Behavioral Pause

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Eleanor sat in a waiting room chair that was clearly designed by committee to offend no one and please no one, upholstered in a beige that suggested both professionalism and warmth while achieving neither. The fake-wood floors gleamed under fluorescent lights, and somewhere farther, speakers played the same sort of instrumental music grocery stores would use to make you buy more cereal.

“Eleanor Wu?” A woman in scrubs emerged from a hallway, clipboard in hand, smile calibrated to inspire confidence without suggesting actual joy.

Eleanor followed her past doors labeled with cheerful euphemisms: Cognitive Wellness Suite, Behavioral Enhancement Center, Mindful Communication Laboratory. They settled in a room where inspirational posters about “growth mindset” hung next to framed certificates from institutions Eleanor had never heard of.

Dr. Reeves looked like she’d been assembled from a manual titled “How to Appear Trustworthy.” Mid-forties, sensible cardigan, glasses that said I read journals but not I’m smarter than you.

She opened a folder thick with consent forms. “So, Eleanor, you’re here about the Pause trial.” Dr. Reeves glanced at her notes. “Tell me why you’re interested.”

Eleanor considered several responses. The truth was that a month ago she’d stood in a restaurant shouting at a man she’d met on an app, telling him maybe his mother should have raised him better, all because he’d suggested they split the check after ordering the most expensive wine on the menu without asking. The truth was that she’d watched his face crumple and realized she’d become the kind of person who deployed personal cruelty as a first line of defense. Also, he completely deserved it.

“I seem to have trouble with…impulse control,” she said. “Verbally speaking.”

Dr. Reeves nodded as if completely unsurprised. “Many of our participants struggle with what we call ‘cognitive-interrupt deficiency.’ The good news is that Pause has shown remarkable results in our preliminary trials.”

She slid a brochure across the desk. The cover featured a diverse group of people looking thoughtfully into the middle distance, as if contemplating the profound wisdom of keeping their mouths shut.

“Pause works by creating a brief neural delay between impulse and expression,” Dr. Reeves continued. “Think of it as giving your better judgment a chance to catch up with your emotional response.”

Eleanor flipped through the brochure. Side effects included drowsiness, dry mouth, and something called “expressive diminishment,” which sounded like what happened to her college roommate after meditation retreats. “What exactly does ‘expressive diminishment’ mean?”

“Some participants report a temporary reduction in verbal output. Nothing significant. You’ll still be you, just more thoughtful and considerate.”

This was starting to get a little too real. Maybe it was a mistake, a dumb idea, etc. But in addition to the dating app incident, there was also the email she’d sent her boss last month that had required a follow-up apology and what her therapist called “repair work.” Oh, and there was her sister’s wedding speech, which had started as a toast and ended as a roast about her body count that made their grandmother cry.

Eleanor sighed and palmed her forehead. “Where do I sign?”

The first Pause pill was small and blue, like something that should cure a headache, not rewire your personality. Eleanor swallowed it and waited.

Forty-five minutes later, she stood in line at her usual coffee shop, watching the barista. He was a young dude with neck tattoos and a daily-maintenance sort of mustache. He moved so slow it had to be on purpose. He was absolutely the type of barista who made coffee drinks into performance art, complete with foam designs that took longer to create than Eleanor’s commute.

Normally, she would have made a comment. Something about how she didn’t need her latte to look like the Sistine Chapel ceiling, thank you babe. Instead, she felt something odd happen. A warm sensation, like diving into a pool heated just right, and the words simply…didn’t come.

“One whole milk latte, medium,” she said instead.

“You want any particular design in the foam?” the barista asked, already reaching for his little foam-sculpting tools.

Eleanor opened her mouth to say Just give me the caffeine, Michelangelo, but again, that warm wash of not-saying-the-thing. It was remarkable. Like watching her own reflexes get overruled by a wiser, more patient version of herself.

“Surprise me,” she heard herself say.

Walking to work, Eleanor felt like she was experiencing a miracle. Every potential moment of snark—the cyclist who ran the red light, the woman talking loudly on her phone about her ex-boyfriend’s mother’s gluten sensitivity, the construction workers who decided jackhammering before 8:00 a.m. was a personality trait and no one could even get her started on the senior citizens playing sunrise pickleball so loudly it sounded like they were shooting each other with weaponized wiffle balls—each trigger simply bounced off her like rain off an expensive umbrella.

