “Fey, this is new,” he tells me in that same calm voice. “You’re frightened. But I promise! I just want to help!”
“No, you want to fix me,” I mutter. “I don’t need fixing.”
“Come with me,” he answers. “Everything will be so much better…”


I wake up covered in a cold sweat, feeling my heart pound and my breath lick at my chest. That dream. It wasn’t a traditional nightmare, but it still scares me like crazy.
I’m broken, but therapy is for people who want to be fixed. Who are really broken, like shattered broken. I could use friends, sure. Still, I don’t need to sit in a chair and barf up my feelings to a smiling doctor. They might not have a stethoscope, but they still want to poke and prod at you. It’s still going to hurt like a normal doctor.
I try to shake the dream off and check the time. Five in the morning. I have half a mind to toss back another pill and sleep for another hour, but it’s not worth it. Slowly, I push myself off of the bed and then fall back down again when I realize I’ll have to pick out my outfit.
Sigh.
I could try Pinterest just this once… I open my phone and instantly regret it. Photos fly at me from every direction, shirts to buy and food to cook and crafts to try and Cute Spring Outfits to wear. It’s instantly too much, each post reminding me of something I should/need/want to do. The phone is powered off and the world fades back into something that makes sense. But I still have to arrange something to wear.
I had always loved having my every need taken care of, but now I wish my parents had let me be a little bit more independent, so I wouldn’t have this fear of getting dressed.
I decide that it’s going to be an I-don’t-give-a-fart kind of day and I’ll just reach into my drawers and choose something at random. I come up with a pair of gray leggings and a powder-blue hoodie, which isn’t awful but still makes me want to hide in bed and never go anywhere again.
I check the time once more. Six thirty. God, if only it was tomorrow. I have nothing to do tomorrow, so I’ll probably just curl up with a mug of from-the-packet hot chocolate and stay in bed all day. I’m a pretty lazy person overall, but I get enough exercise from walking to lectures that it doesn’t show too much. Also, I’m basically in cardio mode all the time, what with my heart and head racing over ten billion different things at once.
My phone dings, a rare occurrence. Maybe it’s that girl from Composition that I gave my number to, I hope halfheartedly, but I know it’s probably just Mum. She texts on occasion, just to check in. And give me instructions on how to do literally everything. And, you know, politely whine for me to come home. Some days it’s hard to see why not. But it’s mostly because I want to give being normal a shot. Just for four years. If it doesn’t go well, I’ll fly home on a plane the day I graduate and let them take care of me forever.
I check my phone. God, it’s that girl.
I panic for about a second before calming down when I see that the message just says, Hey sorry, I forgot my homework, could you send it to me?
I jam both my thumbs typing the answer as fast as I can, because, being honest, she’s cute.
Thanks.
I quickly text No prob lol and then wait ten minutes for a follow-up, clutching my phone in my hand and sweating like some kind of Disney Channel protagonist. But nothing comes up, not even the I’m-typing bubble, so I guess it was nothing more than a quick yeah-hi-can-you-help-me message. I’m going to be lonely for life.


But then, the next day, in freaking International Fiction of all things, I meet him.