The Art of Leaving Well

Many rooms, parties, gatherings, and homes welcomed me in, where I simply left. Sometimes it was anxiety, sometimes I had a busy calendar, other times self-preservation, or it was simply the path of least resistance. Three stories, in three different parts of America, sit in my thoughts more than the rest. Throughout the years, I’ve left; I’ve exited, and I’ve slowly mastered what it means to leave, to finally master, ‘The Art of Leaving Well.’

. . .

My tongue tastes like salt. I remove my cocktail from my lips and, by no surprise, the already drab house party’s hired bartender did not hear that I said sugar, not salt. The Spotify playlist is cursing a little too much, and with such a lack of rhythm. The host is busy; I think I was a pity invite? I look around the room: we all have our shoes on indoors, there is a glass in everyone’s hand, roughly half the crowd is conversing, the other half staring aimlessly at the dinner buffet we were told would be filling yet is nothing but hors d’oeuvres and appetizers—with such a lack of protein. My body feels weak, and I can’t pinpoint if that’s due to my dinner being an adult Lunchable meant for Kate Moss circa 1998, or if it’s because my anxiety has risen and I simply don’t want to be here anymore.

I look around the room once more, not to scan the party, but to scan for my exit route. I’ve given this warm gathering roughly 90 minutes of my time, and even though the host thanked me for being there with a hello and a smile, she was rushed off to tend her party. We exchanged a few words; I don’t think I need to say goodbye.

I see the front door, and now the back door; well, it’s a balcony with a staircase cascading down 14 flights. I think it’d be safer to take the front door.

My purse is around my shoulder; it’s small and matches my outfit, so it’s easier to carry it than set it down. I didn’t wear a coat; it’s still a high of 75 degrees. I’m already wearing my shoes, so I make my way to the front door and slip out without saying a word to anyone.

. . .

I’m driving across the country, more so taking a little vacation and visiting each of my friends. I’ve driven roughly six hours now, and I’m almost to my friend Henry’s house. He lives with his new girlfriend, whom I’m very excited to meet, and his two cats. We used to work together, Henry and I, and for a while we were the best of friends. We did everything together, and he loved going out to the bars with me because we looked like siblings. I’d get approached by some assistant on the Hill, or a Deloitte wannabe, who butts in, scoping us out.

‘We don’t act like romantic partners, so friends, siblings?’ They’d ask themselves as they approached me to flirt and buy me the next drink.

In the end, the ‘boys’ always bought both Henry and me our next few rounds, and we continued the lie that we were brother and sister.

I arrive at Henry’s house, where he’s waiting outside with excitement and open arms. I get out of my car and give him a big hug; it’s been a few years since I’ve seen him, and he looks the exact same. I meet his girlfriend and give her a big hug as well, and thank them both for letting me stay for a few nights.

“We got beef stew ready on the table; I hope you’re hungry!”

I sit down at the wooden table; Henry grabs a round of beers for us three, and Charlotte dishes up everyone’s plates.

“This tastes incredible, and thank you both again.”

We finish up dinner, and I help Charlotte load and clean the dishes; Henry grabs another round of drinks. We sit back down around the wooden table with a deck of cards, a set of rules, and competition rooted in sarcastic jokes.

sneezes

“Bless you!”

“Oof, thank you.”

eyes begin to run red and dry

sneeze sneeze sneeze sneeze

“Bless you! Bless you! Bless you! Bless you!”

eyes are now itchy

“Are you okay, Sheridan?”

“Yeah, let me run out to my car and grab some Claritin; I think my allergies are acting up.”

I place my cards face down on the table and walk out to my car.

I continued to sneeze the rest of the evening; the card game was hard to follow. My eyes are blurry and usually closed with the amount I’m sneezing. The Claritin did nothing.

We finished the game. Tomorrow’s Friday, and we all have work to attend to; they are running to their office jobs in the morning, and I will be finishing up some writing work on their big sectional sofa.

“Goodnight guys!” I say.

“Goodnight Sheridan!”

I lay down in bed; I’m not sleeping, but my eyes can’t stay open. Between the itchy red eyelids and my sneezing at a consistent pace, like steps down a staircase, I forget if I’m dreaming, severely allergic to cats, or awake.

How did I forget this? That I’m allergic to cats? As a kid, I would stop breathing after roughly an hour of being in my great aunt’s house, who had three cats roaming freely, eating the best treats, and yes, they were, well, a little obese. My grandmother’s allergic to cats, so I think it might be hereditary. Whenever I run into a cat, which is randomly often, they approach me, rub against my leg, and purr consistently. It’s as if they know I want to pet them but can’t. I usually still do, and then I run like a chicken with her head cut off, holding my arm out wide, rushing to the soap and sink.

