I’ve sat on this little story for a while because, well, I’m an INFJ with high empathy and harmony strengths with a very active “what if?” imagination who is loathe to possibly hurt anyone’s feelings should they possibly stumble upon my blog and recognize themselves and think I’m making fun of them even though that is not my intent at all…
Anyway.
This one time, I went to the doctor and gave the intake medical assistant all my info, including why I was there and where I worked. In short, I was a victim advocate working with abuse/trauma victims/survivors, and what I told her was how heavy the work was and that I was suffering, etc.
She took one of my pauses to insert her own story. She was a survivor herself who had used the services of the organization where I worked years and years before. While she expressed her gratitude and talked about her story, I swallowed my own tears and leaned in to listen. Because that’s what I do, and that is who I am. Despite being at the doctor’s office because this very nature of mine — my personality right down to my very soul — led to me constantly being the safe place for other people, which was therefore pretty heavy since I’d taken it on as a full-time job.
Also, I was super annoyed.
And then I felt badly for being super annoyed.
I’ve thought about this a lot lately during this whole COVID-19 season with my personal isolation and withdrawal from the world. I have had roller coaster days of beating myself up for not using this pause to check in with so many others, for not being there in a proper way for my friends and others. (INFJ!)
At the same time, I have realized it’s my way of self-preservation — maintaining some level of sanity and harmony with myself. To be too connected right now means to carry too much that does not belong to me at a time when I’ve just so recently come out of, well, 2019. Anything that could be an attempt at a two-way conversation will probably turn into me holding space for the other instead. It’s not a judgment on anyone else — it’s just a matter of fact, the way it has always been.
It is such a delicate balance of self to understand what I need and that part of that need is to be there for others. I have to be careful not to be the me of old who cares way too much about others and way too little of myself. And by balance, I mean, I’m not balancing anything at all. I tip one way or the other in a pretty consistent way. All or nothing — in or out — hiding away or all up in your face!
Isolation in more ways than physical, then. And honestly, few people reach out to me, because they are used to me reaching out to them. I see it pretty clearly, and again, it’s not a judgment — just an observation. But it reminds me how different we all are. While I might obsess about how a friend feels about me not talking to them in three weeks, they haven’t thought about me at all. They’re just trying to survive their own lives in the middle of this shared crisis.
Personality differences are a big thing. As a watcher of the world, I see them all play out in the way people respond, in their silence or their desire to be heard. And I realize, though we are all navigating who we are alongside who others are, too often in the middle of someone else’s pause, we try to insert our own stories. Not because we are selfish, but because we are human and we want to connect.
We want to connect and be heard and seen, even if we’re the type that doesn’t want to be heard and seen. Yet, we want to matter to at least someone, to one or many, it doesn’t matter — we are who we are, and we need what we need. And it looks differently for every single person.
In the middle of my withdrawal and watching, I’ve ached for what once was, and I dream of what could be, all at the same time. I don’t want to go back, and yet, there is also comfort there. I want life to change dramatically and not at all. I think it’s fair to say we are all struggling and needing that which we can’t really make sense of. It manifests, then, as fighting over what is real or not real, over money and health, over who is staying home and who is working, over those who want life to go back and those who want life to be different.
I don’t know who’s right or wrong, or if in fact we are all both right and wrong, but what I do know is that the view from here is heavy and painful. It’s easier to stay in my cocoon where I don’t have to feel all of that heavy fear and pain.
I feel badly for others, and I get annoyed at the attitudes of others, and then I feel badly about feeling annoyed. And then I accept that’s just who I am, and it’s OK to be who I am, and maybe in the middle of this pause, I can insert my own perspective to me and allow it to play out, being OK with the roller coaster that each day is.
Peace to you…