At the office, she opened an email from her boss, Janet, who had somehow managed to use the phrase “circle back” three times in two sentences while asking Eleanor to “take ownership” of a project that was clearly Janet’s responsibility.

Eleanor began typing: Janet, I think there might be some confusion about who exactly is supposed to own this clusterfuck, considering you were the one who—

Delete.

Hi Janet, I’d be happy to discuss this project. Could we set up a meeting to clarify the scope and expectations?

Send.

Eleanor stared at her computer screen. She’d just responded to professional passive-aggression with actual professionalism. She felt like donning a cape next and wearing her underwear on the outside.

But as the day progressed, something else began to happen. Her inner monologue—normally a low-level hum of commentary and complaint in the tone of Reese Witherspoon meets Fleabag—began to expand, growing more elaborate and articulate as her outer expression diminished. It was as if all the words she wasn’t saying had to go somewhere, and that somewhere was an increasingly verbose internal narrator who traded Reese Witherspoon for Joan Didion and Fleabag for…well, still Fleabag but mixed with a weirdly judgmental nature documentary narrator.

Consider, her inner voice mused as she watched a coworker microwave fish in the break room, the profound selfishness required to subject an entire office to the aroma of reheated salmon. Note how he removes the container, inhales deeply as if savoring a fine wine, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he has just committed an act of olfactory terrorism against his colleagues. Observe the way his jaw moves as he chews, each bite a small violence against workplace civility.

Meanwhile, out loud, Eleanor said, “Lookin’ good, Rick.”

By evening, Eleanor was drunk on her own restraint. She’d made it through an entire day without offending, criticizing, or alienating anyone, even herself. She’d been pleasant. She’d been agreeable! She’d been the kind of person who said things like “no worries” and “sounds great” and meant them, or at least appeared to mean them.

But when she got home to her apartment, the silence hit different. It was empty, hollow. She tried to call her sister, but when Dara answered, Eleanor found herself struggling to access the rhythm of normal conversation. Every potential comment went through the Pause filter first, and by the time her brain decided it was safe to speak, the moment had passed.

“You seem quiet tonight,” Dara said.

“Yeah, just tired,” Eleanor replied, though what she was thinking was, I’ve temporarily lobotomized myself, and I’m not sure whether to be horrified or relieved.

Eleanor met Marco on a Tuesday that very much felt like a Thursday, at a bookstore coffee shop that sold both fair-trade lattes and novels about emotionally unavailable men. She was reading The Argonauts and pretending to understand its theoretical framework when he approached her table.

“That’s a darn good one,” he said, nodding at her book. “Maggie Nelson makes me want to write love letters to the very concept of uncertainty.”

Under normal circumstances, Eleanor would have made a joke about how that was either the most pretentious thing she’d heard all day or surprisingly charming, and she wasn’t sure which interpretation said more about him or her. Instead, the Pause kicked in, and she found herself saying, “I’m still figuring out what I think about it.” With a smirk-drenched smile, of course. And to be fair, the remark was true and vulnerable and not at all the kind of thing she usually said to strangers in coffee shops.

And this particular stranger had a face that suggested he listened to podcasts about philosophy and knew how to make bread from scratch. Soft-spoken, with eyes that seemed genuinely interested in her answer rather than waiting for his turn to talk.

“I’m Marco,” he said. “Mind if I sit? I promise I’m not one of those guys who interrupts women reading to explain books to them.”

“Eleanor. And yes, you can sit. Though I should warn you, I’m definitely one of those women who judges people based on their coffee order.”

This emerged before the Pause could catch it, and Eleanor felt a moment of panic. But Marco laughed. Like a real laugh, not a polite one.

They talked for two hours. About books, about the strange intimacy of reading the same sentences, about whether coffee shop conversations with strangers counted as real human connection or just elaborate loneliness management, about the too-early demise of Borders bookstore and how it was absolutely clear that they could’ve survived bankruptcy if they’d pivoted to online much sooner like Barnes and Noble. And Eleanor kept on saying things she normally wouldn’t. She admitted she sometimes bought books based on their covers, confessed that she read Reese Witherspoon’s memoir with genuine investment, acknowledged that she’d never actually finished Infinite Jest despite claiming otherwise at that party that one time.

