Tim's journal

Wow, that was interesting! I'm wondering if I had some degree of selective mutism when I was younger. Particularly, I remember a time when I was somewhere between six and nine and a kid in orchestra with me asked me what my dad did. I say now that I don't have a dad, because I never had a male parent who was in my life (my mother used anonymous donor sperm to get pregnant). But I didn't know the explanation when I was that age, and since I'd never heard of anybody else never knowing their dad (I would have been able to explain a parent being dead or away or divorced, but not this), I responded by... saying nothing. The other kid kept asking me more questions and said "well, my dad does [whatever]" to try to get me to respond. I just couldn't say *anything*. I think smaller incidents like that probably happened a lot for me too, and I avoided socializing more and more because I was afraid of them (until some point in college, when it started getting easier).

Anyway, sorry for the braindump. I had always thought of this as just another part of shyness or social anxiety before, and hadn't thought about treating it as a separate thing. If that makes any sense.