To be seen

[bladespark]

There is no such thing as a universal human experience. There are common threads, and I suppose if you boil it down to the broadest possible strokes: "loss," "struggle," "pleasure", etc. then yes, there are.

Yet every individual truly is different.

For me one of my driving urges is the urge to be *seen*.

I wish to be noticed, understood, seen for who and what I am, and neither ignored nor mistaken for what I am not. It is a common urge, I suspect (it feels quite narcissistic, but narcissism in moderation is very common) but not universal. There are people who would rather not be seen, people who are genuinely shy and do not want attention.

I am an introvert, I find socializing exhausting, but the thing is that to me social interactions are a performance, so I might as well *perform*. I might as well be the star, be the center. Simply talking with somebody is as exhausting as being on stage is, both mean I am putting on the face, the front, the conscious and considered action. But in the case of say, singing, the rehearsal of the correct action for performance is actually miles simpler than for one on one or small group conversation.

So yes, I actually find performing in front of a large audience to be slightly easier and less stressful than being in a room with four or five people and needing to participate in the conversation there.

Weird, huh?

The thing I want *most*, though, isn't the kind of superficial "seeing" that somebody witnessing me sing or reading one of my stories gets. What I want is to be seen as the person I am, to have all the uniqueness, especially those parts that center around gender and personal identity, recognized, acknowledged, understood.

The latter is a tall order.

And this is why I maintain that there really is no universal human experience. Because I've watched countless people genuinely try to understand what it's like to be me, and fail completely at it. The few successes are generally those I cherish as my closest friends. I married one. That was reason number one why I stuck with him out of all the people I ever counted as partners of any kind, because he was the one of all of them that *understood.*

If human nature were really as homogeneous as some people insist it is, if people were really "all the same, deep down", then others would be able to comprehend who I am.

Mostly, they don't.

Mostly, I remain unseen.

Comments

[leiacat]

Hi... you just added me, and I went to look, and I stumbled into this, and it resonated intensely.

And I don't write like you write, but you write (about yourself, at least) in a voice that reminds me of my own, and sounds like I wish my own might have been, if I had been a writer. Perhaps an overpresumptious illusion, but one based on which I would like to see as many aspects of you as may be seen through the filter of a blog.

Which is to say, hi, nice to meet you.

[bladespark]

It is good to meet you too! The process of trying to reach out and make human connections through words on a screen is honestly kind of surreal and also awkward at times, isn't it?

[leiacat]

For me it's as natural as reaching out in person - I have spent many years building connections through text media, up to and including falling in love on occasion.

Or perhaps I'm showing my introversion: for me connecting in person can be pretty surreal, too. At least in text I can curate a fraction of my instinctual awkwardness. (Or at least replace it with potentially more entertaining awkwardness).

[bladespark]

Hmmm. I don't find in-person interactions inherently awkward,, merely inherently draining in a way that online interactions are not. It's a bit of an apples and oranges thing. Then again, I don't find online interactions in and of themselves awkward, only the first connections.

I never know how to start or what to say. There are five thousand things about me that maybe people should know (approximately) and no doubt five thousand things about you I should know. I don't know how to ask, or to tell, about any of them when I begin, though. In person one has the bland, social conventions to begin with. But engaging in social-for-its-own-sake small talk, seems strange through text.

[leiacat]

Quite in reverse for me. In pixels I can always find a jumping-off point to comment on (as I did with you), and access to backscroll and tags saves "where to begin" part of the getting acquainted process - by the time one feels inclined to respond, one has already begun. Anything worth surface-knowing about me, I've probably written down somewhere relatively obvious (and anything deeper would hardly come out at first try anyway).

Whereas in person, I struggle to find relevance or topics of interest or anything non-trivial to say that I (let alone anyone else) would find interesting. I am not opposed to small talk conceptually, but I am no wizard at it.

Of course, in a pinch conversing about conversations is an old favorite for me in either. :)

[howsmyenglish]

well, in my experience, very often it happens not because they're so so different, but because they just don't really want to understand you. they want to be understood themselves.

[bladespark]

I think I will merely say that this hasn't exactly been my experience.

[the_future_modernes]

Oh wow. This is really interesting to read about. Thank you for sharing!