Marco listened the way people listened in the movies. With his whole body. He nodded at the right moments. Asked follow-up questions that showed he was actually processing her words. When he asked for her number, Eleanor realized with horror that she’d been having a real conversation. The kind of conversation where you said true things about yourself with reckless abandon and full intent to see the person again, specifically because of who you’d been in their presence.

“I’d like to take you to dinner,” Marco said. “I want to know all of your hottest food takes, and that would require some, hm, live demonstrations.”

Eleanor agreed. They had a date planned. She immediately went home to take another Pause.

Their first official date was at a small Italian place where the lighting was dim enough to hide anxiety sweat and the noise level required actual leaning-in to hear each other speak. Eleanor had taken her pill an hour before arriving, expecting the usual warm wash of constraint.

Sitting across from Marco, watching him gesture enthusiastically while describing his work teaching middle school science, Eleanor felt the Pause mechanism chirp in her head. Words started emerging without the usual filter.

“I don’t think I’m a very good person,” she found herself saying in the middle of his story about a student who’d built a volcano that actually worked too well.

Marco paused mid-gesture. “Uh. What do you mean?”

“I mean I think I’m fundamentally critical and impatient and I judge people for things like not using their turn signals or ordering well-done steak, and I’ve never been in a relationship that lasted longer than eight months because I eventually say something cruel enough to end it.”

The words were coming out completely wrong. Eleanor felt like she was watching herself from outside her body, horrified but unable to stop. “Last month I told a guy his mother should have raised him better because he wanted to split a check. I made my grandmother cry at my sister’s wedding. I once broke up with someone because they said ‘Pacific’ instead of ‘specific’ and I couldn’t get past it.”

Marco was staring at her like she had a news broadcast of a hurricane beaming from her eyes.

“So basically,” Eleanor continued, “you should probably run away now before I say something that ruins your day, your life, and so on.” She reached for her water glass, her hands shaking slightly, wondering if it was possible to die from embarrassment or if she’d have to live with the memory of this moment forever, just like Infinite Jest.

Marco was quiet for about ten seconds. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Well. That was a bit unexpected, I’ll admit. And that might also be the most honest thing anyone’s said to me on a first date.”

“Right. Wait, is that good or bad?”

“Honestly? Pretty bad. Which is why it’s good.”

Eleanor stared at him. In her experience, men called her “a lot” or “intense” or “maybe something to work on with a therapist.” The word “good” rarely entered the vocabulary, except ironically.

“What I mean is, most people spend first dates performing the highlight reel of their personality,” Marco continued. “But you just let me glimpse the unedited version. That’s kind of a nice thing to do, in a way. Like you trust me or at least like me enough to do something like that.”

Eleanor absolutely could not with this guy, so she excused herself to the bathroom, where she dry-swallowed another Pause pill and spent five minutes staring at herself in the mirror, trying to figure out what the hell just happened. The medication was supposed to prevent exactly this kind of verbal catastrophe.

When she returned to the table, the familiar warm constraint had settled back over her like a blanket. She spent the rest of dinner nodding and asking polite questions, watching Marco’s face gradually shift from engaged to puzzled.

By the time he walked her home, Eleanor felt like she’d lost something important, though she couldn’t figure out what.

The second date was somehow worse.

Eleanor had doubled her dose, terrified of another uncontrolled honesty outburst because her tolerance for the pill had increased. They met for brunch at a place where the servers wore suspenders and the menu used words like “artisanal” and “hand-crafted” to describe what were essentially fancy ways of preparing eggs.

Marco was telling a story about his students trying to convince him that TikTok was a legitimate source for science fair research, and Eleanor was thinking: The way he laughs at his own stories is either endearing or insufferable, and I genuinely cannot tell which. Also, this coffee tastes like it was filtered through someone’s philosophical dissertation on the nature of bitterness.

Out loud, she said, “Mm-hmm.”

Marco paused. “Are you okay? You seem quiet.”

