9/9/24

  I get quiet when I'm overwhelmed. Almost 99% of the time, if I ever actually get angry, it usually comes from a place of already attempting to remove myself from an equation that managed to push that last little button. As someone who, as shamefully as I am to admit it, feels a lot of anger a lot of the time, quietness, solitude, and deep breaths have become my closest friends over the last couple of decades. A lot of that is because, alone in my room, surrounded by my belongings, my mess, my thoughts, and my emotions, I can deal with everything much more patiently. Of course, getting overwhelmed, and feeling my emotions as strongly as I do will occur no matter where I am, my brain is loud enough without noises I can't control contributing to it, and for that reason, being quiet by myself is when I truly feel the happiest. 

I remember on a vacation once, my parents, sister, and I were staying at a campground we had been to twice before. Unlike most vacations where we feel an unvoiced necessity to get every penny's worth of travel and exploration in while we can, this trip was much calmer, much less anxiety-inducing; for them at least. For the same reason we didn't feel the need to run around quite as much, we also for the first time actually attempted to make some vacationing friends in the short time we stayed there. A family staying at the campsite immediately next to us, and with whom we had already shared our granola-adjacent niceties, had a similar dynamic to us. A Dad who liked to rough it, a Mom who was more than happy to go along with it, an older sibling around my sister's age, and a younger brother only a year younger than I was at the time. However, unlike what felt like everyone else at the time, I was the only one with more than one label given, temporarily unspoken of for the time being. While the older siblings got along because they had similar high school experiences, as did both sets of parents who shared little else than camping and family-related stories, I wasn't just the little brother, I was the gay one. Accustomed to the comfort of my small group of friends who had known me long enough not to question the obvious oddities in my personality, I tended to be, and more than often still am, quite reserved in social gatherings that I don't immediately find common ground in. And because of this, one specific memory stands out in the first day or two of attempting to befriend a group of people I otherwise never would've spoken to twice. Encouraged by my sister's enthusiasm, and what I now can recognize as a moment of relief from getting to enjoy their separate vacation, I accompanied my sister and our newfound friends to meet up with a few others of a similar demographic. And whether it was my overt shyness, or simply having nothing to say to a group of popular-looking high schools at the age of 12, I sat behind my sister, quietly watching them all get to know each other. At the time I was honestly perfectly comfortable. I won't say I was overly fond of our new friends, but my withdrawn persona was only present simply because I had nothing worth giving. I had nothing to say. It wasn't until Kyle, the older sibling at the campsite next to us, asked - or, more accurately, picked on - my quietness that I found myself craving the comfort of my sleeping bag. I had no issues with the strangers I had found myself surrounded by, rather, I came to quite enjoy their company by January 1st when we attempted to leave before the rush of all the other holiday visitors had expired their welcome, but in the moments of which I find myself on the verge of comfort and discomfort, at east and on edge, the last thing I want is attention drawn to me, much less attention drawn to the lack of attention I'm attempting to draw on myself. In times like that - times, I still have today - I wish I was able to project my thoughts without having to verbalize them. In many ways, there is a big part of me that feels almost insecure, as though my reserved demeanor comes off as judgmental or mean, when the reality is simply having nothing to say, especially when I find myself in a certain headspace. 

I won't lie and say I'm a shy person. I like talking to new people and making new acquaintances. On the contrary, on more than a few occasions, I've been called loud, annoyingly so, and even more than that, flamboyant. But it is specific scenarios in which I find myself feeling "fine" that this most notable version of myself becomes so prominent. I'm not in a bad mood, but I equally don't have the energy to be the "loud" version of myself that I inevitably become when I'm feeling noticeably happy. I'm just there. More than happy to be a participant but less than willing to contribute my voice to the discussion; and to that I've recently been pondering why that seems like such an insult to the energy of the room. It comes up on more than one occasion where my quietness becomes louder than if I had shrieked in the middle of someone else's turn to speak and try as I might I can't figure out the reason why. 

I pride myself on my self-awareness, though sometimes to a fault. Obviously not on every occasion, and especially not in situations I haven't been made to take note of before, but the voices of my 3rd-grade teachers and parents alike rang true enough to "think before you speak", that it rubbed off in one way or another. But more than anything, I try to be self-aware around my friends. Unlike my family, my friends are not necessarily expected to be there for me no matter what, much less love me through thick and thin. Friends are made from care and comfort, and after a while, especially in regard to my own feelings about them, they become more like family than actual blood relatives, and in that way, it feels that much better when they do stick around through the good, the bad, and the ugly. However, that should not be the expectation. If the teen years of my relationship with my father taught me anything, it is how easily a few bad days can permanently shape one's perception of you for the years to come, and because of that, since the start of college, I have tried harder than anything else to keep the ugly to myself as much as I can muster. Unlike the ones who played a role in my existence, my friends never signed up for anything other than companionship. It's rare that friendships are built on negativity, or angry emotions, especially towards one another. If nothing else some of the friendships I built during my freshman year cemented that belief permanently in the back of my mind. Friendships are built on happy memories shared between the two of you, similar tastes in similar things, and a desire to be near one another. Thus, in the rare occurrence of the relationships I have maintained in my adult life, I try my hardest to, if not keep my negative emotions at bay, keep them as far away from being taken out on any of those I want to keep close to me. 

