Somebody Somewhere by Donna Williams

withdrawing into myself
    • an understanding of when to give up and who to give up on
    • a place I can belong without withdrawing into myself
    • acceptance of “the world” without guarantees
    • a knowledge of the future without what others have
    I took out my list and Dr. Marek seemed to laugh a bit.
    “What’s so funny?” I asked him. “Nothing’s funny,” he said. “What you did was very sensible.” Why, I wondered, would someone find it so amusing to be sensible?
    I wanted to know why people laughed at me. I knew I was funny but I didn’t know why. “Give me an example,” said Dr. Marek. I gave him the example of a reaction to my reaction over a pair of shoes.
    They were shiny patent leather and cost five dollars. I thought they were wonderful. I loved the smell, the smoothness, and the shininess. They looked edible. I had smelled them and brushed the smooth surface along my cheek. I carried them in my arms looking at them as I walked along. The person with me watched.
    My companion looked sort of sad but smiled a bit. “Are they your best friend?” I was asked. I thought about that strange expression. I came to wonder if this person somehow felt sorry for me and I wondered why she would.
    A year earlier, I wouldn’t have wondered at such an expression. It would have required only to be mirrored. Carol would have acted as if she understood what the expression meant, as though acting were no different than actually knowing. I had felt it was others who were missing out by not seeing things the way I did. Right now, however, a feeling began to crawl over me like ivy, choking me into recognition and awareness. I had begun to wonder if it was not others who were missing out, but me. If it was true, what was I supposed to do about twenty-eight wasted years?
    —
    The chair fell over because I walked into it. Logically this was proof that it had felt me knock it. I sat on a chair and the cushion went down. The chair clearly knew how heavy I was. I felt sorry for sitting on a chair sometimes. It was as though I was imposing. My feet made indentations on the carpet as I walked across it. It obviously felt I was there. “Hi carpet,” I said, glad to be home.
    My bed was my friend, my coat protected me and kept me inside, things that made noise had their own unique voices which said
vroom, ping
, or whatever. Windows looked outside at the day, curtains kept the light from coming inside, trees waved, the wind blew and whistled, leaves danced, and water ran. I told my shoes where they were going so they would take me there.
    A tin came down from the shelf. I laughed. It looked like it was committing suicide as it suddenly jumped away from the wall. Things never thought or felt anything complex but they gave me a sense of being in company. I felt secure in being able to be in company in “the world,” even if it was with things. There was space in “my world” for the awareness of people but people were always third-person; they imposed upon an already present sense of company.
    Everything had its own, if limited, volition. Whether a thing was stationary or movable depended more on the thing’s readiness to move than on the person’s decision to move it. Statements like “itwon’t budge” only confirmed this assumed reality. It had never occurred to me to ask myself how objects knew or felt, nor was I interested. For me it had been an unquestioned assumption.
    The assumption had begun long before I knew the words “know” and “feel” were more than combinations of sounds. The words “know” and “feel” were like “it” and “of” and “by”—you couldn’t see them or touch them, so the meaning wasn’t significant. People cannot show you a “know” and you cannot see what “feel” looks like. I learned to use the words “know” and “feel” like a blind person uses the word “see” and a deaf person uses the word “hear.” Sometimes I could grasp these unseeable,