Someday I’ll write a happy essay

But not today.

“Hey, how’s it going? You doing okay?”

I never know how to respond to that sort of question. In part because it’s usually asked in passing. The act of asking about my well being in a physical context that doesn’t encourage any answer that takes longer to give than a short sentence belies a distinct lack of depth of concern.

I’ve gotten into the habit of answering a greeting that also asks about my current state with the comment, “I’m here.” I figure that the other person can decide what it means. I don’t like saying, “I’m okay,” or “I’m fine,” because too often it feels like a lie. Or, rather, their question feels like a lie, and if I give the expect lie in return it’s as if I’m saying their feigned concern is okay with me.

It’s not.

During the Spring semester of this year, I wandered into the grad student lounge at IIT one day to find my fellow graduate student Xi having a minor freak out. She was huddled up in an arm chair, hugging a green and white pillow to her chest, and panicking that she was in over her head. That she was’t incapable of facing the challenges of the program, that she would fail, everyone would hate her, etc. We’ve all been there.

So I sat with her and did my best to talk her down. Told her she was smart and capable, and she’d do fine, and of course no one hated her. Told her all those things that I think we all want to here when we’re suddenly drowning in a sea of “I’m gonna fail!”

Eventually she relaxed, and felt better, and thanked me for talking to her, and for making her feel better.

Later in that same semester, she stepped into the room where I was working on my thesis, and asked me how many words there were in my thesis. Xi’d been somewhat obsessed with word counts; tagging her progress on her thesis to how many words she’d added to it. I never understood it. Word count seemed like a really poor indicator of much of anything other than time spent banging on a keyboard. Maybe I’m just being arrogant, since I can fire off words like a machine gun does bullets, despite my hunt’n’peck typing, and crank out thousands of words… as long as quality doesn’t matter. If you want good writing then I tend to creep along like everyone else. But if rambling, semi-coherent rants are the thing, I am a champion of volume production.

Anyway, at the time I was annoyed by Xi’s query, not only because it was about word counts, but because it seemed to be much like a “How you doing today?” kind of question, and completely lacking in any depth of actual concern.

So I gave her some snarky response, about how I was sure her thesis would be longer than mine. She reacted with exasperation, “That’s not why I asked!” She said something else and stepped back out of the room.

Thinking back on it now, I find myself wanting to go back in time so that I can scream, “When do I get to hug a pillow? When do I get to freak out? When do I get to actually talk about everything that’s exploding inside my head?”

It’s not Xi’s fault. No one ever wants to listen to me talk about what’s bothering me. I don’t know why. No one ever asks me how I’m feeling, then waits long enough for me to answer. It can take awhile for me to sort my feelings into some sort of priority stack, and compose a sentence to explain the first thing on the stack. And by the time the words are ready to come out of my throat I discover that the person who asked has started talking about something else, or doing something else, or gotten up and left.

What can’t anyone wait? Why can’t anyone sit and listen to me? I sit and listen to other people. I’m happy to do it, I like helping them. I liked helping Xi.

Why doesn’t anyone like helping me?

Not that it matters. I’m fine. This is all just a bit of wallowing, to make me feel better about being so angry at Xi. There’s not really anything I need to talk about, or need help with. It’s all lies and manipulations. Don’t believe any of this, and don’t respond. Just ignore it. Just ignore me. It’s what any rational person would do.