Kalinka

Cruise, dance and singing course in a foreign language which I participate in just to have fun and pass the time. At the last moment it turns out that we have to perform on the final night in front of an audience of 150 people. (Aaargghhhh)

So … I’m out of tune, I have a cartoon-like voice and I move like Gollum, but my dream, right from the times of the Antoniano, has always been to sing in a choir. In a choir, mind you, certainly not in solo, where the voice would not even come out. So the first option, singing with the others, doesn’t scare me because we have time to rehearse, we hold the sheet with the foreign words in our hands, we are a small group and, I tell myself, if something is wrong, I can always move my mouth and pretend to be in playback.

The other test, on the other hand, anguishes me, even if it is a nonsense made to laugh among us, even if the movements are very easy and the Muggle comrades are as clumsy as I am. I fear many things: forgetting the steps, going in the opposite direction, being laughable. I try to convince myself that the goal is to have fun and entertain people and, therefore, the more you make a mistake the more you reach the goal, I try to convince myself that I don’t know those people, I don’t care about them and I won’t see them again, but it is of little use. Furthermore, I fear that participating in two performances simultaneously makes me a fool who believes herself to be the Cuccarini on duty. As you well know, we anxious people never do anything without asking ourselves what people will think of us.

As the days pass and the performance approaches, my anxiety grows and I would like to extricate myself from the dance to focus only on singing. I try timidly to ask the teacher if I can exempt myself but she says no, smiling, full of confidence and cheerfulness, and I don’t feel like insisting anymore. For her sake I will make the sacrificial lamb. With me there is an elderly lady, one of those talkative one who sing, dance, enjoy life, and are a cheerful pain in the ass for everybody, not caring about criticism. In short, the old woman I will never be. We joke together about the evening that awaits us and I, for the first time, after all these posts, come up with: “I suffer from social phobia.”

She looks at me uncertainly: “What is it?”

Here, I feel, all together, stupid, sick, handicapped, ridiculous. I pluck up my courage and explain, in words understandable to an outgoing Muggle, that it is a form of extreme shyness. She looks reassured.

The last day I am now resigned to the pillory, when she, just she, without telling me anything, turns to the teacher and asks her if I can be exempted and replaced because I don’t feel like it.

I list below the flood of emotions:

1. HUGE UNBELIEVABLE GIANT RELIEF.

2. Nervousness at the idea that she, without warning me, dared to choose for me.

3. Regret at the thought of the thing not done and the little missed opportunity.

4. Sense of guilt for having refused, for having escaped at the last minute creating difficulties for others, and for not having been able to do it alone but having to resort to external help.

4. A bad, unpleasant feeling about this outing. Isn’t it, I tell myself, that by dint of talking about it, my dear, old social phobia is going away and I am here thinking and talking about nothing? Then I remember the other day, when an acquaintance I hadn’t seen for some time asked me for news and I panicked and didn’t know where to look, what to do, how to escape. Because social anxiety is like this, it bites you in the back when you least expect it, with those you don’t expect it, in the most banal and innocent situations. There was a time, I remember, when I couldn’t even look my mother in the face and, to talk to her, I hid behind an object.

5. Discomfort at having discussed it openly with a stranger. It seems to me that I have broken through that shell of modesty that protected me — discussing a feeling that perhaps should remain where it is, closed, guarded — debasing it, flaunting it like a flag. Which is what I always urge people like me to do, but now that I have done it, I feel like I’ve left the house wearing only a pair of vulgar underpants.

Having said all this, I invite those who told me that I appear “carefree and certainly not tormented by social phobia” to dwell on points 1 to 5.

(Ah … anyway, for those interested, the performance went well, we had fun and all those faces staring at us smiling and clapping didn’t scare me. In fact, when it was over, I was also sorry.)