While walking around the park with shelter dogs and other volunteers a couple weeks ago, I had a couple of relatively lengthy conversations about my interest in urban space/place, what I'd intended to achieve by going for a master's degree, and about cities in general. It feels important to me, explaining how the 20th century Great Migration led to northern cities being notably more segregated than southern ones, the discriminatory real estate practices that caused that segregation, and how the move of industry to the sun belt made things even worse. A lot of folks don't realize that the northern US is more highly segregated than the South. I talked about my awareness of deeply unfair playing fields for people born in different places, and how I wanted to be involved with public policy that would address those issues.
( More about trying to make a differnce in the world )I've been talking to my therapist about the feelings of inadequacy or avoidance I have in situations like seminars in grad school, or even in conversations about complex topics with friends. I've had a deep belief, for all of my life I think, that whatever I have to contribute to a conversation, someone else around will know more about that thing than I do. Thus, I shouldn't bother trying to express my experiences or viewpoint.
When I was little, I never had any interest in being around people my own age. I had nothing in common with them, and what interactions I did have were negative. I felt superior to them I guess. I was always proud to be chosen to read something aloud in class because I was clearly the best reader there. I didn't understand why any of these words were difficult for the other kids who had to slowly sound them out. At recess, I ignored other kids and would sit with a notebook trying to figure out things like the speed of light in miles per hour, or the age in days of famous composers. It was at least partly performative, I think in retrospect. Showing that I wasn't like those other people. I was different. I was smart. Not that it wasn't something I enjoyed, too; creating these arithmetic problems for myself that resulted in strange trivia that I could tell people in conversation.
The conversations I
did have were with my parents and their friends. I always fit in much better with my parents' friends and gaming partners than anybody my age. Those were some fairly intelligent people. F, who was a nuclear engineer. G, who possesses a vast array of information on, and analysis of, historical topics. He could probably be teaching at a university somewhere if he wanted to, except for his non-epileptic seizure disorder and other neurological problems. B, who had been a system administrator since long before there were organizations like CompTIA to certify one's ability to do so. Others too, some of whom I still see from time to time. They're wonderful people and I feel close to them. I've known them longer than anyone except my family.
As a kid though, there was no way I could know as much as them about almost anything. I internalized that fact pretty well, too. There's also a culture of one-upmanship in many geek circles I think, and these folks were not immune. I think I had a couple ways of coping with that. First, I would read obsessively about topics that were interesting to me so that I could have interesting things to say to people that they might not know. (That's a habit that has stuck with me, and once upon a time was one of the things that made me wonder if I was on the autism spectrum.) Second, I actively refrained from those interestingness contests because I knew that I would not win them. I was content to just offer the occasional observation and feel like I was part of things.
That's a mindset that I think has stayed with me all my life. Danae and I were at a board game meetup a few weeks ago where that kind of conversation happened (Danae referred to it being the portion of the evening where everybody tries to out-brilliant each other), and I removed myself to the sidelines and listened. That was partly because a lot of their talk was about hard science that I'm not very familiar with (that crowd leans much more physics than humanities), but it was also because there's a part of me that just feels like there's nothing for me to add. And that's a lot more negative an experience as an adult than it was as a child. I felt left out and alone, but not confident enough to say anything. It's the kind of experience that just makes me want to hide.
It's not that I think people should not be communicating in that way. It's a valid model of communication, and I think one that's both traditional and well-understood in that context. It's just also one that's very difficult for me personally because of my own...stuff.
And I felt that way at Syracuse a lot, too. Certainly nothing I have to say would be of much interest to the people I was in seminars with, my instincts told me. I think it was probably even more true there. I was in a humanities graduate seminar on a topic that the people I was with seemed much better read and more knowledgeable about. Before the urban social justice seminar one evening, I was asked what I thought about one of the books we'd just read. It was a relatively positive and hopeful one, and I really enjoyed reading it; I responded that it was my favorite of the ones we'd read so far. The querent's response felt almost scornful to me. Maybe that's me reading things in to the interaction, but in seminar they all dissected the book pretty thoroughly. Vivisected may be a better word: they sliced it up and held bits of it aloft to demonstrate how they failed to come together to form a viable organism. To be fair, that's how we treated all the books, as that is a main point of such a class. Getting at what works and what doesn't in the realm of theory we're exploring.
Regardless, seminars at Syracuse terrified me. I was terrified of going and exposing my ignorance and analytical shallowness to the world. I was terrified of not going, letting so many people down and squandering my opportunity for a fully funded grad degree. I made myself go. I made myself tear madly through the weekly tomes on justice theory and urban space. And in the end I got an A. The professor commented on my term paper that I was exploring interesting ideas and he hoped I'd continue. I still haven't shown that paper to anybody because I'm embarrassed. I somehow feel that I performed terribly. That my paper was rushed and incoherent. That I hadn't said enough in class, and that it was clear the other students were more knowledgeable, more analytical, just better. After the last session, the professor took people out for a meal at a nearby bar. I couldn't go; I was terrified of that, too. Everyone would know I didn't fit in with the group. I just went home.
I never managed to really make friends with the rest of my incoming class. They didn't invite me to things, and I didn't know how to invite them to do anything. A couple of the women talked about starting a group to work on our Spanish together, and I was excited by the idea. We got together once at the co-op that a couple of them live at and had an evening of Spanish conversation and it was great! But it didn't happen again. I wondered what happened. Did the idea fall by the wayside due to everyone's busy schedules? Did they decide they didn't want me to be a part of it? Was I somehow missing the conversations that people had about when it would happen again? Was there some sort of communication happening that everyone assumed I was part of and I didn't know how to be a part of it? Like, if I knew how to start and maintain friendships like most people then I'd just naturally be in the loop, and because I don't, I'm not? My thoughts were not very rational I suppose, and I was too busy hiding in my apartment and working to think about it too much.
The fears in the last paragraph are different in some ways, but the same in others. I fear not fitting in. I fear not being as smart. I fear being a nuisance. I fear being an imposition.
I didn't feel this way during the span after I split up with me ex and before I went back to undergrad and buried myself in school work. At least, I don't remember feeling that way. Maybe it was just far enough in the background that I don't remember it. The therapist asked me to think, this week, about what my life would be like if my inner joy and wonder shaped my life more than my inner fear. (We've had a couple conversations about personifying aspects of myself and talking to them individually. That's been thought-provoking and I'll write about it sooner or later.) Maybe my life would be more like that span, where I was enjoying conversations with strangers at conventions, and apparently being interesting and confidant enough for a certain person to invite me back to her room at Dellacon and then decide she wanted to stick around with me for six years and counting....
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