"The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a
thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought
special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone
else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it
is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours”
I eat that shit up every time I see it. I accept it as some general, but articulated-just-for-me, truth. Feeling alone in a way of knowing is painful and terrifying; finding you're not alone in some way you experience the world is a tremendous comfort. And as an observation, it's both logical and intuitive: sharing a viewpoint with someone else feels half as lonely as holding it by yourself.
But I've been wondering lately if what leaves us feeling the most widowed is not the unique perspective but the universal one. There's no power or identity in having the same experience as everybody. You don't become more or know more from occupying that space.You are not the chosen member of some specific community of people who feel or know what you feel or know, because when everyone has joined the club, then the club no longer exists. It becomes about being rather than belonging. You aren't some one; you just are.
And it's not just that you have no definition, that you have nowhere to stand. It goes beyond the post-structural bullshit to how people (don't) connect with or listen to you. How easy is it to invalidate or dismiss anyone's experience by telling them it's not there's or not just there's? To deny or belittle someone's feelings by placing them in a box that belongs to everyone?
"Everybody gets depressed some times."
"I know it hurts now, but everyone moves on eventually."
"I don't know anybody who doesn't think they're too fat, or too thin, or too something..."
This is exactly what we tell people when they try to articulate some sensation they're working through. And regardless of the supportive intention, it ultimately erases and silences what is theirs. No, they're not feeling depressed-- they're just a shapeless blob feeling shapeless blob feelings in the great shapeless blob that is the singular human experience. We don't have to listen because there's nothing to hear. We don't have to see because there's nothing to see. And I guess it shouldn't make anyone feel lonely, specifically; it should make them feel like they don't exist and like their entire way of being is just white noise.
But hey, you're not alone! You're just invisible, or you just haven't realized yet how invisible you are. Such a comfort.
This lovely doom and gloom string of musings is all pretense, a prelude to saying that guys, I'm sorting through feelings, and I know they're not unique to me, so I feel like I can't express them. Having these feelings seems pointless. Saying them out lout seems pointless. The feeling is isolating and feeling the feeling is isolating and saying that I feel the feeling is isolating.
But--
I'm having that thing. That thing in every bad indie movie where the protagonist is completely still while the world buzzes and flashes at warp-speed all around them. Or there's a 5-second shot of his mouth agape, screaming, but we cut back to him to realize he was not, actually, screaming-- it was all in his head, it was a storytelling device to illustrate the character's frustrated voicelessness.
I am feeling unseen and unheard and unnoticed in my own life. I think I've been feeling this way for a long time. I feel surrounded by people who don't know who I am, and I don't know if it's that they don't care, or if I've been doing a shitty job of showing things to see and saying things to hear and doing things to notice. But most of the time I feel like I'd have to scream and flail to hold anyone's gaze for 5 seconds, and I'm just too hoarse or exhausted to bother.
And I can't speak this out loud because a) there's no way to express this without sounding like I'm 12-years-old; b) it's the human condition to feel misunderstood or invisible so why would anyone connect to or notice my own brand of smallness and muteness; and c) it's all just real downer stuff and nobody wants to hear it, especially if it reminds them of their own sense of inferiority or isolation or unknowingness.
I've just always had this sense that your voice and your connection to it was supposed to evolve with age. In your teens, you want your voice heard and validated by everybody. In your 20s and 30s, maybe you want it heard and validated by a small group of people, or maybe just that one person. And eventually, you reach a relationship with yourself where you don't care who hears or sees you because you're that confident in your own voice, you love yourself and what you have to say. Mostly, I feel like I'm straddling between those first 2 stages, between wanting 1 and 8 billion thumps up and pats on the back from whoever it is that's actually paying attention. But sometimes--and lately--I question if the whole evolution narrative isn't a farce anyway. Maybe we spend our whole lives wanting other people to see and to know and to love us; maybe we never decide we're happy just basking in the sound of our own captivating voice.