Eleanor opened her mouth to explain, to say something about being tired or distracted or processing what he’d said, but nothing came out. Not even the Pause-approved small talk. Just silence. She tried again. Still nothing. It was as if the neural pathway between thought and speech had been completely severed. Marco waited, almost looking concerned. Eleanor made a gesture that she hoped conveyed technical difficulties, please stand by, but which probably looked like she was swatting at invisible flies with a shrug.

“Maybe you need some water?” Marco suggested.

Eleanor nodded gratefully and took a sip, hoping the liquid would somehow restart her verbal functions. No luck. Her mind was a waterfall of commentary and observation and response, but her mouth had apparently gone on permanent vacation.

This is it, she thought. This is how I die. Not from the medication, but from the mortification of sitting mute across from a man who thinks I’ve suddenly become catatonic.

She expected Marco to try and fill the silence with nervous chatter or make excuses to leave. But instead he just waited. And when it became clear that Eleanor wasn’t going to speak, he started talking again, naturally, as if her silence was a normal part of the conversation rather than a medical emergency.

He told her about his apartment, which he’d had for just a year or so. He also grew tomato plants on his fire escape, which he’d somehow managed not to kill. He had this theory that middle schoolers were basically tiny sociologists conducting experiments on social hierarchy. And he described his parents’ divorce when he was twelve, how he’d developed a stutter that lasted three years, how he’d learned to listen carefully because speaking had become so difficult.

Eleanor found herself leaning forward, captured by the rhythm of his voice and the way he gestured with his coffee cup. Her inner monologue had shifted from panic to fascination. He’s telling me real things. He’s not really trying to put on a performance or pick spotless anecdotes designed to impress me, like these are actual pieces of his life. And he’s doing it without expecting anything back from me except nods and one-word reactions. This is madness.

When he asked if she wanted to walk around the neighborhood, Eleanor nodded and smiled. They spent two hours wandering through side streets, Marco pointing out architectural details and Eleanor listening with an intensity that surprised her. Every few blocks, he’d pause and look at her as if checking whether she was still with him, and each time, Eleanor would nod or smile or make some small gesture that seemed to satisfy him.

At her door, Marco said, “I had a really nice time.”

Eleanor wanted to say: How? I literally said less than fifty words the entire afternoon. You had a good time talking to Ariel from the second act of that Disney mermaid movie. Typical dude. Except, well, this one’s on me, so I guess I can’t blame him. Still, though. Prick.

Rather than speak, she managed to produce a smile and what she hoped was a meaningful look.

“I’d like to see you again,” Marco said. “If you want.”

Eleanor nodded, and realized she meant it.

After he left, she sat in her apartment trying to understand what had just happened. She’d been completely unable to participate in the conversation in any traditional sense, yet somehow the date had felt more intimate than most relationships she’d had. Marco had talked to her like she was present, like her listening was enough.

Weirdest of all, she found it extremely hot.

Two weeks into dating Marco, Eleanor realized she’d become a professional listener. Which would have been fine, except that inside her head, she’d become the most eloquent person she’d ever known.

Consider the tragedy, her internal narrator observed as Marco described his day, of becoming fluent in your own thoughts precisely when you lose the ability to share them. Note how he gestures with his sandwich while explaining the politics of the teacher’s lounge and the casual intimacy of being someone’s chosen audience. Watch how his face changes when he laughs, the way his whole body participates in the joy of his own stories.

Out loud, “Mm-hmm. Very nice.”

Marco was telling her about his coworker who insisted on using comic sans for all official memos, and Eleanor was composing elaborate responses in her mind. The choice of comic sans in professional communication represents a fascinating intersection of rebellion and incompetence, either a deliberate rejection of corporate formality or a fundamental misunderstanding of font-based propriety. In either case, it suggests someone who has given up on being taken seriously.

What she actually contributed to the conversation…a laugh that sounded like air escaping from a tire.

They were lying on his couch, her head on his chest, and Eleanor could feel the rumble of his voice through his ribs as he spoke. It was impossibly intimate and completely one-sided, like being in love with a radio show.

“You’re such a good listener,” Marco said, his fingers tracing patterns on her shoulder. “Most people are just waiting for their turn to talk, you know? But you actually hear what I’m saying. I do want to hear more about you, though.”

