Deadweight Butterflies

Analogies are tricky things.  Their purpose is simple enough—to make difficult concepts simpler.  The tricky part is that it is anything but simple to craft the perfect analogy.  This is exponentially true in relation to the complexity of the concept to be communicated or, in my case, its proximity to the truth.

Simple concepts require few words.  But, how would you describe the color red to a person who has been blind from birth?  These sorts of notions—those that can’t be directly inferred though personal experience by the audience—require significantly more.  For this reason, analogies tend not state their meaning outright.  They do not exist to inform only the analytical portions of the mind.  This creates only knowledge.  It’s one thing to know the Moon has less gravity than the Earth.  It’s another thing entirely to be Neil Armstrong on July 20th, 1969.  This level of understanding requires a deeper, more personal form of thought.  Emotions must be included.  So, analogies are built to engage the senses rather than relay concepts.  It is through enduring these conceptual scenarios and the emotions attached to them that we gain empathy.

This is why we have stories.  As before, simpler ideas require fewer words to express their meaning.  A children’s book about counting colorful fish can be a fun read while teaching its young audience fundamental notions that will improve their lives as they grow.

Teaching adults the complexities of inter-human conflict is another beast entirely.  The larger the concept, the more is needed to distill it into something that can be digested.  It’s why Tolstoy’s novel, War and Peace, often more famous for its length than its subject, uses about 570,000 words (depending on translation) to tell the story surrounding the French invasion of Russia in 1812 from the perspective of those who witnessed it.  Les Misérables, longer still, requires just over 650,000 words (in the English translation) to tell a similar tale of humans in conflict leading to the June Rebellion in 1832.  These works are fictional.  The conflicts and emotions they relay are not.

I think it’s for this reason that I’ve written so much about my social anxieties over the years.  The stories I’ve shared are more than anecdotes and observations from my peculiar perspective.  Each piece has been a quest to find the perfect anecdote—the perfect analogy—to help people understand why it is so difficult for me to engage with others.  They’ve all served their purpose in one way or another, but none can fully express exactly how I see the world.  Perhaps that’s just the way it is.  To a blind person, red is just a term without meaning.  No amount of analogy can ever allow their other senses to perceive it as those with sight can perceive it, just as those without anxiety issues can never fully understand my perspective.

At least, that’s the story I tell myself each time I complete one of these pieces.  Analogies, you see, can mask the truth as much as they help reveal it for the writer as much as they do the reader.  They obscure our gaze and misdirect our focus from their true purpose through clever wordplay and thoughtful description, blurring the edges just enough to allow for the most dangerous result of literature:  misinterpretation.

I’ve been inspired recently, as I often am, by failure.  I’m going to break an unwritten rule of writing to point out that this is not my first draft of this piece.  It’s my fourth.  The first pass was terrible, as always.  The second was much improved, but not ready to share.  The third, I thought, was the winner.  Only I hadn’t considered how my words would be interpreted and, for one individual, I crossed a line.

I wrote in that lost draft of a woman I met recently.  I attempted to be vague about her identity, but failed miserably in that regard for she easily recognized herself in my words.  I wrote how I attempted to befriend her because I could relate to some of her mental health struggles on controlling skewed perceptions and felt it would be nice to have a friend who could relate to some of mine.  My own attempts to interact with her were clouded by my anxieties, which bordered on panic that I desperately tried to restrain.  I maintained awkward silences, unsure about what to say and when to speak.  When I did speak, it was either on subjects unrelated to the topic or for far too long to be considered polite.

I went on to theorize—wrongly—that I had been making her uncomfortable.  I then presumed—incorrectly—that this discomfort was caused by her assumption that I was expressing romantic interest and she, not reciprocating, wasn’t sure how to let me down.  I went on to clarify—foolishly—that I had only been attempting friendship.  So, I—stupidly—decided to leave her alone, feeling utterly defeated once again with no one to blame but myself. 

This small, seemingly innocuous story was meant to be nothing more than a transition leading to the next section of the piece where I used it as the source of my inspiration for a new analogy to describe my anxieties in a way others might find relatable.  It went a little like this:

Think about the last time you had a crush on someone.  I mean head-over-heels, unspoken romantic interest in someone to the point that it hurt while you were away from them and terrified you when you were near.  That flutter of butterflies in your chest, the tightening of your throat when you tried to speak, the lightheadedness, the shortness of breath—all of it was terrible and wonderful at the same time.  None of it made any kind of logical sense, yet the feeling had its own form of rationale.

You wanted to stand as close to them as possible while also wanting to run and hide.  As much as you wanted to speak to them, you were afraid to do so for fear of driving them away.  When you did speak, your words stumbled out of your mouth in ineloquent bursts.  You were easily humiliated by mistakes in their presence.  You were awkward and clumsy near them, so you felt foolish often. 

