And another

[greenstorm]

PDA helps explain why I get so angry at the unstated social expectations folks have, especially the ones I'm completely aware of. I always want to force people to acknowledge those: "if we live together you'll expect me to talk to you every day" or "now that we're dating, if you go through a hard time you'll expect me to accommodate that" or "if we see each other every week for a year, you'll continue to expect to see me every week".

I've always been a little puzzled by my need to make these explicit. Now I understand it: it's not that I don't want to do these social things with someone. What I was trying was to feel seen around the magnitude of what was being asked, trying to make clear the huge commitment involved in agreeing to an expectation (even an expectation for something I want to do).

But of course folks were confused because it just... isn't a big thing for them.

I watched a YouTube video tonight, someone with ADHD who took an adderall for the first time. Not long after it kicked in she started crying: "it's so easy to do things now" she said.

Of course no one was going to acknowledge the magnitude of meaning involved in my knowing a behavior would create expectations and doing it anyhow. Of course no one would understand that as an absolute expression of love, of those people's importance in my life.

For most people both the creation of those expectations and the expectations themselves are throwaway activities, incidental, secondary.

For me it's playing chicken with a train. And, more often than not, the train hits me.

Comments

[greenstorm]

People are so *diverse*. Every time I think I understand it, I learn that I don't understand it. I still don't think I've met anyone with whom I share an internal experience, not really? Not in person? And I'm not sure I can believe that's uncommon?

[yarrowkat]

it's so true. there are these big human universals (like love & grief, i mean, the huge things) and at the same time, each person is incredibly individual even in how they experience the universals. i think my personal epistemology is common enough (or effectively socialized, take your pick; i think that if cultural socialization was not quite so oppressive, there might be quite a lot more expressed diversity among people), but at the same time, there are ways in which my internal experience feels completely different from every person i know - like i might have one part of it in common with this person, and another part in common with that person, but nobody quite aligns with all of it.

[greenstorm]

I've always connected easily with people on a deep level, and I've always been able to find some commonality with someone. So many of those folks have seemed so relieved to be slipping around the edges of that oppressive socialization of whatever we were talking about. But the *experience* of it seems so different and, as yo say, nobody aligns with all of it. And of course our stories spend so little time on interiority so we can better inhabit these general stories.

I pingpong back and forth between human diversity being riveting and exhausting.