Outside Affliction

( chapter 1 )

❝I WILL NOT let my disease control me.

 

I WILL NOT let people define me or confine me.

 

I WILL LISTEN to seek the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the strength to change the thing I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.❞

 

The cheesy Support Group mantra had been stuck in my head since the first meeting. After came the long list of prayers, praying for so and so’s bones, for someone else’s blood, until they got to the very bottom of the list, which was me. Second to last out of thirteen prayers. We pray for Reagan, is all’d they say. Then they’d moved onto Michael’s brain. See, the thing about Support Group is that all of us have something physical to define us. Michael’s brain was his disease, and so naturally, that was his prayer. But social anxiety was really my mind, which of course they couldn’t say. It sounded unusually cruel. They could go many ways. They could pray for my stomach, because with social anxiety came the many side effects including eating disorders. I was thirty-seven pounds, and going into college. They could pray for my social life, which sounded shallow and horrible compared to so and so’s bone problems. They could pray for mostly anything, because I was screwed up in a lot of places. But to cover all of the basics, it was easiest to pray for everything. Fabulous. Then after the mantra and the prayers, we would go into the less religious part of the whole affair, and introduce ourselves. Every. Freaking. Meetings. It went around in a circle. I’m Reagan, I’d say when it came to me. I have social anxiety. I’m seventeen. And I’m doing fine, unless I say otherwise. I didn’t say the last part about saying otherwise, but I did add that I was fine. Most everyone said that, because it was so generally vague that no one would assume anything and no one would dare to ask for a more in-depth description of your emotions, because no one asks sick kids for anything. Disease Perks. They started off as Cancer Perks, until we all came together as a whole, talked about how Support Group and Support Group John was idiotic, and agreed to be one, big, happy family that was all going to die. How lovely.

Support Group settled for my mother and my father for a couple years. Then it wasn’t good enough, because it became obvious it wasn’t helping. I hadn’t gained weight. I hadn’t gained friends. I hadn’t gained any sudden desire to go outside instead of read. I was still going, of course, but the summer before shipping me off to Yale, it was decided that I’d stay at my uncle’s house for the summer. I knew it broke their heart. I knew they didn’t want to. But when you have a Professional Sick Kid, you do things you would have never had the strength or reason to do with a Regular Kid. Uncle Jamie was an Internet sensation, which probably would do wonders for my social life if I wanted to brag about it. But I didn’t. He was filming some kind of collaboration, with some kind of band that I’d never heard of: Outside Affliction. I didn’t bother to look them up, because I knew that I’d spend my summer inside reading and on my laptop, which was okay. Jamie was serious about his Internet web series work, and this was a whole TV show type thing. Vonnie and Cory and Chest, his crew, were coming along with the band manager, so I knew the whole thing was serious as hell.