Yet, you kept coming back, didn’t you?  You kept trying because they were wonderful and the alternative was so much worse.  The butterflies took to roost when you were alone.  They pressed into every empty void.  Your heart ached under their collective weight.

So, you had a dilemma.  Which felt worse:  the weight of staying away or the flurry of trying again?  You had to choose.  Neither option was pleasant, but only one offered some chance at happiness—unless your feelings weren’t reciprocated.  Then, either option was doomed.  That thought was terrifying on a whole new level.  There was no third option.  You had to choose, but the thought of having to choose made you all the more anxious.  It fed on itself until you couldn’t take the pressure anymore.  You had to make your choice.  So, you did.

For me, this feeling strikes not when I’m near someone I adore but with every other person I meet to varying degrees.  It’s not that I have romantic interests in everyone.  It’s just that the importance my mind puts on everyday, mundane interactions is at the same heightened level that most people reserve for one, special human being.  It’s as if the dial on the part of my brain that controls my ability to measure the social hierarchy is offset a few notches higher than most everyone else.  It is so poorly calibrated, in fact, that I’ve come to the point wherein I doubt I could handle any relationship more serious than platonic friendship.

Sometimes, even attempting that is beyond me.  It’s stressful and it’s depressing when I fail.  Being aware of the offset doesn’t change anything.  It just means I have to put a lot of work towards lowering that dial to the point that I can interact with people.  It takes a lot of focus and energy, but it is possible.  So, if I’m attempting to start a conversation with you, please know that I feel you’re worth the effort.

That means I have a choice, don’t I?  I could keep trying because people, on the whole, are awesome; or I could become a recluse carrying deadweight butterflies and carve my sad memoir into the walls of my apartment with a dwindling collection of silverware.  Either option is frightening, but only one offers some hope in finding contentment.  There is no third option.  There is no way to opt out and the thought of having to decide is as terrifying as the decision itself until I can’t take the pressure anymore.  Then, I do what I do every morning when I wake up.

I make my choice. 

End of story.  Only, there’s no such thing.  There is always the next chapter.  The maxim with which I opened this piece, and that earlier draft, held true:  It is anything but simple to craft the perfect analogy.

I’m not going to detail her exact words to me during her reaction, but she interpreted my previous piece as a passive aggressive attack on her character.  It wasn’t, but that doesn’t matter.  That’s how she perceived it so, whether I like it or not, that’s what it was and her anger was justified.  Needless to say, she wanted nothing to do with me ever again.

Where did I go wrong?  I got lost in my own analogy.  Honestly, I don’t think I even knew what I was aiming for when I began the original piece but it’s there, buried beneath the metaphors and compound sentences.  Sometimes I have to get the words out before I know what I’m saying.  Truthfully, what I wanted to say was terrifying.  So, I found every way imaginable to say it without saying it, masking it in analogy with the hope someone else would notice and say it for me. 

It is a cowardly way to write.  In my attempt to shield myself from pain, I inflicted it on someone else.  By writing less than the full truth, I failed to say the truth at all and was misunderstood.  It is a difficult, and costly, lesson to learn.

How to correct it, then?  The answer is that I can’t.  The damage has been done and I have little power to do anything about it except apologize.  What I can do is tell the truth—without mincing words through analogies or labored similes.

I thought my previous draft of this piece was going to help people relate to my anxieties through common experience.  I was wrong.  I didn’t need to mention the circumstances surrounding my meeting this specific woman, or use the metaphor of people with crushes, if that were the case.  I could have used any scenario of my failure to make friends—trust me, I have plenty—but I selected her.  Though I never expected her to read it, I think she is only person to have recognized the truth in that original piece—a truth hidden to everyone else, including its author.

Honestly, I really liked this girl from the moment I met her.  She struggles with so much more than I do with my anxieties and she faces it courageously with a smile on her face.  She’s really quite impressive.  I was too frightened by what I felt to ever do anything about it, even acknowledge it.  I realize now my assumption that I was making her uncomfortable was only me seeking an excuse to run away again.  I run a lot in many ways, but I want so much to be able to stand firm one day.

I don’t know if that will ever happen.  I’m afraid I’ve become so defensive that I will never have the courage to allow myself to care for someone—or to allow them to care for me—as deeply as I would like.  In my last draft, I eluded at the end that I wake up every morning and choose to face the world with the butterflies fluttering away in my chest because it’s better than the alternative.  This is another lie I’ve told myself to hide the fact that I’d, in fact, chosen the alternative.  I’d chosen to carry their whole, nesting swarm inside me for so long I’d forgotten what it was like to live without the burden of their weight.

So, what’s the moral of this story about humans in conflict I’ve used almost 2,200 words to relay?  The fact is that it’s up to you.  I know what it means to me.  It may mean something quite different to you, but I hope it’s as significant.  The beauty is that we’re both right.

All I know is that I still haven’t found the perfect analogy.  Perhaps I never will.  Now, I’m not so certain that’s a bad thing.  They are so very tricky and the truth is so simple it hurts.