Some days, I'll admit, I really want to be celebrated. I want a fucking parade in my honor. I want the experience of knowing and hearing me to be transformative, to give you a reason (one of many I hope) to wake up in the morning, to make you want to scream, laugh, cry, orgasm, faint, reflect, and better yourself. I want a memorial built when I'm gone that says "We knew Adam Conway, and we were better for it. Thanks for helping us feel all the feels and think all the thinks."
And some days, it would mean the world to me to have someone stop me at a party and say "How are you, really?" or "What are you thinking about?" and to genuinely and effortlessly listen.
--Or have them say "I thought about that thing you said last week, and here's my take on it."
---Or, Jesus, even just comment on some rambling feminist Facebook post of mine that said "Your self-righteous, sophomoric, but well-intentioned pedantics are not being thrown meaninglessly into a void. I read the words you decided you need to share, and they left some impression on me, even if it was a miniscule one, or even it wasn't necessarily a positive impression." But we heard you, Adam. We saw you. And your words and your you did something.
I imagine I sound depressed, down-trodden. Strangely, I'm not. I'm actually better than I've been in a long while. I like the things that I have to say, and the way that I say them, and it means something to me to say them out loud. And I've got a boyfriend and a couple of other people in my life who listen to and respect what I have to say and what I have to show them, even the things that they don't like or they don't necessarily find interesting. They even humor me when I share the same thought in the same voice that we've all had and we've all heard and we've all articulated a million times over. And while that's not necessarily "knowing" or "getting" someone in some (probably impossible) completely whole or total sense, it absolutely sounds like love, which makes it a little harder to get too down about feeling small.
So, I guess I'll chock this post up as therapy and as the first or 30th step in sorting out my own, personal, 100 percent-unique-to-me experience of this whole universal "wanting to be known and wanting to be valued" thing. I guess I keep digging through all the words in my head until I find some outlet, some community, some way of voicing that makes me feel heard and makes me feel like what I voice matters beyond me.
P.S. I'm wholly aware that this whole post was both circular and ironic. I champion that History Boys quote only to undermine it, and then I ultimately articulate that I would, indeed, feel like my hand was being held by someone who anonymously validated some piece of myself that I thought no one valued or noticed. Again, I think it's the difference between the feeling I'm discussing here and what it feels like to feel that feeling.
And it's not just that you have no definition, that you have nowhere to stand. It goes beyond the post-structural bullshit to how people (don't) connect with or listen to you. How easy is it to invalidate or dismiss anyone's experience by telling them it's not there's or not just there's? To deny or belittle someone's feelings by placing them in a box that belongs to everyone?
"Everybody gets depressed some times."
"I know it hurts now, but everyone moves on eventually."
"I don't know anybody who doesn't think they're too fat, or too thin, or too something..."
This is exactly what we tell people when they try to articulate some sensation they're working through. And regardless of the supportive intention, it ultimately erases and silences what is theirs. No, they're not feeling depressed-- they're just a shapeless blob feeling shapeless blob feelings in the great shapeless blob that is the singular human experience. We don't have to listen because there's nothing to hear. We don't have to see because there's nothing to see. And I guess it shouldn't make anyone feel lonely, specifically; it should make them feel like they don't exist and like their entire way of being is just white noise.
But hey, you're not alone! You're just invisible, or you just haven't realized yet how invisible you are. Such a comfort.
This lovely doom and gloom string of musings is all pretense, a prelude to saying that guys, I'm sorting through feelings, and I know they're not unique to me, so I feel like I can't express them. Having these feelings seems pointless. Saying them out lout seems pointless. The feeling is isolating and feeling the feeling is isolating and saying that I feel the feeling is isolating.
But--
I'm having that thing. That thing in every bad indie movie where the protagonist is completely still while the world buzzes and flashes at warp-speed all around them. Or there's a 5-second shot of his mouth agape, screaming, but we cut back to him to realize he was not, actually, screaming-- it was all in his head, it was a storytelling device to illustrate the character's frustrated voicelessness.
