Introspection: Day Two

By Circe -
I'm not very good at asking for comfort. One reason is that I learned very early on that no one was responsible for coddling me. Asking people to do it anyway was a great way to get disappointed, if not yelled at.

Another reason is that... well, it doesn't help much. I don't generally verbalize things to other people until they have grown to a serious, obstructive Problem, which hugging does nothing concrete to alleviate. The only problem you can fix with hugging is the problem of "I have been insufficiently hugged today." Inasmuch as I do have friends, and many of them are in the performing arts, this is not a state of affairs that persists long enough to be an issue. People in theater will hug you because you're arriving, or departing, or remaining, or happy, or sad, or nervous, or because you've broken up with someone, or just because it happens to be a Wednesday in the month before the spring equinox just before the full moon.

I've any number of people who would listen to the story of my Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day and respond by giving me a hug. It would be nice. It would convey validation and sympathy. It is communication, hot-swappable with words, and I recognize it on a personal, but intellectual, level. It just doesn't do anything to fix the Problem, and without fixing the Problem, I'm going to remain upset.

Seldom do I think, "I want [person] here to hug me right now, because that would make me feel better." There are very few people I have ever felt this way about. But I acquired one of them in 2018, and I have no idea what to do with this.

On the rare occasion that anything like that does cross my mind, I generally think, "Huh. That's interesting," and file it away for later. I keep that shit to myself. I have a policy of not asking questions to which I do not want to know the answer, and not asking for things that I know will not help. I treat that thought much as I treat the realization that I want to punch all the stupid people in the stupid subway station right in the backs of their stupid heads, because I'm tired and in pain and they're between me and the next place to sit down. It's an indication that I'm exhausted and about to lose my ability to deal with things like a civilized human being, so therefore I should go the fuck home until I'm reasonable again.

This particular person, though they would obviously rather see me happy, actually aims to be their friends' crying shoulder. They want to be the person who gets 1 am phone calls from friends who are drunk and just ditched the worst Tindr date they've ever had without any way home. (I would never make this call, because it would never occur to me. If I'm ever lost/stuck, I just walk around looking for a bus stop. Transit is slow, noisy, and inefficient out here, but it is omnipresent, and it's not hard to find a bus going to literally anywhere I recognize, from whence I can get home.) I'm not entirely sure I will ever get used to it.

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