blighttown

A fairly crass and imperfect metaphor I keep returning to

The metaphor

Picture yourself in something like a college setting. Or maybe a Harry Potter-like setting. You sleep in the dormitories, and when you wake up, you come downstairs to a long set of benches and tables, where your friends and peers are eating breakfast. You can picture yourself descending the stairs, and you hear the talking and eating below. As you climb low enough on the stairs, the whole room and everyone in it comes into view. It looks so warm, people are talking and smiling. You come to sit down at your place, and there's a bowl right in front of you.

And pick up your spoon, and look in your bowl, and it's a big pile of feces. Recoiling a bit (but not fully, since you don't want to draw attention to yourself) you look around. Everyone is eating the same thing.

You try to explain that everyone is eating shit. You try to explain how gross it is, how awful and unbearable it is. But they all just look confused. They don't say anything. Why are you being so weird, they seem to wonder. Politely, they don't really argue with you, but they give you weird side glances. And you have a choice: eat the feces or continue to mark yourself as strange.

Explanations and immediate criticisms

So up front I want to acknowledge: I know this is not a great metaphor. Even calling it "not great" is probably overstating its quality. It's far too gross to be the sort thing you'd want to share with others, and although I've only tried the metaphor out on a few people it has never really seemed to land. Despite the shortcomings of such a gross metaphor, it is something I return to fairly often.

I came up with this metaphor in college. I was trying to explain my experience to a very sympathetic friend. She was someone who was really available to listen and understand. I don't even think it landed with her. And so if it failed with such an understanding and sympathetic audience I doubt it will land here either.

So What does the metaphor mean? It's pretty simple; so many of the things that other people enjoy, make me uncomfortable. Let's paint a scene. Someone wants you to join them for an activity: this is great! Someone cares enough about you to want to spend their time with you. So what do they want to do? Take you to a crowded, expensive restaurant. Or drag you to their kid's birthday party. In reality, this sucks. Restaurants are actually terrible, although most people don't seem to realize this. Just think about it:

Now, I'm being a bit funny here. This is really how I see restaurants. But I'm not an idiot: I know that most people don't see them this way. People love just being around other people. The more crowded a place is, the better! (at least for some) And the whole experience is so fun and exciting that it's well-worth the additional time and cost. Or at least this is how I assume people feel. For whatever reason, it's actually really difficult to get anyone to have these sorts of conversations. People don't generally want to describe their inner experience. I don't really know why people are like this.

Now, briefly, take my bulleted list seriously: imagine that all those things are really as I described them, and if you went out to eat that is usually how you'd feel. Maybe some restaurants would be better than others: cheaper, quieter, less crowded. Maybe if enough of those aspects are better, the remaining issues are more bearable. But in general, this is your restaurant experience, and you feel it just as I've described. In this scenario, my question to the reader is: what is the worst part of going to a restaurant?

The worst part

The worst part would not be anything in my bulleted list: the worst part would be watching the other people at the table enjoying themselves. And you could not join in the moment and connect with them. You could not enjoy yourself. And really, you couldn't even explain why being at a restaurant would be so awful. At best you might just confuse them. At worst, you might actually make them uncomfortable. Maybe they would think you're weird. Maybe they would feel guilty. They would probably just stop inviting you out again. Why bother with the weirdo that doesn't like normal things.

Now, I can imagine some immediate retorts here: "just explain your preferences beforehand." "Suggest an alternate activity." etc. Those are fine and valid points, but here's the real problem: it's far, far more than just restaurants. It's so, so many things in everyday life. It's any crowded space. It's a house where there's stuff piled up in the walkways so you feel trapped. It's certainly any concert. It's any show or performance. It's being in a city. It's wondering if your car will get towed all so that you could visit a bar you didn't want to be at. It's making small talk that goes nowhere. It's any situation where you're not free to leave whenever you want. It's a million other things. Your employer wants to show their appreciation by taking you to a really expensive restaurant. You really just have to lie and pretend to be thankful, or else you're rude, you're ungrateful.

Years ago, when I lived alone, sometimes I would walk into a grocery store, see how busy it was, and just immediately turn around. Not having food would be far better than being trapped somewhere, at the mercy of other people's space and other people's schedules.

What do to?

Rest assured, I'm not young. I'm well over 40. I've tried lots of different tactics here; immersion, therapy, doctor-prescribed pharmaceuticals, etc. Not much has really worked very well. I've had better times and worse times, but nothing has stuck; there have been no permanent solutions.

