This night I am alone.

In a room of 200 people.

197 of whom I know.

Give or take a few.

On the outside I am bright, smiling, and loud.

I walk through the crowd and hug and shake hands and laugh uproariously.

Almost everyone has something personal to say.

I read your blog.

I’m so glad you’re back in choir.

Your smile brightens my day.

All things I want to hear. All things I am grateful to hear.

I am happy and warm. Receptive and embracing. Gregarious and energetic.

And absolutely scared to death.

Halfway through the evening, I realize that I am shaking uncontrollably. On the inside. Nobody else can see. At this point in my life when this happens, I even fool myself. But I am overwhelmed by everyone who surrounds me. I do not make eye contact because I am afraid that everyone is mad at me. That nobody likes me. That this is the day everyone will turn from me and I will lose everyone I love. And everyone who loves me.

Tonight, in a group of 197 hugging, loving, smiling people, I am so alone.

This extreme social anxiety I experience did not begin 3 hours ago. Or 3 months ago. Or even 3 years ago.

The first memory I have of anything like this began when I was in 3rd or 4th grade. This is the time that I now pinpoint everything to have started happening – the depression, the inability to focus, the crushing fear of almost everything.

It is when I believe the physical symptoms to have started – the anxiety within me that ate away at my tiny body and racing mind – the coursing energy that cleansed my insides of normalcy and left me feeling frantic…and nervous…and worthless.

Looking back on it now, I’m sure I was a hyperactive child. I’m sure I suffered from would now be described as Attention Deficit. But, I did not act out. I was deathly afraid of getting into trouble. I did not want to divert from set rules in any way. I did not want to rock the boat.

So I kept it all inside. The coursing energy, which I’m sure is what is now recognized as my mania, was trapped without any means of escape. Because unleashing it and somehow upsetting other people was never an option, I contained it effectively and turned it inward.

Between the ages of 9 and 11, the degree of self-hatred I developed was impressive and only exacerbated by an already sharply honed level of perfectionism. By this time, I was unwilling to accept any degree of error and punished myself by inwardly judging every aspect of my young self.

You are no good, I would think.

Over and over and over.

You are not pretty.

Nobody likes you.

You can’t do anything right.

And I lost almost all ability to function. I was socially awkward. I was physically awkward. I could not concentrate in class. I knew I would never win. These were very hard times.

At school, matters only became worse. The feeling of not belonging grew exponentially. I hid as much as I could. I was small and miserable and lonely. My grades suffered. I started thinking I could benefit from seeing a counselor.

Then, everything drastically changed. And my world began to spin in a different direction. It spun so wildly that it rolled off the table and cracked just enough to let the tiniest bit of light seep in.

And the tiniest bit of light was just what I needed.

It all started when my friend Elayne began talking about a performing group to which she belonged. She did plays and traveled around the area, singing and dancing in a poodle skirt and a t-shirt with her name puffy painted on the front.

And gosh, it all seemed so great to me.

So, I quit piano and joined the group, too. In my mind, the kids who already belonged were so ridiculously talented I was afraid they wouldn’t let me in. I was afraid of this for a very long time. Even after I’d been around for a while, I thought they might approach me and ask me to leave. This would have been devastating, as belonging in this group was something that became important to me really fast. Though I did not initially feel like I fit in, I immediately understood that I was around other people who had the same passion as me – they liked performing. And they liked it so much that they were willing to devote much of their time after school to rehearsal and shows.

It was not long before my mom had adorned my 5th grade choir skirt with a poodle and lace and I was traveling about the area singing and dancing with everyone else. And though I loved it, I still felt inferior. I knew I would never be able to match the abilities of many of my fellow performers. And though I fit in with this group much more than I did at school, I still felt like I wasn’t socially worthy there either.

Until summer came.

And we found out that there would be auditions for a musical: Bye, Bye Birdie.

