This is a rant. It started out politely and ended Somewhere Else. The road between meanders.

I've cultivated some fairly decent social skills over the years. I credit my family with this; my mother is a "people person", able to initiate and sustain conversation with just about anyone. My upper-middle class suburban upbringing also exposed me to a number of well-bred and well-mannered individuals, providing me with many models of etiquette and polite conversation.

On another level, my personal experiences (read: mental illness, rehab, etc) have given me a profound sense of empathy and compassion for anyone who's ever felt awkward, alienated, trapped, or invisible. Having suffered all these feelings myself, and being still susceptible to insecurity, I have an instinctive desire to make others feel comfortable expressing themselves. I wouldn't call it compassion, so much as a compulsion. A yearning to comfort my past self, or maybe redeem her; to show her the kindness of an encouraging smile, a friendly gesture, and inclusive embrace.

Back then, and now, I am unable to do these things for myself. I have built in a resistance to comfort, a barricade of self-sustainability that is at once self-destructive and self-preservative. It is a way of protecting my ego from feelings of rejection and failure. At the same time, it is a way of starving my soul, which needs to connect, to bond, to share in the same way that my body needs air. Spiritual asphyxiation. That's what isolation is.

My situation isn't desperate, don't get me wrong. Quite the contrary, in fact.  I have wonderful relationships with my family, a small but vital number of friends who know me deeply and truly, and a blessedly large and diverse circle of more casual (yet still vital and enriching) friends and acquaintances who amuse, educate, challenge and inspire me. I am supremely fortunate in my relationships.

Yet still, the old anxieties remain. The walls have not fallen away completely, though in some places they have crumbled away considerably. Small talk exhausts me. Large gatherings overwhelm me. I sometimes avoid social situations altogether, unwilling or unable to summon the energy it takes to engage with people on a superficial level. I cannot entertain and be vulnerable at the same time, not truly. I can bare what seems to be my soul, but in truth they are just facts. The details of my life are not personal. It's the contents of my soul, my memories and impressions and the way I feel at night or in the  morning or when I clean the cat feces from the litter box. These things are private. And it's not that I don't want to share them with you. It's just you so rarely ask. It's not polite. And I only want to share with someone who's sincerely interested. Ideally, someone who's willing to share with me. And such people are rare. Such relationships are rare. As they should be. But I love those relationships. I thrive on them. I long for more, even as I resist them with my "I'm-fine" demeanor and witticisms and antics.

I make people uncomfortable when I reveal too much. My intent, my desire, is to make people more comfortable with revealing too much. We should all be less comfortable more often. But somehow I don't think HR would approve. And what is HR but a representative of polite society?  Someday I'll plot my escape. 'Til then, tell no one what I've revealed here today. I need my job.

A Typical Online Dating Exchange

Him: WOW!!! Hello beautiful..... :-)⭌

Me: Is that a soul patch on your smiley face?

Him: Lol no he's blowing a kiss!!

Me: Oh. I think I'll just keep thinking of it as a soul patch.

Hallo-weenie

I want to share with you a recent conversation I had on a popular online dating website. Ready?  

Guy: What are you going to be for Halloween?
Me: Mister Rogers!
Guy: That's a good costume...not going to take advantage of being allowed to dress slutty?

Pause here. 

First of all,  I didn't realize I needed permission to dress like a whore. This whole time I thought I was free to dress in any way I like. I mean, here I am, thinking that I'm CHOOSING to wear pants, when in fact I've been unwittingly adhering to a dress code imposed by -- who, exactly? Society? The man? DAMN THE MAN.

Secondly, how does he know my Mister Rogers costume isn't slutty?

Ok, back to regular programming.


Me: I prefer to dress slutty only when it’s NOT allowed. 

Zing! Right? Apparently not:

Guy: Dressing slutty is a skill all girls should have in their armamentarium.

He then went on typing, but I stopped listening here. Try as I might to resist it, I was offended. Not "as a feminist," because that phrase is overused and alienating and just plain obnoxious. But as a woman, or even just as a human.

I realize that this guy is typical. Men want sex. That in itself is not offensive. It's just shallow and uninteresting and ... well, typical. There's so much more to discover about a person, beyond the temporary thrill of physical attraction. I'm tired of superficial flirtations that only serve to inflate my ego momentarily. Sex without substance. It's lost its appeal. I think that's a sign of growth.

On the other hand, and this is the embarrassing part and probably the root of my anger and indignation, I felt the impulse to prove to this guy that I did, in fact, have sex appeal. Or, as he stated it, the "dressing slutty skill." I felt I had to explain that I'm not only capable of dressing like a skank, but I excel at it. Which isn't really true, but at the heart of this defensive impulse is the subconscious fear that I am not attractive enough, feminine enough, desirable enough (for who? this ordinary guy I'm not even interested in? my ego is such an asshole) - that I need to rely on my body to win a man's affection. 

I refuse to buy into it. And I know that it's not society that needs to change - or at least, I can't wait for society to change. It's my ego. That divisive wicked little creature responsible for all those self-defeating thoughts. The impulse to tear down my self worth, the false beliefs that I am not enough, that I can't, that I don't deserve, that I am wrong. This is my greatest enemy, which I believe I might be battling my entire life. But I have this anger, this guilt, this shame, provoked by a few thoughtless and harmless words. And it's my responsibility to get free from those feelings. By matching every negative thought with an affirmation. By acknowledging that those feelings exist. And, because I'm human, by having a little fun at this guy's expense. Because he's definitely going to be included in my next set list. Hallo-weenie indeedy.