I struggle to exist in space with other people. I understand what’s happening around me. The shape of the room. The dynamics. The unspoken tensions. I can observe a situation with almost clinical clarity. As long as I’m not part of it.

The moment I factor into the equation, my grip loosens.

It’s like I lose the outline of myself.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop right now. I came to meet a friend. I arrived two hours early on purpose so I could transition into being out in the world before I actually had to interact. I had the time. It felt strategic.

What was I going to do at home? Sit there all sharp edges, unable to start anything because I’d just have to stop when it was time to leave? I hate interrupting myself mid-immersion.

Writing is the only thing I can start and stop without feeling peeled open.

So I brought my laptop.

Even when I have nothing to write, I can look like I’m writing. It’s my best public fidget. My most socially acceptable stim.

Oh.

Oh.

That feels important.

Why did I spend so much time in bars when I was young, sitting alone with a notebook?

Did I love writing?

Yes. I did. I do.

But did I also love having something solid to hold onto when nothing else felt solid?

A book. A legal pad. A pen.

Instant camouflage.

It wasn’t blending like that old Will It Blend segment on The Tonight Show. I’m not talking about pulverizing myself into sameness.

But I have spent an alarming amount of my life wondering what it would be like to be inside the blender.

Not because I want to be.

Just because my brain likes to offer that up as an option.

And if you’re the kind of person sitting in a bar while your mind idly wonders what would happen if you stuck your hand in the blender… those thoughts don’t fit the room.

So you start to feel like you don’t fit the room.

Writing gave me something to do with my hands. Something to look at so I didn’t accidentally stare through someone and have them think I was staring at them.

People don’t seem to like that — the vacant focus, the thousand-yard dissociation that isn’t actually about them. They take it personally. Or maybe they just don’t understand it.

I can look directly at something and not see it at all.

That doesn’t translate well.

So I wrote.

And somewhere along the way, writing became more than camouflage. It became identity. It became work. It became craft.

But I still wonder sometimes:

Do I like the things I like because I like them?

Or because they help me blend?

I drink tea now instead of coffee. And part of me is convinced it’s because I’m trying to be cool. Or pretentious. Or curated.

Except I stopped drinking coffee because my nervous system cannot handle caffeine anymore. I was told, in no uncertain terms, no more caffeine for Cami.

I very occasionally have a lovely decaffeinated espresso beverage. But a straight cup of black coffee — decaf or not — is too much. It sets everything jangling.

Thus the tea.

Not just tea.

Fucking herbal tea.

So why, exactly, do I think I’m drinking it to be pretentious? To get attention? To signal something?

It’s chamomile, not a personality.

It’s peppermint, not a performance.

And yet some ancient voice in me still whispers that every deviation from the norm is theater. That if I’m different, it must be deliberate.

I can read a room.

But I can’t always read myself.

And that’s the part I’m still untangling.

What’s preference.

What’s camouflage.

And what’s just me.