Eleanor shrugged even though she wanted to scream. She wanted to tell him about the three-act play happening in her mind, the detailed analysis she was conducting of their relationship, the fact that she had entire novels worth of thoughts about everything from his choice of buying food based on how much the branding emphasized protein to the way he said her name. Instead, she made a small sound that could have meant anything.

Marco invited her to a dinner party at his friend’s apartment the following Saturday. Eleanor spent the week practicing phrases in the mirror, trying to prepare responses for basic social situations. How are you? I’m well, thanks. What do you do? I work in marketing. How did you two meet? At a bookstore coffee shop.

She took her pill an hour before they left, then another in the bathroom at Marco’s friend’s place, just to be safe.

The apartment was full of several types of people Eleanor typically enjoyed making fun of. On one side, the graduate students in the humanities, but also the freelance writers with a secret trust fund, plus a bonus woman who introduced herself as a “creative consultant” and spoke exclusively in buzzwords about “logistical brand narratives.” Under normal circumstances, Eleanor would have spent the evening collecting material for later mockery, the invisible stand up comedy special in her tiny apartment.

Instead, she sat next to Marco on a loveseat that had seen better decades, nodding and smiling while conversations swirled around her about rent control and whether true crime podcasts were ethical and someone named Brad who’d apparently started a kombucha company that was 100% a pyramid scheme.

This is what hell must be like, Eleanor thought as this man in vintage glasses explained his theory about how cryptocurrency was going to democratize art. Being surrounded by people having opinions about things they don’t understand, while you sit mute as a witness to humanity’s capacity for confident ignorance mere minutes from apocalypse.

“Eleanor’s a great listener,” Marco kept saying whenever anyone tried to draw her into conversation. “She really thinks before she speaks.”

If only they knew, Eleanor’s internal voice commented, that what I’m thinking is how much I’d like to ask Bitcoin Brad whether he’s ever actually looked at a piece of art, or if he just assumes that adding blockchain to anything makes it more libertarian. I’m thinking about how his girlfriend keeps touching his arm every time he says something, as if she’s trying to physically restrain his stupidity. I’m thinking about how this wine tastes like it was chosen by someone who equates price with quality, which explains a lot about this entire gathering.

Out loud, when someone asked her opinion about whether social media was destroying human connection: “That’s an interesting question, Gina. Never thought about it that way. Honestly.”

Finally, they left, allowing Eleanor to come up for air after that sea of horrors. In the Uber home, Marco could hardly sit still. He kept talking about his friends’ various projects and relationships and obsession with pickleball, while Eleanor sat beside him conducting a detailed internal postmortem of every car accident of a conversation she’d witnessed.

“Did you have fun?” Marco asked as they reached her building.

Eleanor nodded, though what she was thinking was, Fun is probably the wrong word for whatever happens when you become a silent anthropologist with crippling ego. Educational, maybe. Existentially horrifying, definitely.

Marco kissed her goodnight, and Eleanor realized that even their physical relationship had adapted to her silence. He’d learned to read her responses in touches and gestures, the tilt of her head, the way she moved her hands. It was like dating a mime, if mimes were capable of having complex internal emotional lives and a weird aversion to pickleball.

Walking up to her apartment, Eleanor caught sight of herself in the lobby mirror and paused. She looked like someone cosplaying as herself. The same face, the same clothes, but something essential was missing. She looked like a person who had been carefully edited for public consumption, with all the inconvenient bits either airbrushed or removed.

The question, her internal narrator observed, is whether this is an improvement or a tragedy. And the fact that I can’t answer that question out loud might be the answer itself.

The breakdown, also known as the end of the world, began on a Monday.

Eleanor had been increasing her Pause dosage incrementally, chasing the feeling of perfect social control. What started as one pill had become two, then three, then a handful taken whenever she felt the dangerous urge to be herself.

She’d been dating Marco for six weeks, and their relationship had settled into a comfortable pattern of him talking and her listening with what appeared to be profound attention. He’d started calling her “mysterious” and “contemplative,” as if her pharmaceutical-induced muteness was a charming personality quirk rather than a medical side effect.