I am feeling unseen and unheard and unnoticed in my own life. I think I've been feeling this way for a long time. I feel surrounded by people who don't know who I am, and I don't know if it's that they don't care, or if I've been doing a shitty job of showing things to see and saying things to hear and doing things to notice. But most of the time I feel like I'd have to scream and flail to hold anyone's gaze for 5 seconds, and I'm just too hoarse or exhausted to bother.
And I can't speak this out loud because a) there's no way to express this without sounding like I'm 12-years-old; b) it's the human condition to feel misunderstood or invisible so why would anyone connect to or notice my own brand of smallness and muteness; and c) it's all just real downer stuff and nobody wants to hear it, especially if it reminds them of their own sense of inferiority or isolation or unknowingness.
I've just always had this sense that your voice and your connection to it was supposed to evolve with age. In your teens, you want your voice heard and validated by everybody. In your 20s and 30s, maybe you want it heard and validated by a small group of people, or maybe just that one person. And eventually, you reach a relationship with yourself where you don't care who hears or sees you because you're that confident in your own voice, you love yourself and what you have to say. Mostly, I feel like I'm straddling between those first 2 stages, between wanting 1 and 8 billion thumps up and pats on the back from whoever it is that's actually paying attention. But sometimes--and lately--I question if the whole evolution narrative isn't a farce anyway. Maybe we spend our whole lives wanting other people to see and to know and to love us; maybe we never decide we're happy just basking in the sound of our own captivating voice.
Some days, I'll admit, I really want to be celebrated. I want a fucking parade in my honor. I want the experience of knowing and hearing me to be transformative, to give you a reason (one of many I hope) to wake up in the morning, to make you want to scream, laugh, cry, orgasm, faint, reflect, and better yourself. I want a memorial built when I'm gone that says "We knew Adam Conway, and we were better for it. Thanks for helping us feel all the feels and think all the thinks."
And some days, it would mean the world to me to have someone stop me at a party and say "How are you, really?" or "What are you thinking about?" and to genuinely and effortlessly listen.
--Or have them say "I thought about that thing you said last week, and here's my take on it."
---Or, Jesus, even just comment on some rambling feminist Facebook post of mine that said "Your self-righteous, sophomoric, but well-intentioned pedantics are not being thrown meaninglessly into a void. I read the words you decided you need to share, and they left some impression on me, even if it was a miniscule one, or even it wasn't necessarily a positive impression." But we heard you, Adam. We saw you. And your words and your you did something.
I imagine I sound depressed, down-trodden. Strangely, I'm not. I'm actually better than I've been in a long while. I like the things that I have to say, and the way that I say them, and it means something to me to say them out loud. And I've got a boyfriend and a couple of other people in my life who listen to and respect what I have to say and what I have to show them, even the things that they don't like or they don't necessarily find interesting. They even humor me when I share the same thought in the same voice that we've all had and we've all heard and we've all articulated a million times over. And while that's not necessarily "knowing" or "getting" someone in some (probably impossible) completely whole or total sense, it absolutely sounds like love, which makes it a little harder to get too down about feeling small.
So, I guess I'll chock this post up as therapy and as the first or 30th step in sorting out my own, personal, 100 percent-unique-to-me experience of this whole universal "wanting to be known and wanting to be valued" thing. I guess I keep digging through all the words in my head until I find some outlet, some community, some way of voicing that makes me feel heard and makes me feel like what I voice matters beyond me.
P.S. I'm wholly aware that this whole post was both circular and ironic. I champion that History Boys quote only to undermine it, and then I ultimately articulate that I would, indeed, feel like my hand was being held by someone who anonymously validated some piece of myself that I thought no one valued or noticed. Again, I think it's the difference between the feeling I'm discussing here and what it feels like to feel that feeling.
