Catskill Collective

Thank you. I hope so, too.

I half-understand where parts of my argument could be read as “essentialist,” but only if someone is coming from a place where they’ve turned social materialism into dogma. Material conditions shape people enormously, obviously. But a wide variety of material conditions have existed throughout history, and solitary, novelty-seeking, nocturnal, private, intense, or otherwise socially unconventional people have persisted through all of them for reasons we may never be able to explain.

My point was never “people are fixed and society can’t change anything.” My point was that social diversity is real, and liberation should mean making room for more kinds of people, not deciding that everyone would obviously become the same kind of emotionally available, diurnal, uncomplicated person if only the bad conditions went away.

Them: People are naturally mellow extroverts who love crafting.

You: Many people are not like that.

Them: But they should be.

You: Why?

STOP INSULTING THEIR LOOKS

THEY DON'T DESERVE IT

MORE IMPORTANTLY:

anyway I did cry while we drove home from the wedding just because no one was like... mad at me. at my friend's wedding. which is deranged, because why would anyone be mad at you for being at your friend's wedding when they invited you to attend their wedding. like lol what. anyway

I have had this exact same experience my entire life, right up to the same feeling of complete shock and... I don't know how to phrase it. Difficulty comprehending? When I find myself in the company of one of those rare people who don't treat me like a termite in an ant nest and instead just, like, gets to know me, and likes me.

It's impossible to get anyone who hasn't lived it to understand just how absolutely and completely BIZARRO WORLD it feels to make a joke... and have someone laugh. To have someone willingly pick the seat next to you. To be invited into a conversation. To be liked, at all- not even in an over the top "this is my best friend she's the coolest" way but just in a "I am happy to have this person around and I'm not going to willfully go out of my way to misinterpret everything she says and every subtle mannerism of hers in the worst possible way" sort of way.

Because when you've got this superpower, that's what it's like. From most people, most of the time. You walk into the room and you're already tagged as an enemy. Some people are nice on day one but by the end of day three they don't want to engage with you and start muttering behind your back. You get alienated from every group interaction, up to and including official business ones. It doesn't matter what you say or choose not to say, it's never right, and SOMEONE will be upset about it. If you keep to yourself you're haughty, if you make small talk you're nosy, and they NEVER like you, and you're NEVER right, and you grow up just KNOWING that it's you. You're the problem. A rare friend or parent might say there's nothing wrong with you but you know in your heart that the only consistent factor in your problems is YOU. Everything you say and everything you think is poison, you're just loathesome like that, nobody wants you around, no one has ever wanted you around...

... and then you meet the right person, and, like. The superpower just doesn't affect them. You say things, and they hear the actual thing you said. You can talk to them. You can answer questions or offer suggestions and they'll listen to you. You can make jokes or be sarcastic and they'll be amused. You can be REALLY daring and be a little rude and they'll just laugh or shrug it off or just tell you that was rude and everyone moves on without treating you like a monster for it. And it's just as easy as the interactions that everyone around you have always had, and you didn't have to change a damned thing about yourself to get there. Because it turns out the problem wasn't you in the first place.

i think the hardest part of when you interact with people who just respond to you like you're a person is that it makes it so immediately clear how like... it DOESN'T take some sort of superhuman effort to interpret you that way. the people who take you in good faith AREN'T working twenty million times as hard as everyone else somehow. they're just ... treating you like a person. everyone who made you feel like your expectation or desire to be treated like a regular person was somehow Asking Too Much of them was lying. it is not asking too much. the people who do it do it easily.

its really, really hard to maintain the kind of prosocial optimism about human society that I work really hard to maintain when I'm reminded that people are often making choices NOT because the alternative is just too hard. but because they simply don't think it's important to look beyond instant kneejerk emotional reactions to people. they simply don't think it's important to not Punish People who have done nothing actually wrong except sort of give them the creeps. they're lazy.

I wrote a master’s thesis on intentionally single people, and the number of them that said in various ways, “I didn’t know not dating people was even an option at first” was absolutely tragic. They honestly thought they had no choice and it never occurred to them that opting out was even a possibility available to them.  

People honestly believe these are life experience you are required to have AND THEY ARE NOT.