The crisis started when Marco suggested she meet his parents.

“They’re coming to town this weekend,” he said over dinner at a Thai place where the pad thai was “authentically” mediocre and the lighting made everyone look like they were recovering from the flu. “I thought maybe Sunday brunch? I know it’s quick, but they’d love to meet you.”

Eleanor’s internal response was immediate and detailed. Meeting the parents. The ultimate relationship milestone that requires actual conversation, the ability to answer questions about yourself, to demonstrate that you are a functioning human being capable of independent thought and verbal expression. A social situation in which nodding and looking thoughtful is insufficient, where silence reads as rudeness rather than contemplation. In other words, my ultimate nightmare.

What she said out loud: “Sure.”

Marco was used to her one-word answers by now, but something in her expression must have conveyed distress, because he reached across the table and took her hand. “Hey really, it’s no pressure,” he said. “I just think they’d really like you. My mom especially. She’s always asking about the woman who’s made me so happy all of a sudden.”

The woman who’s made you so happy, Eleanor thought, is a pharmaceutical fiction. A chemically optimized version of a person who used to exist. You’re dating my medicated shadow, babe.

That night, Eleanor lay in bed staring at the ceiling, her mind racing through worst-case scenarios. Meeting Marco’s parents would require her to demonstrate basic social competency. They’d ask questions about her job, her family, her interests, her intentions regarding their son. They’d expect her to have opinions, to engage in conversational give-and-take that “normal” humans didn’t even have to think about.

She got up and took another Pause pill, then another, hoping to achieve some kind of maximum calmness that would carry her through the weekend. Instead, Eleanor woke up Sunday morning to discover that her inner monologue had fractured. Instead of one coherent narrative voice, she now had what appeared to be an entire committee of selves arguing inside her.

Past Eleanor: You realize you’ve traded your entire personality for the approval of a man you’ve known for six weeks, right?

Medicated Eleanor: Better to be liked than to be blunt. At least this way nobody gets hurt. Including Eleanor.

Future Eleanor: You’re going to have to speak eventually. What happens when he realizes you’re not actually mysterious, just chemically docile?

Past Eleanor: Remember when you used to say things? When you had opinions? When you were brave enough to risk being disliked? God, you were so much cooler back then.

Medicated Eleanor: Being disliked is exhausting and stressful. This is manageable and preferable.

Future Eleanor: Preferable for who?

Eleanor stumbled to the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror, searching for these three selves. Her reflection gave her nothing. Just a bunch of sharp edges smoothed away, the interesting imperfections removed, the essential self-ness edited out in favor of…well, she wasn’t even sure at this point.

She met up with Marco and his parents at a brunch place in Alameda where the waitstaff wore flannel and the menu featured at least a dozen different ways to waste money on toast. Marco’s mother was exactly as warm and chatty as Eleanor had expected. She asked follow-up questions and even remembered details from previous conversations.

“So, Eleanor,” Mrs. Lopez said after they’d ordered, “Marco tells me you do marketing in the city. What kind of accounts do you handle?”

Eleanor opened her mouth and felt the familiar Pause-induced paralysis. But this time, instead of peaceful silence, she experienced what could only be described as internal chaos. Multiple versions of herself were trying to answer simultaneously…

Past Eleanor: Tell her about the account where you had to pretend soap was revolutionary.

Medicated Eleanor: Something neutral. Something safe.

Future Eleanor: Tell her the truth about everything.

Past Eleanor: Tell her you’re high on medication designed to make you more palatable, especially to mothers who baby their sons.

Medicated Eleanor: Jesus Christ, don’t tell her anything like that. Just nod. Smile.

Future Eleanor: TELL HER SOMETHING.

What came out of Eleanor’s mouth was: “I…I handle…soap.”

Marco’s father raised an eyebrow. “Soap?”

“Revolutionary soap,” Eleanor continued, the words emerging without her permission. “Soap that’s going to change everything. Soap that’s been precisely imagineered to remove not just dirt but also…but also the essential human messiness that makes people, people.”

She was dimly aware that she was no longer talking about soap. Marco’s mother narrowed her eyes, as if trying to follow a conversation that had taken an unexpected turn. “That sounds quite interesting.”

