Humanness.

I started therapy in December. I noticed that many of the things that I've spent my entire life grappling with were not actually my own problems. They were projections and long-term effects of the decisions of other people. Eating my feelings? Projections resulting in internalized guilt for always being the thin friend. Depression? Internalized reaction to the life decisions of others (sometimes including the world as a whole). Low self-esteem? Having a childhood best friend who constantly criticized her looks and never listened to praise, which somehow turned into me criticizing my looks out of sympathy. General anxiety? Being raised (in part) by a Virgo. No matter how pessimistic, therapy has at least helped to me analyze situations and determine whether I am the problem or if I’m simply experiencing *a* problem. But lately, there’s one issue that I haven’t been able to address: my own humanness.

I say “humanness” instead of “humanity” to emphasize the idea of me being a real, individual person versus simply being a member of a living society. I like to think that I’m compassionate and empathetic, gifts I got from my mother and those before her. They’re both a blessing and a curse. They help me to find other compassionate people, but allow various people to section me into random levels of an arbitrary hierarchy of importance. Essentially, it leaves me in scenarios where people feel comfortable telling me they can’t give me 6% despite actively giving 10 other people 40% each. I know that math doesn’t add up–that’s the point. 

Compassion and empathy are both double-edged swords. They curse you with allow you the ability to see the moment the sword is headed toward the other person. But instead of avoiding the pain altogether, it encourages you to grip the blade with your bare hands and plunge it into yourself. Compassion is allowing your friend who’s owed you $400 for 2 months to keep holding out because they bought their parent an expensive birthday gift 2 weeks ago. Empathy is watching someone you love face the consequences of the decisions they made that have also affected you, without being upset because you’ve already put yourself in their shoes. Compassion is knowing that you asked someone for a genuinely simple favor yet feeling bad because you know the person is swamped with completely voluntary commitments. Empathy is knowing the full extent of their exhaustion and letting it slide in hopes that they’ll heal. But as a compassionate and empathetic person, when is enough enough? In an ironic twist, I reflect upon my former Virgo friend who bizarrely ended our friendship by claiming that she was “drained” after “energetically supporting [me] since [I] began law school.” I want to make clear that this is not that. I know better than to voluntarily extend my energy in ways that do nothing but exhaust me. Rather, this is a result of genuinely feeling bad that people don’t expect me to have feelings about things. Imagine the controversy of white medical trainees genuinely believing that Black patients couldn't feel pain as badly because they had "less sensitive nerve endings" but with my emotions.

At the start of COVID, I had what I believe to be my first mental breakdown. I lived alone in a city that was 3 hours from my family. I was in a long-distance relationship and 98% of my friends from undergrad had left. As global uncertainty grew, I juggled between tending to my own mental health while feeling guilt for people who had lost loved ones to COVID or were grappling with households full of screaming kids. I convinced myself that I was “lucky” to at least be alive and not be trapped with major stressors. In doing that, I deprioritized myself and shoved the consequences to the backburner. 

I talked to my therapist about the people in my life and the issue of humanness. “Always understanding, but never understood” were the exact words I used for her. "Understanding" in the context of actively empathizing with people and *understanding* the depth of their troubles. I grieved with my therapist about watching people I love enforce their boundaries in their interactions with me, while simultaneously complaining that no one else respects their boundaries…without them realizing that they haven’t actually enforced their boundaries with anyone other than me. It forced me to question whether I’m viewed as an actual person or a resource. Always the title of friend, confidant, counselor, or any other fill-in-the-blank first, with my humanness--raw emotions and all--an afterthought. 

So as a general announcement to all: Yes, I do feel things. Even when I don't speak up. Especially when I don't speak up. And as a response to their stress levels, I downplay my genuine feelings and emotional needs as a means to avoid piling things on them.

My therapist asked me (in better words) if I had ever “snapped” at the people who do this. I told her no, and she explained that maybe I would need to. With that compassion/empathy sword still sticking out from my abdomen, I still question whether I dare stress anyone else out with this thing that very much affects me in real-time. I often feel invisible, like I'm not real. I ask myself whether every invitation and consideration from these people is out of pity. I question whether I exist as a human or just an entity. I ask myself if I'm even real at all. And beneath the surface, I grapple with the possibility of being called “dramatic” or “selfish” for asking for just a sliver of someone’s time. The general consensus is that most people can’t give the 6% I mentioned earlier not because of the 10 other people getting 40% but rather because the 6% is what they’re desperately trying to hold onto for themselves. But similar to the example with the friend borrowing money, I see the 6% being withheld just so they can add an 11th person to the list. What hurts the most is hearing what the 40% is for and hearing them articulate how they know that the 40% is voluntarily draining them and expecting me to fully empathize with them while fully or partially rejecting me. What about me as a person makes it so easy to just turn me down? To assume that I'll be okay without ever asking? And what makes it so difficult to do it with anyone else? I just want people to say "No" to everyone equally. I'm all for boundaries, but I'm not for inequality. I’m tired of being the recipient of “I’m so sorry but you’re like the only one who understands!!” from every angle. I’m tired of understanding and never being understood. It’s like having a parent who consistently puts themselves first and knowing there’s no use in being sad that they can’t come to your little league game--not because they’re working, but because they already agreed to take your cousins out to dinner.

Relationships are two-way streets and require work. Therapy has forced me to examine my familial, platonic, and romantic relationships in ways that have made me uncomfortable. It’s not easy accepting the fact that people you adore treat you like an expensive doormat for the simple fact that you haven’t called them out on their behavior. I'd like to think of these people as people, not dogs who need toys and play time taken away to remind them not to sh*t indoors. And in an era when everyone’s decisions are “valid”, how do I address the fact that I often feel as though my feelings are not? Why must I cry, scream, and shout to be seen as a human? When other people insist that their words should be “enough” for me to understand their perspective, why do they not extend me the same grace? Why do I have to make a blog post declaring my humanness to the world for people to actually consider it? I want to believe that violence isn’t the answer but