Not your emotional dumping ground (from 2016)
(This was from sophomore year, holy shit.)
The other day someone texted asking me how I was. “I’m alright,” I said, a few hours later. “How about you?”
And lo and behold, the reply I received was not the usual, “Same,” or even, “I’m well,” or “Ugh finals,” but two blocks of texts talking about feelings—about peace and taking walks and probably the night sky. You know, the type of stuff people would tell someone like me—because I’m known to be more emotional, more into the poeticisms of, “Wow, the night is so gentle; the rain feels so cathartic; I’m taking a walk.”
Which is true. I am that type of person. Regardless of whether I want to or not, I’ve established myself as such.
But with a dawning horror, I realize that others tend to especially act that certain way around me. Our conversations tend to be heavy, skipping over whatever’s happened that day, straight into the heart of the human condition. Emotional baggages inspected at the counter I unwillingly man, if not opened for me to peer into and come up with a response to. This sort of discourse has “deep” slapped over it, and that is most often the reason why I see the message and do not open it. Because “deep” is emotionally taxing, especially on me.
This is something I’ve started to realize more and more as the new friends I’ve made become better ones—meaning that our conversations, once filled with lighthearted banter with the occasional foray into the personal, are now diving into the realm of emotional issues I am not sure I can handle. Even talking about the day-to-day relates to a deeper condition of the mind—an “I did this because like I told before, I feel this.” Once the friendship has been opened up, it’s common to spend most of your time in the deeper waters.
I realized with a horror that I enjoyed talking with new people so much, simply because of the person I was allowed to be with them. I am able to suspend this emotion-heavy character I am, to return to the surface and bask in the warmth of getting out of myself. It is often not a close friend who cheers me up when I am sad, but the girl who lives down the hall that I occasionally see in the bathroom when we are both groggily brushing our teeth. Because when we ask how our days have been, we talk about an exam the next morning, or the anticipation of an upcoming break. When we take our leave from each other and wish each other a good day, we sincerely mean it because we have nothing else we could wish on each other.
This is not to say that I don’t love or appreciate my friends and our conversations—simply that there’s become an incredible lack of variety. There is a certain way people view me—a handful of adjectives and nouns thrown together that I can’t even agree or disagree with—artsy, Instagram, music, writing—and they act accordingly, with me. And they all act the same. Our conversations become so eerily similar, even though they are all different people and I am open to talking about more than being peaceful and confident and loving yourself.
It’s natural that people naturally act more similar to the person they are talking to, in an attempt at connection. That’s quite a beautiful thought. But I disdain that, possibly because I am not quite so fond of who I am or at least how I’m viewed. Everyone is the same because I am the same.
Some boy I’ve seen at Frist a few times has recently caught my eye, and I’ve been joking (or not) about finding ways to meet him with my friend Chris, who had a class with him. Then, when I bought up the issue of my potentially being the default emotional dumping ground for people, he noted that between the two of us, too, our conversations tend toward the heavier stuff—recovering from heavy bouts of sadness—and that he agreed, that he enjoyed talking to me about the Frist-boy.
I was taken back, because I hadn’t realized that I may have been the one who set up these situations.
(6 Nov 2017 - I have, indeed, talked to Frist boy.)