I wake up; there is a rooster down the road cock-a-doodle-dooing at 5 in the morning. I open my eyes, what’s left of my sight, and see dawn still hasn’t broken; it’s about to, but not yet.

My breathing is difficult; I can’t see, and I can’t stop sneezing. There is cat hair covering the sectional sofa, the floors, and the comforter I used to sleep. I walk to the bathroom and rinse my hands first, then my eyes and face.

My sneezing took a break; otherwise, I might have made a watery mess all across the bathroom vanity. I look at my eyes, puffy, red, swollen, and my god, so incredibly itchy. I rub my eyes, saying to myself, “You’ll regret it.” I did, but in the moment it was too good.

It’s only 5:10 a.m.; I don’t know if I can do this. Henry and Charlotte said they’ll be up around 7 in the morning, and no amount of allergy pills is subduing my symptoms.

Can I leave? Would that be rude of me? To just leave before they wake? My eye bags are almost as puffy as my eyes; I don’t know if I’ll be able to recognize myself after another night, another day, maybe even another hour.

I need fresh air.

I leave the bathroom, walk through the house and outside, where I step out into the backyard and sit down on a tree stump. My breathing increases, my eyes stay the same, and I’m no longer sneezing.

“That’s it, I want to do this, but I can’t. I need to leave right now.” I said to myself as I regained consciousness, breathing not ‘cat air,’ but fresh air.

Guilt rides through my veins; my face is hot, not from allergies but from the anxiety of the decision that I had just made.

I take a few deep breaths of not ‘cat air,’ and quietly open the back door. I grab my things, pulling the zipper on my duffle bag so slowly that it probably made more noise than if I did it regularly. I walk from the guest room, pass the cat hair-covered sectional, through the kitchen; I stop and stare at Charlotte’s and Henry’s bedroom door. The guilt is increasing, but so is my need to sneeze.

I take a deep breath for anxiety, for guilt, and instantly regret breathing in all the cat hair once again. I pass their bedroom door, step into the mud room, and slowly open the back door.

“Thank God,” I say, stepping into air I'm not allergic to.

My breathing steadies, and my need to sneeze diminishes.

I quietly walk past their bedroom window, which, to my surprise, did not have curtains or blinds. Dawn still hadn’t broken, so perhaps they saw a white figure passing by, perhaps they thought I was Casper, or perhaps they didn’t see me at all.

I feel miserable, guilty for leaving my friends without a proper goodbye, or waiting for them to wake up, but I’m allergic to their home.

I open the backseat door of my Corolla and place the duffle bag inside. I loop around to the driver’s side, I get in, and begin driving away.

. . .

I’m still in high school, well, technically.

I drive over an hour every day to take classes at the nearest college. I wish I could say it was because I finished my grade school classes easily, fast, and I was done, but the right answer is… sort of. I took Calculus at 13; I never took any other AP courses, I was a straight C student in science, and was even placed in the slow class for chemistry. I needed a few more things to technically graduate, but I was in a sticky, bully-filled situation.

It was the classic “leaning over to put my books back in my bag, and she walks by holding her book out as a football linebacker, and my head is the quarterback.” But my bullies also utilized the internet, social media, anonymous threads and chats, which was the part the school had no idea what to do with, how to handle it, or how to reprimand a 16-year-old girl taking pictures of you around school to post to social media with slander, hate speech, and not a kind word attached.

Soon the school and my mother came up with a clever agreement. I get to go to college early, so I’m not on the school campus anymore, but I have to schedule my classes so I will be back by 3 PM to continue my starting position for the Varsity Girls’ Soccer team.

So, now I’m a college student, with a hefty drive to and fro, and time constraints on when my scheduled classes can be.

The first semester, I was incredibly shy, a little shell-shocked socially, and felt rather incapable of making any type of friend. I wore my fur coat, my little skirts with tights, and of course heels; it’s usually cold here, in Minnesota, so my fur typically stayed on during class.

I signed up for a history class; it was a big lecture hall, the biggest I had seen at the time. Roughly 60 students. My anxiety to speak to a stranger, a peer, or anyone, for that matter, is at an all-time high, so I assume a position in one of the few back rows where I can walk to the exit door without asking another to ‘scrunch their legs in.’

The three girls and two guys in front of me seem to be a clique; they chat coming into class, the second the professor calls it done, and all the way out of the room. Always smiling, laughing, poking fun at each other. They seemed nice, but I was far too shy, too scared, to say a word of any kind to anyone.

The blonde looks behind, and we make eye contact; I briefly smile, and so does she. She turns to the girl and guy on her left and says, “I really hope the professor calls on the Russian student today; I really want to hear her accent.”

