To the ones who read my messages of despair that I always get into these conversations that feel like fights, that I'm afraid my professional relationships may always be characterized by comments like "If you're so anxious about this, maybe you should reconsider your fit for this position"...
To the ones who greet my whimper with a cheer, who are proud that I'm finally coming around to seeing the problems in myself and may be open to getting better... Who tell me to grow up and adapt, to make the people around me more comfortable...
To the one who told me today encouragingly that I may be onto something, that I could seek psychiatric evaluation, that I "can't make other people adjust to me on a dime" so I should consider how to broaden my own approaches in order to get "more doors staying open" to me...
I already told you I got a psychiatric referral last year and I just don't know whether I ever even got on the waiting list because they don't send me any kind of notice. Already wanted diagnostic tests. I brought it up to you. Remember?
I don't like getting a response like this. All the advice about how I could (should) change myself to fit a world which is generally sloppier and more careless than me just reminds me how much I don't want to. I already know all this. I already hate all this. I've already put so much into making myself comprehensible. You kind of know me, I'm not just a stranger to you, but even you seem to demand that I bend myself backwards even more instead of holding out hope that I could or even should be embraced as I am.
I had hoped you would empathize.
I know this email is 'unprofessional'. I can feel the knowledge of it glaring at me from the parts of my own mind that reflect what I know the world expects. I can't care right now. Not when you won't show me you care about the truth-loving, sensitive, quality demanding side of me except to figure out how to get rid of it.
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When my integrity cracks under the pressure of a life condemned to be looked upon in disgust or pity but rarely admiration, it is nothing to cheer about.
I am not proud of coming back around to seeing myself as the problem.
I have grown so far. I have adapted so much. I hold myself to a higher standard than I expect of you. I am committed to a pursuit of truth. Truth which is not designed to make you comfortable.
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It's not that I don't know what kind of processes could make it easier for me to get along with the world as it is. I know some of them far too well. And I refuse. Starve me a little longer for any validation, make me suffer and beg and degrade myself, maybe insist I put on a suit and lipstick before I can even see a smile, and maybe I will submit myself to be edited into something less me that you might expect employers to approve of.
But I hope not.
I would rather die, I would rather crawl into the gutters and live on stale crusts and freeze under a goddamn stairwell and even have no-one remember me as anything more than a nuisance they had to deal with, than give in and lie to myself that society and its impatience and my mother and my bullies were right: I was too sensitive, I cared too much, I overthought everything...
Become them; pass on the same conditioning to the little children who are growing up now. Tell them not to think, not to care, to suffocate and bury that part of them, because they need to smile pretty at the customers. Smile so pretty at the boss. Pretend the world's not screaming. Pretend you're not screaming. Pretend until you forget that you're pretending. Then you'll be...
happy
... don't you want to be happy?
Sometimes I forget.
Sometimes when I am that starving for any validation at all, I do
forget. And then peoples' subtle, unintentional intolerance, holding
hands with the very best of intentions, reminds me.
That is how I feel. That is how this feels. That is what's broken.
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