Hi, I’m Nervy

Uh, hi. I’m Nervy—nervy, as in, nervous, not as in…you know, like having nerves. Nerves of steel? Because that’s not me at all: having nerves of steel, being bold. No, no, no, that’s not me. I’m a very nervous person. I may not show it, but as soon as I open my mouth, you should be able to tell. I become flustered…very flustered. There’s probably a better word, a word with more oomph behind it, but I can’t think of it. As I did just now, with the lack of a better fitting word than ‘flustered, ’my mind goes blank—test anxiety in every situation. I know what I want to say, but I lose the ability to string words together in a logical…ahh, string (?), as soon as I hear my voice coming out of my face, for everyone to hear, everyone hanging on my thought. I freak out. I regret opening my mouth and wish people could just be happy with the fact that I nod in agreement. Why do they have to expect my input?
In high school, I had a few friends, well friends of friends—like the kind of friends that you don’t hang out with outside of class but you would if either of you wanted to—that understood my condition. Maybe ‘understood’ is the wrong word? More like they pointed it out every time I began to stammer some coerced banter that would go on and on since I never knew if they really got my point and felt like I needed to make myself clear on the original point I began to explain and every other point I wandered off to in the process. And they would tease me, and I would deserve it. They would squawk, “Sam’s nervy, Sam’s nervy!” stressing the two syllables in ‘nervy’ like every toddler-bully singing his teasing one-liners. To be honest, I was actually grateful they put a face to my nerves. It was like it’s taboo to point out that someone’s having trouble communicating because their mind is slowly unlearning social transactions. It actually takes the pressure off when I’m stopped in the midst of my unlearning and the obvious is pointed out. It was like their teasing was actually reassuring me: “We hear you, Sam. We hear that you’re having trouble talking to us, even though it makes no sense at all because we’re not intimidating, at least to anyone else. Take a breath and be reassured that you’re screwing up, hard to follow, losing our attention, but yet we are still here, if for no other reason than to poke fun at your expense.”
It’s absolutely exhausting being a nervous person. My mind’s running a marathon uphill in order to get a mile down the road. It’d be so much easier on me and those that are forced to listen to my stumbling tongue if I was just a fly on the wall, and we would have an understanding that my winged presence was better than a clumsy hornet’s flight around the room. And what’s more, being a nervous person doesn’t just end with awkward speech in every setting, it reaches into every facet of my life. But if it’s okay with you, I’ll stop while I’m only this far behind and save you from the rest of my droning. I really would much rather stop now, or that I never began, than go any farther.