That sounded like a good idea but it was hard to comprehend. I could feel my mouth go dry, started to feel a little lightheaded about what had just come up. Would I be able to do it, or would I proceed like other times and back out, leaving the possibility in the air so I could look up at it and pretend it just wasn’t the right time now, but it would be later.

I wasn’t sure if they saw that I froze, if they saw the speeding thoughts in my eyes while they waited for me to say something, to say anything really. Maybe they weren’t waiting for me at all, and I was just an incidental thing they needed to cross off a list, like checking the weather to see if it they needed to adjust their plans due to rain.

I wanted to move, to act not like my usual self but like the self I had in my head, who took decisive action, who was able to see good ideas when they were presented, to see the potential that others might miss. He was very different than the me on the outside, who wasn’t able to be that way in life due to reasons outside of his control.

My eyes felt dry. I forced myself to blink, swallowed, my throat feeling like there was a horse pill in there with no water. I knew I wouldn’t join them, and I hated myself for it. I wanted to keep up the pretense of mulling it over, but their faces showed me they had already moved on, my moment to show I understood over, confirmation that this is who I was, who they knew me to be, and that I would never be other than a fiction.