I overhear her, and proceed to look around for this ‘Russian student.’ In a sea of camouflage, Nordic descendants, and just one diva- me in fur and stilettos, I think to myself, “Wait… does she mean me?”

I went home that night and watched countless YouTube videos on how to mimic a Russian accent. I thought to myself, But can I pretend to be this Russian student? Maybe it’ll give me a fake boost of confidence, and I may make a friend, or at least talk to someone.

I could only pronounce ‘Vodka’ correctly. I tried a few more nights, rewatching videos and mimicking the tricks and accent of the instructor, but I couldn’t get further than ‘Vodka.’

I stayed quiet, silent in fact, for the rest of the first semester, letting the rumors flow wild, and continually wearing fur and stilettos as my main costume every day.

But it’s second semester now. And after this, I’m transferring to George Mason University across the country. I wanted the confidence I felt that rushed in after the idea and before the failure of learning to mimic a Russian accent.

‘I’m moving across the country soon, by myself. This is so hard, just leaving my family, my home. I don’t have close friends from my high school, and what if I make great friends here, or a boyfriend? Would that hold me back? Make it harder to move? I have to do this for myself, my future, my goals.’ I thought to myself.

A plan popped into my head: “What if I have a fake name? That way I can choose to move across the country instead of breaking the news to any friends I make that I’ve been lying about who I am this entire time?”

‘This is psychotic, Sheridan,’ I thought to myself. ‘But I think I need to do it.’

Annette, Mary, and Sarah, depending on who I meet, each had a slightly different gravitas, but in the end they are all me, just with an extra shield I need right now.

I’m still anxious socially, but lying about my name has given me a boost in confidence; if I say something wrong, just continue- it’s improv, or ‘yes, and.’ I leave my communications class, where I sat roughly in the furthest back row with a perfect exit route if my anxiety so needed, and proceed down the hallway.

“Hey Annette!”

“Hey there!! Catch up later?”

They nod, and we both continue walking in opposite directions down a hallway on campus.

“Hi Mary!! I love your outfit today!”

“Thank you so much!!! That really means a lot.”

We continue walking in opposite directions, and I arrive at the cafeteria where I join a table of two guys and a girl I’ve hung out with around campus.

“Sarah, oh my god, my day was terrible. I hope yours was better than mine! UGH!”

“Babe, no!! What happened?”

The table fills with chatter, and my social anxiety slowly flutters away through the window and out to the pond where it belongs.

. . .

But what I forgot in each of these is the need for others, the common courtesy. Yes, I had reasons—justifiable or not—in every single scenario, though there are much better ways I should have approached each one.

The art of leaving well isn’t having a clean exit route, or saying nothing at all. It isn’t building up your entire world to combat fears or social anxiety. It’s consideration for the host, the friend, the person’s home you are in, and for a moment not considering yourself, but the community you are a part of, individually and as a whole.

At the house party, I should have waited awkwardly nearby the host, waiting for a moment to chime in, hug her goodbye, and thank her again for hosting an amazing evening. Perhaps following up with an invite, or a note of how we need to grab a coffee soon and catch up.

With Henry and Charlotte, I should have gone to a local coffee shop. I should have packed my car, driven there, and come back with a coffee for each of them, a hug, and a sincere apology for why I couldn’t stay. I could have had them meet me on the front porch or the back patio. Instead, I snuck out, embarrassed by my state, embarrassed I didn’t remember I was allergic to cats, and guilt-ridden that I left without saying thank you again, or goodbye.

And the fake names… I made so many amazing friends who aren’t able to find me on social media, send a Facebook request and message, “OMG how the hell have you been! I haven’t seen you in years!!” Because they don’t know who I really am. Because I was scared. Because I was afraid that I was the problem. Because I was afraid to be bullied again. The fake names acted as armor, and possibly what trained me later for my role as a Duchess of England during my one blip of being a professional theatre actress.

Each of these scenarios has shaped different outcomes in my life: my smaller-than-I’d-like social circle, the lack of friends I keep in touch with who have moved across the country throughout the years, and perhaps whether I get invited back. Friends who could think I’ve disappeared off the globe, who aren’t aware I was never honest with them.

The art of leaving well isn’t seeing a clear, timely, effective way to the exit door. It isn’t boundaries labeled and upheld as anxiety buffers. It isn’t finding the simplest solution back to health while disregarding everyone else around you.

The art of leaving well is about taking a moment to actually say goodbye. To acknowledge. To pause with gratitude and a smile—because it isn’t about you.

It’s remembering that we need friends and community. That we need to be grateful and honest. And that most of the time we can set the anxiety aside, because fear can’t survive in the presence of someone who keeps choosing to try.

xo,
Sheridan Guerrette
What Sheridan Said
Life Behind the Artist: Wed at 9/8C