Writing This Made My Stomach Hurt

A brief disclaimer: I have never been diagnosed with anything along the lines of anxiety, so I am not trying to speak to a general sentiment here.  This is my attempt to explain my own difficulties with interpersonal relations.

Social anxiety makes everyone into strangers, while simultaneously making strangers safer than friends.  For me, strangers are easy to interact with, particularly in the contexts I usually find myself–when I’m working, or when they are working, it’s easy because I know what to expect from someone who comes in to order food or someone who is processing my requests at the post office or the bank.  It still makes me nervous, but I can prepare myself.  

Once I kind of know someone, however, some of the padding goes away.  Once faces and names are familiar, people expect more of me, and different things, things I can’t predict.  People who come into the store quite regularly start asking me questions about myself, offering information about themselves.  I have no idea how they are going to respond to my responses.  These conversations I find much more awkward, and therefore much more terrifying, than the light small talk exchanged with strangers.

Then there are true acquaintances: people I know from church or from work, who know the general shape of my life and I know theirs.  If I know about their family and they know the name of my cat and my roommate, in some ways it is easier.  But I still have to play the role of the person they know, still have to fit myself into the parameters in which they expect to see me.  And while I no longer have to quite explain myself every other sentence, which is a relief, there is a new fear in the form of defying the expectations they already have.  I have to guard myself to make sure I won’t say something out of character, something that doesn’t fit in the mental picture they already have.  It's not rejection I fear, but lack of understanding--that I will describe something that is so very important to me and receive a blank look in return.  Those awkward "oh, okay"s are horrifying to me in a way that I can't explain.  I am constantly concerned with protecting other people’s comfort level with me.

I’m so grateful for my real, true friends, who have revealed time and again that even if I let down my guard, even if I just be bluntly obvious about myself, they will still find something to admire and love in me.  These, of course, are unicorns, precious and few.  And still even with them, sometimes I can’t ask for what I need.  I love them so much that the idea of burdening them, or even inconveniencing them in any way, terrifies me.  What have I done for them, after all?  What do they really get out of this friendship with me?

Is it any wonder that I haven’t found a significant other yet?  This final level of friendship, this boss fight of human interaction, would mean a person in whose company I am always comfortable, whose love and acceptance of me are beyond doubt.  This someone would have to be someone who had been tested and tried and had proved themselves worthy of seeing my soft, vulnerable self with no shell whatsoever, and who would never be tempted to take advantage of that trust.  Not only am I terrified of the process it would take to get to this level, I am doubtful that anyone could ever actually beat it.  And yet I long for this person, for this one human, this exquisite creature, with whom I could share my least, strangest thought, and know that they understand and resonate with it, with me.

All Hail

I’m nearly always late to get excited about trends.  I’m the anti-hipster—I only like things once they’re not cool anymore.  Most of the time it’s because I am reluctant to invest in any story, no matter the medium, unless I’m sure that I will enjoy it.  My time is way too valuable to waste.  While this protects me from some bad works, it also means I miss out on wonderful things unless someone who knows me strong-arms me into the experience.  Oddly enough, it is often Pinterest or Tumblr that convinces me to watch or read something.  Fans will post art or quotes from the story, and these things will persuade me that maybe I should actually check this story out.  This is how I was introduced to Night Vale.

Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast which began airing in mid-2012 and just recently reached its 100^th episode.  It is written in the style of a small-town local radio show, featuring news, weather, traffic, local events, etc.  All of this might not be very interesting except that Night Vale is a place where very strange things happen.  An aircraft appears for a moment in the middle of a baseball stadium, hooded figures wander through the dog park (where under no condition are you to go, nor to take your dog), and various surveillance helicopters fly over the town, occasionally scooping up stray children.  And that’s just the first episode.

The host of the radio show and voice of Night Vale, Cecil, is a man with several mysteries of his own.  He is cheerful, humorous, profound, and inspiring.  Though initially just a voice on the radio, he soon evolves into a character of his own, struggling with imperfect relationships.  What I find most fascinating about him and the way he tells the story is the way he frames what can be a truly nightmarish life.  In Night Vale, surveillance is everywhere, magic and sheer weirdness destroy lives in every episode, and yet Cecil still talks about the goodness in life.  He reacts to horror and pain with humor and wisdom, making the best of the various strange situations and showing love for his home and his town despite its danger.

Night Vale truly does question the notion of what is normal.  There are several points in the series where Cecil wonders if he or the world even exist, or if it is all just an illusion.  Time travel, wars in space, and dark sacrificial rituals are de rigueur, and town-wide disasters happen so often that people tend to get bored of them.  What’s more, though, is Night Vale normalizes some things that still cause controversy in the so-called “real world”.  One of the running plot points for the show involves the development of the relationship between Cecil and the town scientist Carlos.  The show features disabled characters, non-binary characters, and characters with various religions and races, and they are all treated as if these traits are secondary to their value as thinking entities.  Indeed, Cecil offers support and understanding to artificial intelligences and five-headed dragons, so why not?  It is a powerful statement, I think, on how to respect others regardless of their viewpoints or backgrounds.

Most fascinating to me, however, is the beautiful and thought-provoking language, and this, I feel, can only be conveyed in the exact words, so here are a few of my favorite quotes.  Some of them are drawn directly from the podcast, while some come from the associated twitter, @NightValeRadio.

“The universe is unraveling, but how beautiful these moments within the dissolve.”

“Fear is consciousness plus life.  Regret is an attempt to avoid what has already happened.  Toast is bread held under direct heat until crisp.  The present tense of regret is indecision.  The future tense of fear is either tragedy or comedy.  The past tense of toast is toasted.”

“I could teach and preach and shout and explain, but no lesson is as powerful as the lesson learned on one’s own.”

“All the beauty of the world was made within oppressive limitations of time and death and impermanence.”

“Mostly void; partially stars.”

“Today you will meet a beautiful stranger.  Actually hundreds of beautiful strangers.  Everyone is beautiful and you know almost none of them.”

“ ‘Human being’, like ‘men working’ and ‘children playing’, is a sentence with a noun, a verb, and the possibility of an imminent disaster.”

“Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.”

I highly recommend this exquisite, humorous, expansive work, still ongoing after five years.  Episodes are released twice monthly and can be found through ITunes or other podcast apps, on YouTube, or via their website, welcometonightvale.com. 

“Close your eyes.  Let my words wash over you.  You are safe now.  Welcome to Night Vale.”