“It’s not interesting,” Eleanor said, her voice getting louder. “It’s the opposite of interesting. It’s designed to make everything clean and pleasant and acceptable, even when clean and pleasant and acceptable means removing everything about yourself that makes you feel alive, damn it.”

The internal committee was now shouting.

Past Eleanor: STOP TALKING.

Medicated Eleanor: WHY AREN’T THE PILLS WORKING?

Future Eleanor: KEEP GOING.

Past Eleanor: YOU’RE RUINING EVERYTHING.

Future Eleanor: EVERYTHING WAS ALREADY RUINED.

Eleanor stood up abruptly, knocking over her water glass. “I have to go.”

She grabbed her purse and walked out of the restaurant, leaving Marco and his parents and the toppled water glass staring after her.

Eleanor sat on her couch for four hours, examining the bottle of Pause pills on her coffee table. Her phone buzzed with increasingly concerned texts from Marco, but she couldn’t bring herself to read them.

The internal committee had finally quieted down, leaving her alone with a silence that felt different from the medicated kind. This was the silence of possibility rather than suppression. The quiet that came before speaking rather than in place of it.

She picked up the pill bottle and walked to her bathroom, where she stood holding it over the toilet for a while before finally emptying the entire contents into the bowl and flushing. Then she called Marco.

“Eleanor?” He answered on the first ring. “Are you okay? What happened at brunch? My parents are worried about you and so am I.”

Eleanor took a breath. “I’ve been taking medication,” she said in a flat tone. “For the past two months. Something called Pause. It’s supposed to help you avoid saying things you’ll regret, but I think it just made me avoid saying anything at all.”

Marco was quiet for a moment. “Wait, what kind of medication?”

“I just told you, keep up, dude. It turns you into the kind of person who says things like ‘that’s interesting’ when what you really mean is ‘that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.’ It makes you agreeable and pleasant and completely, utterly fake and bogus.”

She told him the rest. The trial, Dr. Reeves, the consent forms, what that soap thing was really about. She even told him about her internal narrator and the committee of selves and the fact that she’d been conducting elaborate conversations in her mind while he thought she was mysteriously contemplative.

“So basically,” she concluded, “you’ve been dating someone who doesn’t exist. The real me is impatient and judgmental and says things like ‘maybe you think someone is good at listening because you love hearing the sound of your own voice.’”

Marco was quiet for so long that Eleanor wondered if he’d hung up. “Can I come over?” he finally asked.

When Marco arrived, Eleanor was sitting on her couch with a cup of coffee, practicing being present in her own body without chemical assistance, save for the coffee. It felt strange and vulnerable, like walking around without skin.

“I need to tell you something,” Marco said as he sat down beside her. “I knew something was different about you the whole time.”

Eleanor looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“The night we met, in the coffee shop…you were so…alive. Funny and sharp and present. Then on our first date, when you told me you thought you weren’t a good person, it was like seeing you without any armor on. It was so real.” He paused, seeming to choose his words carefully. “But after that, it was like you disappeared. You were still there, but not…there. I kept waiting for that person to come back, the one who said true things even when they were uncomfortable.”

Eleanor felt something sharp and warm in her chest. She actually had nothing to say, not yet.

“I thought maybe you were just shy,” Marco continued. “Or that I was imagining the connection we’d had. But I kept seeing glimpses of her, the real you, in the way you’d react to things before catching yourself. Like you were constantly editing yourself in real time.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Marco shrugged. “I thought maybe you’d tell me when you were ready. Or that if over time, I could be good enough for that side of you or something. And I liked spending time with you so much, even the edited version. But I missed…I missed hearing your thoughts.”

Eleanor looked at him with piercing eyes. “I have a lot of thoughts,” she said. “Some of them aren’t very nice.”

“I’m betting most of them are pretty funny, though.”

Eleanor considered this. On the one hand, Marco was being kind and saying extremely romantic things. On the other, he’d basically confessed to liking a version of herself who held back herself. Not cool, dude.

“Well, Marco, I think your friend Brad’s cryptocurrency art theory is complete nonsense,” she said. “And that woman who calls herself a creative consultant is basically a professional bullshit artist. And your coworker who uses comic sans is either passive-aggressive or completely tone-deaf.”

