Sometimes I feel like I’ve failed, emotionally. My parents are coming to visit next week, and we’ll be spending Christmas together and it’s Good. I know I should be excited about this. I’ve missed home, I’ve missed food, I’ve missed hugs, I’ve missed the comfort of being in the presence of people I know and love. But I can’t say I’m “excited.”
I don’t always like or welcome change, but I generally adapt to it fairly quickly. Perhaps this is simply a failure in memory, that I forget that the way things are now is not the way things were before.
Cut off a foot of hair? Sure, I’ll use too much shampoo for a few days, but I won’t feel any different.
Go to college? Okay. No tears, no freakout of “where the hell am I?” when I wake up in a new bed in a new room.
My sister gets married, moves out? What’s the big deal?
Fly to another continent alone? Okay, bye. You can let go now. And is the crying really necessary?
Parents come to visit? It’s a thing that’s happening.
Sometimes I am so blank
Sometimes all I can do is distill the Things That Happen in my life down to “and it’s Good” or “and it’s Bad” because I cannot name any emotions to match how those events effect me1 or because I need that binary to identify whether I’ve had a good day when someone asks.2
“Good” things can be as simple as buying a warm cookie or as major as my parents coming to visit. “Bad” things can be as tangible as spilling my pasta or as abstract as an unidentified anxiety.3
In this way, my parents’ coming to visit is no different than buying a warm cookie. They are both Things That Happen and they are both Good.
“Are you excited?” people ask, and I do not know how to answer. I cannot honestly or convincingly say “yes,” but I fear their response if I say “no.”4
“Why aren’t you excited?” As though it’s a Bad thing. For me, it is simply a Thing That Happens. It is the judgment, or perceived judgment5, of my Blankness6 that is a Bad thing, not the Blankness itself. But this sense of Wrongness that is instilled in me when I am expected to display emotion and cannot distresses me more than I can say. How can anybody say that this integral, though intermittent, part of me is unacceptable? Why does a part of me believe that, even if no one has yet said it to me in so many words? Even though I know that my occasional Blankness is not a Bad thing, I still try not to show it7 because I have internalized this idea that a lack of emotion is Wrong.
So though I know I should be excited about my parents’ imminent arrival, I refuse to acknowledge my non-excitement8 as a Bad thing. I know that to someone who does not understand, they may think me cold, unfeeling, unloving. They would be wrong (well, mostly. The unfeeling thing is occasionally quite accurate.). Just because having my parents around is comparable to having a cookie does not make it any less of a Good Thing. And perhaps, once they are actually here, it will finally seem real and I will be able to feel, show, name their presence as something other than “Good.” But even if I can’t, that’s okay.
1. Effect, because they may not make me “feel” anything.
2. When I am Blank, I keep track of the Things That Happen, count the Good and the Bad, so that when someone asks how my day has been, I can simply tell them which is in the lead and in this way adequately participate in Small Talk. Communication, particularly Small Talk, is often difficult for me, because even if I am interested in something, I sometimes lack the words or appropriate expressions to show it. So the Good/Bad Tally is not only useful, but necessary.
3. I think perhaps I use my binary because it does not require degrees or nuances of emotion. In a world of Things That Happen that are either Good or Bad, I have no need to determine if something makes me merely “happy” or more than that, “joyful.” I have no need to analyze a negative, to name it “sadness,” “melancholy,” “sorrow,” or “misery.” I have no need to define emotion at all.
I choose to use this binary, even knowing its inherent flaws. “Good” and “Bad” exist on a spectrum, much as many other perceived binaries do. Sometimes, though, I need the oversimplicity of the binary in order to name anything at all. And I do acknowledge other parts of the spectrum, in my own way. For things that are neither Good nor Bad, they are Things That Happen.9 For things that are both Good and Bad, I specifically name the aspects that are Good and the aspects that are Bad and, if I can, why.
4. So all too often I say nothing at all and let the communication die while they wait for my answer.
5. Anticipated judgment?
6. Blankness: A temporary inability to either feel, express, or name emotion (or some combination of the above). May appear in degrees. That is, I may feel something without being able to name it, or be able to name it without being able to show it. Or it may only affect certain emotions, or emotions of a certain intensity.
7. Yes. I try not to show that I cannot show emotion. How? With exhausting difficulty.
8. I say “non-excitement” rather than “lack of excitement” because I do not think I am “lacking” anything.
9. I use this term in many ways. It describes events in general, events that are neither Good nor Bad, and events that have not yet been categorized. It is both an umbrella term and a specific term under that umbrella (much like “queer”).
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