Liane Holliday Willey - Pretending to be Normal

The instant he violated my space, I backed up to move myself away from everything about his actions and his person that gagged me. Still he kept coming toward me, inch by inch, very slowly like a motion picture stopping at every frame. It never dawned on me to scream. It did not occur to me to run, though I never quit backing up. I do not think my feeble reactions were affected by a state of shock. I was conscious of the room, the stillness and the darkness outside and the fact that we were alone. I do not remember tasting fear the way I do when my children almost wander into a busy street or when I see a terrible accident almost happen. I think I was just unable to separate my sensible emotions from my sensory overload on that day; everything was too jumbled.

Thankfully, miraculously, a male student I had never known to be early before, came into the class and quickly and confidently walked to my side so that he was wedged between the man and myself. For some reason, the student’s closeness to me did not offend me, but it did bother the man. In the blink of an eye, he disappeared out the door. When the man was gone from the room, I remember the student asking me if I was okay, if I needed anything, if the man had hurt me. I remember remaining very calm, almost wondering why he was so concerned, then I remembered the man’s smell, his violating my personal space. Then, I knew I should have been afraid. I knew I had made a terrible error in judgement. I knew I had just been very, very lucky.

I took that experience with me like a student takes the knowledge he uses to pass an exam. I let it teach me a lesson about human behavior, one I was unable to know intrinsically. Never since then have I put myself in a position where I might be caught off guard. I still go many places alone, but never without looking for a quick exit, never without reminding myself that if someone does come too close I should scream, and never without telling myself there are people in the world who do mean to harm others. Lessons come hard sometimes, and sometimes, at a very high cost. The price I give to understand people is often more than I have to offer.

The experience at the university pointed out to me just how little I understood about human behavior. Objectively, I was able to see how close my inability to judge a person’s motive properly had brought me to personal harm, but still I could not catagorize what made one person safe, another fun, another someone to build a relationship with or another someone to avoid. I did realize, by then, that there were some rules to friendships, some parameters that made them possible and sustaining, but I was still unclear as to what those rules and parameters were. To be perfectly honest, I remain confused.

After I quit the university, I took a job as an elementary education teacher. I enjoyed every second with the children and every aspect of teaching, but I was awkward around the adults I worked with. When I was with a group I would rather naturally resort to my stage talents. Literally. I smiled, made witty remarks and told interesting stories, and when I ran out of stories to tell, I left as if I was walking off the stage. I tried my very hardest to be a gracious and kind co-worker, but I never got the hang of it. I still do not. For example, I can never tell how much time needs to pass before I buy someone I have recently met a little «Thinking of you» gift. What if on the very day we met, I see something I think the new friend would like? Should I get the gift then and save it for say, six weeks, and then give it? Or can I give it away that afternoon? Or am I wrong about the whole gift concept. Is it just something commercials promote and not something I am really supposed to act on? Do I really have to talk on the phone to anyone if I think the conversation is boring or a waste of my time? If there is a lapse in the conversation, am I supposed to hang up or tell a joke or just sit there? What if I like the person well enough, but I decide I cannot stand one of their behaviors or habits? Can I tell them right away or do I have to wait a while, and if so, how long and if not, what am I supposed to do to keep from focusing on their annoying habit? The questions are endless, and the concerns mountain high. This is why human relationships usually take me beyond my limits. They wear me out. They scatter my thoughts. They make me worry about what I have just said and what they have just said, and how or if that all fits together, and what they will say next and what I will say then, and do I owe them something or is it their turn to owe me, and why do the rules change depending on who the friend turns out to be and… well, the whole thing drives me to total distraction and anxiety.

If I could have spent all my time and energies on my students, I think I might still be teaching. But of course, this could never have been. I had to interact with the administrators, counselors, parents and other teachers, no matter the discomfort. I never wanted to work on my teaching skills with my principal, relax with my co-workers in the teacher’s lounge or talk to parents about anything other than their children. I had to force myself to attend staff meetings, hating the thought that I was expected to be a team player. I had to make myself join the faculty choir only because I knew it was expected of me. I had to will myself to smile while parents kept me after class with stories of their day or their goals in life. Thankfully, when I had to, I could appear interested, intrigued and motivated by the discussions and people around me. All I had to do was fragment myself. One of me could nod, interject and produce monologues of creativity. The other me heard only my inner thoughts, felt only my irritation at the situation, understood only the need to escape. Neither of me was very good at listening to entire dialogues, but both were very good at hearing the first parts of sentences or even words, and then disregarding the other halves.

It was not so much that people and their words and actions irritated or bored me; the effect was far more inclusive than that. People, particularly people I never saw or thought of unless they were sitting in front of me, unraveled me. They unhooked the calm in me and let loose too many thoughts, too many images, too many questions. My mind would melt amid the noise and the light and the voices and the asymmetrical patterns and the smells and the images, as I desperately tried to attach meaning to every word every person uttered. If I could not find a reason out of my meetings, and believe me I found many, I would allow my mind to settle on a few of my favorite obsessive rituals. I might have counted to ten over and over and over. I might have typed sentences in my mind, creating patterns as I did, so that my left hand would spell out the first two letters, then my right hand, then left, then right, until the sentence was spelled using a variety of symmetrical patterns. I might have ground my teeth to a rhythm playing in my mind.

I can imagine that other people have all kinds of masking rituals they do to pretend they are interested in the topic at hand, and so in that, I am probably not so very different from the norm. The difference comes, I think, at the point when closure comes. Speaking to others, I learned they quit their ritual the moment they want to, or the moment they need to. I go beyond that and continue my habits until their symmetrical pattern is complete or until the rhythm is over. I could not, and cannot, seem to easily shake my compulsive rituals from their hold on my thoughts. Not until they have completed their pattern. I try terribly hard not to fragment, particularly if I know I am going to be called on for much input or conversation. I know it is important to stay on task and work with others as well as I can. And for the most part, I can, at least on short projects. But back when I taught, I had to fight with myself to stay on track. I would try to keep my eyes very still, concentrating intently on people’s faces, but not their gestures. Gestures took on dialogues of their own, making it even harder for me to keep up with the conversation. I would take notes, hoping that if I wrote down everything that was said, I could later piece everything together like a puzzle. Or, I would completely take over the meeting, asserting my own thoughts and ideas, as if I were the self-appointed expert. But when all else failed, I used to rely on a «fitting in» trick that is nothing more than a sophisticated form of echolalia. Like a professional mimic I could catch someone else’s personality as easily as other people catch a cold. I did this by surveying the group of people I was with, then consciously identifying the person I was most taken in by. I would watch them intently, carefully marking their traits, until almost as easily as if I had turned on a light, I would turn their personality on in me. I can change my mannerisms and my voice and my thoughts until I am confident they match the person I wanted to echo. Of course, I knew what I was doing, and of course, I was somewhat embarrassed by it, but it worked to keep me connected and sometimes that was all that concerned me. It was simply more efficient for me to use the kinds of behaviors other people used, than it was for me to try and create some of my own.