Yesterday, I wrote about fawning, and though it helped me process the hopelessness I often feel in relationships, it only skimmed the surface of a deeper issue: the problematic nature of black-and-white thinking.
I am proud of my keen sense of justice. I will never hesitate to die on a hill if that hill means fighting for equality, equity, fairness, or ethics. I don’t care if it makes me seem naive, hard on myself, or unrealistic in expecting a world that favors justice over hate. But I know that my black-and-white thinking is marred by the sufferings in my own life. I think my childhood created a rigid view of what it means to treat others "right." As a result, I’ve developed approximately 5,832,012 scripts for every possible social scenario. Sometimes I joke that it’s a good thing I have aphantasia—more room in my mind for all those scripts.
I don’t know exactly where or when this began, but very early on, I started noticing the subtle expressions on people’s faces when I did something "weird." I have rejection-sensitive dysphoria (RSD), so I also noted—and hurt—when I was scolded, punished, or laughed at. I took stock every time I was called ugly or told I wasn’t good enough. And every single time, I strategized a way around the “problem.” More makeup. Don’t talk about hyperfixations. Keep relationships strictly sexual. Find ways to sell my worthiness as a friend or partner to make up for being ugly and weird. Wait until I’m in the shower or in bed to cry because no one cares anyway.
When I made the mistake of crying or showing my heart, I felt lonelier than ever. Fear settled in like a shadow. Sometimes that fear was justified, sometimes not—but either way, it became a prophecy fulfilled by my own retreat.
Needless to say, I developed a lot of strategies and solutions and scripts, and doing so was hard work. Even harder was consistently masking to execute those scripts well. When someone tells me about their hyperfixations, I know to listen and ask questions. If I accidentally talk about mine, I smile, apologize, and pivot: ask what they like, talk about the weather, or lament how sucky Tuesdays are. And when one works hard, and sees that they’re working harder than they should, resentment starts to creep in.
In every friendship, I masked to show interest and quickly realized things would become one-sided. No one asked how I was, but I was expected to listen to their aches, their fatigue, their struggles—while exhausted myself. This sense of injustice created a tension: I want to mask for this person because I care, but resentment lingers: Why don’t they put in the same effort I do?
Do you see the problem with that? I turned relationships into transactions: “I worked this hard,” or “I didn’t work hard enough.” But relationships are not bank accounts. My black-and-white thinking prevents me from evolving, from seeing beyond the exhausting effort it takes to trust that people care about me—whether I mask or not, whether I fail at my scripts or not. And if society lived in a collective dream, so to speak, doesn’t that make scripts inherently useless? After all, what we as a humanity value is subject to change.
Love means dying in the Other for Marsilio Ficino, too: I recover myself, "When you love me ... and as I love you… lost in the first place by my own neglect of myself, in you, who preserve me." When Ficino writes that the lover loses himself in another self-and yet, in this same waning and oblivion, "recovers" and even "possesses" himself-this possession is the gift of the Other.
– Byung-Chul Han (The Agony of Eros)
Reading this, I wonder: if love means both losing and recovering ourselves in another, then aren’t my scripts, my masks, and my efforts to perform perfection missing the point? Maybe the real challenge is surrendering the need to script and finding the courage to trust—in myself, in others, and in the love that endures beyond any mask I could wear.
Unravel me, a distant cord
On the outside is forgotten
A constant need to get along
And the animal awakens
And all I feel is black and white
The road is long, the memory slides
To the whole of my undoing
Put aside, I put away
I push it back to get through each day
And all I feel is black and white
And I'm wound up, small and tight
And I don't know who I am
Everybody loves you when you're easy
Everybody hates when you're a bore
Everyone is waiting for your entrance
So don't disappoint them
Unravel me, untie this cord
The very center of our union
Is caving in, I can't endure
I am the archive of our failure
And all I feel is black and white
And I'm wound up, small and tight
And I don't know who I am
Everybody loves you when you're easy
Everybody hates when you're a bore
Everyone is waiting for your entrance
So don't disappoint them
Everybody loves you when you're easy
So don't disappoint them
Don't disappoint them
Don't disappoint them
Don't disappoint them
– Sarah McLachlan (Black & White)