[Don't] Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Start the Conversation about Mental Health

by Kelly Jensen

Prolonged eye contact was among the things I have never recovered. Not yet anyway. I work on it every so often, with my counselor, and with an app on my phone. But I’m not worried about it. Eye contact is not a harbinger of decency. It’s just a skill. It would be overstating the case to say that I ever “missed” it. Growing up unafraid to say the wrong thing? I missed that. Allegedly, there were people who didn’t practice words in their heads before they said them. They just opened up and were out with it. It sounded made up, but that’s what I was told. Whatever that was called, that talking without practicing the sounds—without wringing out the words first, to make sure they wouldn’t stain any moment—that would have been nice to try on as a kid, to feel it.