Bad days happen, and when constantly surrounded by the people who you chose, and chose you, to be closest to, such negativity will likely rear its ugly head in their presence. However, what I remind myself, especially within the last trying year, is that on more than most days, said bad days have absolutely nothing to do with them. They are the people I love most in the world, the ones I share thoughts and jokes and sadness and joy with on a daily, and as much as an attitude can become present, an angry demeanor toward them is not something I want to be known for. So I got quiet. I sit in silence, responding not with my words, but with a head nod or a smile, expressing positivity with my body when negativity has my mind in its grips. 

In popular media that most of us consume today, mental health or, to the same degree, mental illness, is portrayed in what I would call narrow-minded ways. Though, with few exceptions for the ones commended for their accurate portrayals of the good, the bad, and the ugly, most tend to teeter between two archetypes; the ones getting through it (Girl, Interrupted, American Horror Story, Love, Simon), and the ones the writers don't care to venture into too deeply (FRIENDS, Victorious, Harry Potter). They become shallow, angry, disrespectful, hollow people who can only hide themselves away and talk of nothing other than how hard they have it. They don't wash their hair or leave their rooms, they wear baggy clothes and cut off all of their friends, and for that arch of their character, very little else is shown of them - and then they get better! They brush their teeth and go shopping with their Mom after a heartfelt apology for acting the way they did for the last few episodes, and all is set right in the world because whatever was bringing them down was solved over some simple communication and a temporary therapist. On the contrary, there are the ones that are happy, whimsical even, the It girls of the mentally unstable community. They wear wacky clothes and share short little limericks that are rewarded with sideways glances from their friends never to be brought up again. They might have an episode where they cry and express how different they are from everyone else, how nobody will ever really get them, and then they get over it and move on. 

Like any chronic illness, mental health isn't something one endures for a little and moves on, nor is it something one can just focus on other things and ignore. For many, and most, it's a daily occurrence, a wave of emotions picking up and plummeting down in waves for days, weeks, months, and years. And for some, it's something undeniable. It can be something one has to get through, and it can be something one can ignore, but it is also usually both simultaneously. Thus we have the third and what I find to be the most accurate archetype; The Eeyore. In any version of Winnie the Pooh one finds, Eeyore can be seen right alongside him. He sits, with a pin in his ass and a frown on his face, accompanying Winnie and his friends no matter the occasion, because despite his melancholic demeanor, and less than excitable attitude, he continues to feel all the same feelings the rest of the Winnie the Pooh gang feels, just without the energy to express it quite as blatantly as Pooh or Little Rue. 

I recently had a conversation with my Mom about some of these ideas, furthering it by saying how badly I wish people could just see inside my head. To be able to skip the conversation, and explanation of how I feel and whether or not I'm upset, for the people closest to me to understand that my simple expressions are not a representation of how I'm feeling overall, but a manifestation of the headspace I'm trying to avoid. I feel insecure on many occasions that my aptitude for silence translates as an attitude toward those around me, knowing the more I'm asked if I'm ok the less I will be able to continue convincing myself I am. Because when it comes down to it, I know I am. I know as I sit in the car with my best friend listening to music I like, bopping my head and tapping my toe to the on and off beats, that everything is fine, but somewhere between Target and Thomas St, I lost the ability to express it. So I go quiet. I sit and hope to separate my mindset from the conversation occurring between two of the people I like being around the most, finding enjoyment in getting to be a part of it, without a need to participate. 

I like literature so much because it's one of the few forms of media where you get to see everything laid out directly in front of you; words, actions, environments, thoughts, all participating to create one unilaterally clear picture. All separate parts of the same story, equally contributing to its creation but each playing a separate role. This is what I wish could exist for myself. I know at the end of the day the friend who sits quietly in the back is the least fun to be around, and the last thing I would expect is for people to want to give energy to someone who, from time to time, has absolutely none to give in return. But that is why characters like Eeyore, like Charlie from Perks of Being a Wallflower, like Oscar the Grouch, like Elio from Call Me By Your Name are so important to me in a world full of Love, Simon's and Phoebe Buffy's are so important to me. Not as though I'm exactly like them, or as though I am always this demure, shy, quiet, misunderstood person, but because they portray a small part of me that even I don't always understand. As much as I want to be a Phoebe, or a Luna Lovegood, or a Susanna, more often than not, I'm not, and I find myself to be just as much of a bummer as Eeyore seems to everyone else.