Marco grinned. “See? That’s pretty funny.”

“Those are just the mean thoughts. I have nice ones too.”

“Like what?”

Eleanor felt herself blushing. “Like how you talk about your students like they’re compelling human beings instead of problems to be managed. And how you listen to people like their stories matter. How you didn’t make me feel bad about myself when I couldn’t speak. How you’re just as willing to make fun of people in a harmless way as I am.”

“Well, not always harmless.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment. “I should probably call your parents and apologize,” Eleanor said.

“They’d like that. My mom thinks you’re ‘complex,’ which in her vocabulary is basically the highest compliment of all time.”

Eleanor laughed with her gut, and it felt like remembering how to use a muscle she’d forgotten she had.

A few months later, Eleanor sat at a dinner party. Not Marco’s friends this time, but her coworkers, celebrating a promotion she’d earned by learning to advocate for herself in meetings, specifically about soap.

She felt the familiar urge to make a cutting comment about the woman across from her who was explaining her cleanse diet with evangelical fervor. But she paused. On her own, to be clear. She had naturally considered her options: the sharp comment that would get a laugh but make someone feel small, the polite deflection that would maintain social harmony but leave her feeling diminished. She went with something else entirely.

“That sounds like it requires a lot of discipline,” she said, which was true and kind without being dishonest.

The woman beamed and launched into the details of her meal prep routine, and Eleanor found herself actually taking mental notes. She also caught Marco’s eye across the table and saw him smile. That boy had quite the smile.

Later, walking home through streets that hummed with late-night energy, Eleanor realized she’d spoken exactly as much as she’d wanted to that evening. Not too little, not too much. Just enough to be present, to be real, to be herself without apology or chemical assistance.

“How was that?” Marco asked as they reached her building.

Eleanor took the question gravely seriously. The evening had been imperfect…she’d disagreed with people, expressed opinions that weren’t universally popular, admitted to not knowing things she probably should have known, definitely burned a few bridges when she mentioned how pickleball is for people who can’t handle tennis. She’d been herself, in other words.

“It was good,” she said.

Jon Negroni is a Puerto Rican author based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s published two books, as well as short stories for IHRAM Press, The Fairy Tale Magazine, and more.

Author’s Note

It’s truly odd how quickly we've moved toward pharmaceutical solutions for what used to be considered personality traits. We have medications for social anxiety, for attention difficulties, all of which can be incredibly helpful for people who need them. But when working on this story I started wondering: what happens when we can medicate away the parts of ourselves that are inconvenient rather than harmful?

Eleanor's problem isn't really a mental health condition, obviously. She's just someone who speaks her mind in ways that sometimes hurt people's feelings. In another era, she might have been called “outspoken” or “direct.” In our story's near future, it's a treatable condition called “cognitive-interrupt deficiency.” As someone who is autistic, well, you can imagine how much my own experience shaped this story when it comes to social interactions.

So I was particularly interested in exploring the internal narrator that emerges when Eleanor can no longer speak freely. We all have that voice in our heads that provides commentary, makes observations, even judges people. But what if that became the only voice you could access? What if your most articulate, insightful self was trapped inside while your medicated self smiled and nodded?

The relationship with Marco is crucial because it explores how authenticity functions in romantic connections. He falls for the real Eleanor—sharp, honest, vulnerable Eleanor—but then spends most of their relationship with her medicated shadow. I want the reader to wonder if you can really love someone you’ve never truly met. And if they can love you back knowing that you’ve only engaged with the “optimized” version of “you.” Whatever that even means…

There’s a social pressure to be “nice” rather than real. Eleanor's impulse control issues primarily involve saying true things that make people uncomfortable, after all. It should be notable that the medication never makes her kinder or more empathetic. All it really does is make her less likely to voice inconvenient truths. There's something disturbing to me about that trade-off.

That’s why the ending tries to find a middle ground in Eleanor learning to pause on her own, to consider her words without losing access to them entirely. She attempts to find the space between impulse and expression that the medication was trying to create artificially, but by doing it consciously, she ends up with communication as a choice rather than a chemical constraint. Well, except for the coffee.