There are some thoughts I've been having sometime over the past, eh, yearish? something like that, about some of the reactions I get when I hear certain things from people I know.

It's generally a situation where something good is happening for that person, and they're reacting with delight and enthusiasm, and my reaction is not the expected delight for that person and the situation that they're in (though I'm glad things are going well), but something about their phrasing and emphasis is ringing belated alarm bells about the sort of situation that they tend to be in.

( An altogether too rapey example )

Or maybe "My paycheck was so accurate this week!" or "My paycheck hardly ever bounces!"



I kept hearing these really enthusiastic descriptions of how nicely things were going with these various people in these various situations, and I kept having to beat down my impulse to harsh their squee by responding with annoyance that they were going out of their way to celebrate something that should be so very 101. Yes, your goddamn paycheck should be accurate. Yes, your goddamn paycheck should clear. Yes, your best buddy should exhibit basic goddamn courtesy on a regular basis. But do any of these things warrant over-the-top celebration? Hello! *eyeroll*

But since having that sort of reaction in my outside voice would be a dick move, and I do try to avoid being a dick when I can, I shut up about it and sort of just sulked and punched my pillows a lot. (Petty annoyances stick in my brain and keep echoing around while I'm trying to go to sleep. It's amazingly unpleasant, and means that little things that happen to occur near bedtime, or that I happen to be reminded of near bedtime, bother me far more than they should.) I just could not shake the feeling that there was something not right about those simple statements of enthusiasm and delight. Some of it seemed way too emotionally frou-frou: hello, basic common courtesy, why are you going into all this ecstatic detail about the mechanics of how not treating each other like dicks works?

It took an embarrassingly long time for it to dawn on me that these things that I was thinking were so basic and should be a given were very possibly not the default for the people who were celebrating them with what I felt was an excess of enthusiasm.

That changed my viewpoint some. Person enthusiastic about having had a respectful discussion about their field of academic study with a professor from another department? What sort of fucknut professors had they been dealing with in the past?! Going on and on about negotiating boundaries with family and having them respected? Yeah, just because I have a family who respects my autonomy and doesn't scream at me doesn't mean that everybody does.

Just because I viewed something as a given and thought that everybody should also have this does not actually mean that the rest of the world is like this. Well, duh, you useless Betan frill! Welcome to the world where shit does not always work the way it should. I should know these things! Just sometimes it takes a while for it to sink in.


Now that I'm hearing the celebrations that I found too enthusiastic for something expected as an indication that this sort of thing is unusual, the little uncomfortable feeling that something about this is not quite right is correctly coming through as warning sirens about that person's past and general situation.

There are the oddly-specific bits of enthusiasm, of course, like "My mother-in-law called today and she didn't promise to come by my house and poop on my car again!" where you don't really have to have any background in that situation or any particular leap of insight to realize that something is really not right. But sometimes it's subtle enough that if your worldview includes something as a given, you don't notice it until you really consider it straight on (and sometimes it doesn't become apparent until someone else points it out).

I can deal with warning sirens. I know how to deal, more or less, with the sudden realization that there are things that are various sorts of not-quite-right with friends. Once I realize that stuff isn't quite right, I may even be able to act helpfully to mitigate some of the suck if it's still happening, or at the very least act with a little more sensitivity around things that might well be a sore subject. (Sometimes it's avoiding the topic. Sometimes it's saying "Hey, I sort of picked up on the concept that maybe not all is right with that one dude? He, um, sounds like he's treating you poorly, and you deserve to have a partner who doesn't treat you like shit. LMK if you want to yell about it or anything, or maybe I could just put the fear of me into him if he ever pulls those shenanigans again.") It's much better than being annoyed with people I like because what they're saying isn't sitting right with me and I can't put my finger on why.