Startlingly Different

Chapter 1

Dorian:

The questionnaire I had responded to in this latest therapy session left me more shaken than I let on.

Dr. Francine Yardstein probably senses that I needed to think things over, so we close this session.

Walking down the short hallway in a slight daze, memories crowd my mind and it pretty much confirms Dr. Yardstein's and my own suspicions...I am an introvert.

For years, especially when I lived in the small town of Llanview, Pennsylvania, I wondered why it was always so hard to me to mingle socially, especially at parties.

I have always had such a low tolerance for small talk, both from me and from others and I'm sorry to say that this trait has had me labeled "rude" or "snotty."

I appear to be bold since I am known for my loud, brash manner, but more than an hour or so at any large gathering leaves me drained and wanting to go home and be by myself.

Even at my oldest daughter Cassie's wedding back in January 1993, after Cassie and her first husband Andrew left for their honeymoon, I was too drained to stand with the crowd that was throwing the confetti, so I just stood apart quietly watching them.

Unlike Cassie, who is extremely social, and most others I know, I can never feel free to walk around talking to random people at gatherings, especially large gatherings.

I can't fake smiles at acquaintances, let alone strangers...the most I can usually manage is a tight, terse, brief lip stretch.

I become easily overwhelmed, which I then mask under an aloof, haughty-seeming exterior.

I know I'm not the friendliest person, a fact that the Llanview old-money high society often used against me.

Getting to my car, my introverted nature weighs me down...I feel as if I have a disability, a social one that marks me as vastly different from most of the rest of society.

I never fit in when I lived in Llanview, which was dominated by an old-money clique, namely the Buchanan dynasty, who behaved as if they were American royalty.

Thank God that dynasty is mostly splintered now, their business going down in their own corruption and their own backbiting ways.

From what I now hear, the matriarch of that clan, who is my stepdaughter, Victoria Buchanan is now in a mental hospital in the outskirts of Llanview, never able to really gain control of her dissociative identity disorder.

She did all she could to make my life miserable when I lived in Llanview largely because she resented sharing Victor's fortune with me and because she felt threatened by my "new money" status in Llanview in contrast to her "old money" status.

Asa and his son Clint were the patriarchs of the Buchanan clan.

Clint was married to Viki for a long time and raised three kids, but Viki had several affairs and Clint chased unrealistic fancies of living the "simple" cowboy life in Texas, so those issues broke up that marriage.

Clint and Viki waged a long war against each other with their innocent kids as collateral while at the same time berating me for my own sex life, labeling me a "whore."

Asa is now dead and Clint is now in prison for business fraud and embezzlement.

From what I hear now, Bo, Cord Roberts and Max are battling over what is left of Buchanan Enterprises.

I know I also did several terrible things back in Llanview also...mostly to expose the Buchanans' greed, hypocrisy and corruption and to protect my own family.

These are things that even now occasionally bring me shame, but here in Washington, DC, I've moved past a need for revenge.

DC is vastly different from Llanview...no small town gossip and I am far more free to be who I am without being judged, glared at or berated.

I could write ten books about it, but I have a diary that I've written everything down and saved in my e-mails.

I have in my will that this diary is to be released one year after my death, whenever that is.

Glancing in the mirror, my dark brown eyes look back at me, wide and troubled, two vertical lines forming two creases between my brows.

I run a hand through my shoulder-length dark hair and realize that my hands are shaking.

I have to turn away, overwhelmed by even my own image, look away from a woman who is an outwardly powerful world diplomat, one who earned most of her wealth, yet has an invisible social disability.

I start to put the keys in the ignition, but tears gush into my eyes before I can stop them.

I can't hold back the tears and I have to lean on my steering wheel and cry.