meta

recently i read a blog post where someone defined emotional labor as synthesizing a bunch of seemingly unconnected thoughts and feelings about a situation into a coherent narrative. that's what i do here - i talk about something that's happened to me, and then i talk about how i feel about it, and then i talk about what i think about that, and i try to make it fit into the narrative i have about my life. it's not a very happy story, but it's my story and it's important.

anyway, the context for the term was a discussion on how women are expected to do this kind of work for men. when i'm friends with men, i do tend to do a lot of this kind of work for them. i don't normally mind, because i'm very good at it. i have a lot of feelings and i'm good at talking about them, so it makes sense that people who aren't good at talking about them would come to me.

recently i was talking with my friend and i said that i was nervous about moving out on my own because if something happened to me i don't think anyone would check on me. she asked about the person i like, and i said that if i asked him to do something specific and concrete, like buying me groceries or returning my library books, he would do that happily, but if i asked him to listen to me while i talked, or sit with me while i cried, he would be essentially useless. this is because he is very bad at and uncomfortable with emotional labor. he doesn't know the things to say to a crying person. he doesn't know the questions to ask a person who needs to talk about serious emotional problems.

the reason i don't resent him for this (well, i do, but not very much) is that he's not great at doing it with himself either. when we first became friends, we bonded over our high school experiences because we both had terrible ones. my stories went like this: something happened, and i felt like this, so i reacted this way, and it made me feel this. his stories went like this: something happened, so he reacted this way. i'd respond with something like, "that must have been hard," or "were you upset about that?" and after a moment he'd say, "yeah." it's hard to put my finger on what exactly i feel is missing from the way he talks about emotions - context, maybe? i don't know.
i know that it makes me not want to talk to him about my own feelings, because i'd have to do my own labor, which defeats the purpose of talking about them to begin with. i wouldn't be comforted or gain any new insight into my problems or anything. i'd probably have to take care of him - reassure him that i'm okay, that things aren't so bad, that he doesn't need to do anything. i think that might be part of why people with mental illnesses or even very serious life problems or trauma are hesitant to talk about it. you talk about it, and then the other person gets so upset just from hearing about it that you have to comfort them, and then you feel angry and tired and resentful.

i don't know - i guess i just wish i had at least one friend, who i could see in person, who knew how to deal with feelings without saying something useless or trying to flee.