I have this memory, from whenever I was in school and I walked into a lunch room. Not just one specific time but many, many times throughout many different schools and across so many stages of my life. I would walk in to a full or filling lunch room and see groups of friends sitting down; talking or laughing or showing each other something they think their friends like. Kids would walk in behind me and be called to, motioned to sit next to friends. I'd see some kids sitting down without being asked, because they didn't have to be called over or ask to sit down and I remember watching that be cool with whomever they sat by.
...then there was me...
Each second became harder, somehow, to find a place to belong. I tried so hard to just be invisible so I could survey the area without being noticed. But as I have learned, I can't will myself to be unseen. I felt the awkward pouring over me, I felt kids' eyes hitting me and I felt the panic of the fact that even though I looked out of place; like I just needed ONE person (not friend, because...what's that) to pity me and ask me to sit with them...they didn't care.
All that I just explained took seconds, maybe a minute in real time but to me every single time that happened it was longer than any clock had to show. And it wasn't the fact that I was awkward that hurt so much, it wasn't that I needed to sit or even that I had no friends (most of the time at least) It was the fact that no one cared enough for real to help me out of that misery. Even people who claimed to be 'my friend' didn't care if I was going through those torturous moments.
So I learned that I was able to make myself invisible. My superpower, right?! There were times when I would stand in a corner of a cafeteria, lean against a wall and eat my lunch and not one person would say a word to me. I wish I could say this is just a metaphor or an exaggerated example of things that happened but this has happened to me many times, in real life. And it hurt worse every time I went through it.
If that was just a memory and I was hurt but learned from it, that's cool. But it affected me in a pretty big way. Dissecting what that did to me:
-I learned that there's no sympathy for people like that (like me) and for some time I was actually scared that I might be a sociopath because I developed the ability to just not care, like there was some switch and I found a way to turn it off.
-I learned that I don't matter to people. I heard people talk about how they could never just ignore someone when they have no friends but those were some of the same people who saw me standing there and had absolutely no emotional reaction to seeing someone on the brink of panic attacks or on the verge of giving up and they didn't even flinch. If they can't handle seeing someone in pain and don't have even an inkling of emotion when they see me...they're not the problem, I am.
-I learned to avoid groups all together or to show that I don't want to be in groups.
-I learned to hide from social situations and eventually I learned to hide from situations that hurt me the same way, even when it wasn't as bad as I thought it felt like it to me and it hurt the same as if it was the worst case scenario.
-I learned to shut down when an overwhelming amount of emotional weight hit me the way it did then.
And these are just a few things that I unintentionally leanred from those seemingly small moments. Those teachings have bled into areas of my life that I am told regularly "You need to just stop." except there's no second part to those commands, the part that explains how to 'just stop' and I'm left learning that I'm not good enough even stronger...like a terrible truth on steroids. HULK SMASH all over me again and again.
When my daughter was growing up she used to complain that people were staring at her. I asked her how she knew? She said she watched them. To which I said: "so, you were staring at them. Maybe they were seeing you staring at them?"
ReplyDeleteWe observe situations and our internal dialogue, absent some method to guide it, assigns 'value' or 'intent' to those observations. Maybe those kids in the lunchroom thought you aloof, snobby, 'too good for them' and tuned you out likewise. It is difficult to create in a child a 'limiter' to those internal dialogues - usually it comes from a parent or mentor that provides alternate interpretations for those internal dialogues.
Unfortunately, once 'down the dark path you will forever go', it is hard to change step. The old phrase, never attribute to maliciousness what stupidity explains has more than a few corollaries. Children, even of the teen variety are still learning social behaviors. And they do it badly often enough to leave disaster in their wake.
So, how do you intentionally, unlearn those lessons? I try to attribute to ignorance when I can't evidence intent. And the truth is, the one lesson that is right, is that most people don't care about the stranger enough to pay any attention. And when my daughter stopped staring at people to see if they were staring at her, no body stared at her anymore.