I feel like I've actually gotten worse at this over time. I suspect that this is not really true. I'm just older, I have kids. People expect you to act a certain way when you're a full-blown adult. You don't get the sort of leeway that someone in their 20s would receive. (and of course, rightly so) At the same time, I have less and less room for error. A wife, multiple children, a job I absolutely need. There's very little down-time where I get to be myself, far fewer people who are willing to accommodate me. Far fewer people who would be interested in even having his kind of conversation. "Tell me in detail how you're weird psychologically" is a conversation for people in their teens and twenties. No one really cares about that from someone in their 40s.

When I was younger (although I didn't realize it at the time) I was much more self-selecting in who I interacted with. If someone was not fairly enamored with me, I really just avoided them. I never really had to be faced with how weird I was. I just stuck around compatible people. I had much less of a filter, and was much less self-aware. In very real terms, I was far less socially fluid back then. I could excel in small, constructed scenarios. In the right room I was commanding, I was the life of the party. But put me in another room, a crowded, unfamiliar room, and I'd need to flee. It would be unbearable.

This is ultimately immature, and not really something you can carry into adulthood. You need to be able to work with people who you don't like, or who are dissimilar to you, or whatever else. You need to be an adult. And I may not have made it sound like it, but I actually do just fine here. I can go into any room and do what I need to do. I can work with anyone. Any personality, any quirk, and flaw, I can build trust and good working relationship. I can do this in ways which were strictly impossible for me when I was younger.

So what's the problem? I can't enjoy it. I'm lying. I'm lying to keep people comfortable. And I'm in these situations so often that I'm lying more and more. There's less and see time where I just get to express my emotions natively. More and more, I need to try to just put on a mask. I need to ask myself "what do people need me to feel in this situation?" At this point, I'm exhausted of it, and I struggle to even do that. Why would I fake an emotion for a person I'm never going to be able to connect with. People will say "just be yourself." That works sometimes for some people, but honestly a lot of the time it just makes people uncomfortable.

There is at least some cohort of people who believe that the evil patriarchy is forcing men to withhold their feelings. Part of why I *hate that cohort is because they live in a fantasy. They think if I could freely express my emotions, I would become sensitive, and cry, and have some beautiful connection with them. If I really let my emotions out all, they would be too embarrassed to sit with me at a restaurant. If I really let my feelings out all the time, I would be strictly selfish. As I've discussed before, If everyone's emotions are valid, how come I have to go to work?

Selfishness

The selfishness here is the big confounding factor for an adult who is attempting to be functional. I know precisely why you cannot just be led around by your emotions. Why you must make serious attempts to put others first even if it makes feel poorly. But what what happens when you're really weird? When you're in some weird outlier position on the bell curve? The people who are trying to accommodate you are actually making you uncomfortable. They're doing what would make most people comfortable, but not you. And if they really had to accommodate you, it would be too much of a burden for them.

I don't necessarily think I'm actually worse at this sort of skill set than most people. I think most people just like restaurants. ie, they don't need to put on a show as often. They like the stuff they're invited to do. They like the way they need to navigate the world, at least enough such that they don't seem to have the same troubles I do. With regard to what they enjoy, and how they can relate to other people, they're just close enough to the middle of bell curve that there's not so much discomfort to overcome. Or maybe not, maybe I'm just an immature pain in the ass.

There is a cohort of folks who do want to optimize for me. They're the sort of people who suggest wacky things such as waving your hands rather than clapping so as not upset the neuro-divergent. Mind you, clapping doesn't particularly bother me, and waving is not any better in my mind, but I think this works cleanly as an example. I don't think this cohort of people has a worthwhile answer, though. We should not optimize society for a small minority of people. We would be slightly improving the lives of a very small number of people, and slightly making things worse for a much, much larger number of people. It's a bad deal when taken as a whole.

Honesty

I also just don't know what to do about it. If I'm not being myself with people, I'm really throwing away a chance at a real connection. In a way, I'm lying to them. But if I'm myself too often, I'd make people uncomfortable. It would be selfish and immature. I feel as I've got older that I've become less and less honest. I'm not trying to be. It's just that no one wants to hear the angst of a 40+ year old man. No one. Trust me on this. I've always valued honesty so much, but reality is that no one likes it. I'm perfectly happy making people uncomfortable when it's necessary. If I needed to intervene in a heated argument, or point out that someone needed to face an uncomfortable truth, this is easy for me.

But so, so many situations are purely social. There is really nothing external at stake; you're with those people and all you're supposed to do is make nice small talk and make them comfortable. And I just don't know how to do it while being myself. If I don't emotionally disconnect I'll make people uncomfortable. If let me emotions run free I'll be selfish. But if I withdraw, people are uncomfortable too. They wonder why I'm not participating.

The older I get, the less I feel like I will ever arrive at a solution. I think I will need to learn to make peace with being alone.