- Overdramatizing the events of my own life or playing up the mini-dramas I imagine to keep my brain occupied during the day
- Tossing together an interdisciplinary mish-mash founded on simplified philosophical ponderings and an exaggerated sense of wonder at the synchronicities of life
- Saying something pretty depressing and then leaving an opportunity for hope
- Forcing out the first part of a fascinatingly underrealized work of fiction
- Paying homage to something crazily nerdy
If you've noticed any of the above trends, please try to forget, as it might hinder you from enjoying my blog as much. Today might be a little different, I hope.
If you can credit it, there was once a time in my life when I was absolutely lacking in social graces. Not that I was miserably unpleasant to be around; I could be funny, and a fair enough conversationalist if I was in the right mood, but generally I just thought I was superior to everybody around me and had little enough interest in getting to know them. I'm very thankful that I grew out of that (with the help of wise elders who yelled at me for being such a self-centered jerk), and it really was a growing process. It isn't that I just woke up one day and realized that other people had feelings that deserved to be respected, unfortunately. It took time.
Essentially, I learned that people would react to me differently if I related to them a certain way, and I learned how to do that years before I learned to see things from others' perspective and value them as people. But I learned enough to convince people that I was a pretty nice person, even if I wasn't, so it worked well enough. Armed with this new understanding of how to interact with people, I set out to make friends.
It's not that I didn't have any friends before that; I did, and great ones! They were friendships formed of long camaraderie and shared experience, though, and as such, they were effortless to maintain. If I wanted to make more friendships, I would have to put work into it, and find new ways to connect with people. It was an exciting challenge to uncover things I might have in common with others, to learn to converse with them about topics we might not both already understand well, and to avoid saying every weird and disturbing thing that might cross my mind.
I couldn't control everything I said (still can't), though, so occasionally I would give voice to a mean comment, or make some overly-dark declaration on the state of the world. When the mask of cheerful friendliness would slip, my new friends would be disturbed. They would be worried. Sometimes their feelings would be hurt. But most of all, they would be fascinated.
I soon found that nothing bound people closer to me than to insult them, wait a bit, then admit I had been rude and apologize for it. It became such a reliable system of making close friends that I became somewhat horrified at my own manipulative nature. But I didn't know another way; the bittersweet truth was that, as I got to know so many new people, I started to see what was so special and important about each of them. I started to grow up, finally, but I'm not sure that I could have without that first jump into cruelty and manipulation.
I don't do that anymore -- well, not deliberately, anyway. And I know that I don't, because my rate of making new friends has slowed dramatically, as well. It's true that I'm at a different stage in my life, and it's natural to not make as many friends anymore, but I find it much harder even to get to know people these days. Unfortunately, I still carry some of the old habits with me, and from time to time I find myself hurting people almost automatically. My manipulative ways became so completely ingrained in me that it actually takes effort not to follow them. And I make that effort! But sometimes I slip up, and I look back, and I wonder if there might not have been another way for me. If there was, I surely couldn't see it.
No comments:
Post a Comment