This knowledge sent a weird excitement through me. It thrilled me in a way that nothing else really had before. I had always fantasized about being onstage. I thought it was something that I might do well. As a result, I decided I really wanted to be in this show. I knew that I would never get cast, but I remember making a very conscious decision to go into the audition and give them everything I had.

So I did.

And in return, I got everything back.

My life, myself – everything I did and everything I said – what I wanted and who I was – how I related to people and how people related to me – all completely changed. It was the beginning of my self discovery. I had finally tapped into something that meant something to me. It gave me identity. It made me feel special.

In the broad comedy role of Mae Peterson, I learned two things that would shape my life forever: I was funny. And I was good onstage.

And this was important. Because onstage, I felt like I fit in. Onstage, I felt like I could do something not everyone could do. And people laughed. People applauded. It was like magic. And it made me want more.

Slowly, I learned to incorporate what I had learned from being onstage into my personal life. Perhaps I could not pay attention long enough to connect the dots in math class, or win any junior high beauty pageants, but I was funny. And being funny meant the world to me.

It was a badge that, over the years, I wore more and more prominently. I knew that if I was funny, people would like me. So I made endless jokes, particularly at my own expense. If I acted dumb, that was funny. If I made fun of the way I looked, that was funny. If I fell on the floor, that was funny, too.

And eventually, my self deprecating humor twisted until it cemented my belief that I wasn’t any good at all. I absolutely hated myself. And the only payment was laughter…which for years I truly believed was enough.

But it wasn’t.

And when I became sick upon graduation from high school, I wasn’t always funny anymore. Being funny had become something to hide behind, and it no longer benefited me. In my depressive spins, I still made constant jokes. I still smiled all the time. If I didn’t, I was sure people would have left me alone. So when I finally had the breakdown that ended in hospitalization so many friends came to me and said they had never known me to be depressed. I had been chronically happy, they thought.

But it was all a façade. It was just something I had built and cowered behind it in fear of being left alone. If the thing I had cultivated to make people love me was gone, then they would be gone, too. And I couldn’t afford that.

The effort to keep up what was no longer real began to exhaust me even more. Something I thought would never leave me left. Being onstage brought me no longer brought me joy. And I began to resent being funny.

The only respite I had from these feelings was when I finally made it to Chicago to do improv comedy. That was the point when my dream came true. And I poured everything I had into it – and for a while I was good. For a while they said I could make it. For a while, I truly thought I was on my way. And then I fell completely and totally apart.

***************************

Seven years later, after an exceedingly long period of antisocial existence with a man who did not think I was funny, I came back into the world.

And I started doing shows again.

And, once more, people thought I was funny.

But this time it was different.

I felt like two very important parts of me had been given back to me as gifts – to better appreciate this time. To enjoy for the right reasons. And, finally, after so much struggle, I understood the right reasons. For so long, though I never realized it, I enjoyed being onstage because I thought it validated me. That it made me special. I thought that if I was able to go to some other city and become famous for being talented and funny, then people would finally understand that I was okay. That in some sense, I mattered.

But the thing is, I never really had to convince other people of this. In the past two years, I have found that nobody else had ever doubted me. That I had nothing to prove to them. I had always been special – not because of what I could do or how much I made them laugh. But because they loved me.

I had only doubted myself.

And it turns out that ending up where I am has left me more satisfied than ever. Like Dorothy, everything for which I’d been searching was in my backyard all along. I can do shows now because I thoroughly enjoy being onstage. It is fun for me again. I can enjoy being funny again because it is no longer a desperate tool to coerce people like me.

And on nights like this night, when I am smiling and frightened, too, I must remember to take it slow. For me, the social anxiety may never completely dissipate. It might always, on some level, be there to raise challenges here and there. But now I can recognize it and move through it. I don’t have to fight it by trying to win over everyone in the room.

I don’t have to be funny or talented or prove anything to anyone.

I can just be me.

And I guess, at bottom, that is perfectly alright.