Open Letters, Never Sent

To a colleague,
I'm sorry that you dislike me. I'm sorry that I have appeared to insult you (and managed to successfully offend) – I never meant any of it.

I had an inkling previously that you may not have the most sparkling opinion of me, but did not seek to confirm or deny it. It just was. It was a state of affairs with which I was distinctly unconcerned and which I decided could be left unresolved. It was one thing I did not deem necessary to clarify as we rarely interacted anyway.

As one of my favourite personalities once expressed in not so many words, the desire to explain oneself to others can be loathesome. I find that I detest myself for having to reason publicly why it is that someone whom I have not openly disdained has concluded that I am a waste of space and air. Clearly, given the circumstances surrounding this particular trait which urges me to enumerate the manifold personalities of my being, I have already handed you a clue as to why you may dislike me so.

It was not in the way you spoke that hinted at your disregard for me. Rather, it was the way you regarded me with apparent disinterest and a marginal measure of irritation. Your words were perfectly polite, your tone (perhaps carefully) pitched to present the very image of amiability, but I have seen the way you stand apart from me. All this, I have chosen to ignore, however, in the light of my recent employment and thus my lack of understanding of your person.

Maybe you were always like this, I reasoned. Maybe you were aloof to everybody else. Maybe you perpetually give the impression of being on the brink of expressing outright annoyance. Maybe it was just the way your face was constructed, something over which you have no control (I understand this point full well; I have always been self-conscious of my angry-looking eyebrows and how I must appear to those who do not know me).

I should have known you were giving me "preferential treatment" the day a close friend of mine whom I have known for years and who was employed in the same cohort as I responded to a comment I made by saying that you were very nice. I should have suspected at least that it was only me whom you dislike.

This was what I had told my friend (not verbatim, obviously, because my memory is infamously horrid) before she pronounced her favorable assessment of you: I told her that you and your friend (with whom you were much more pleasant than I had ever witnessed and who had earlier reproached me with more venom than I may have deserved, given that I was new and still learning the ropes at my first job) were scary.

I based this assessment on both your facial expressions and extensive coolness around me, the way your eyes were half-lidded as if to say that I was not worth your time.

I did not express any dislike for you, merely wariness. For your friend, however,  I had no such compunctions. I made a rookie mistake which was not deserving of a strict dressing down as had been delivered. Furthermore, you are two years younger than me, and your friend probably around the same age as you, thus compounding the unfairness I felt when berated as if your friend had been mightier and better than I in all ways, as if she could do no wrong and everything that I did will always be a misstep, as if I had not lived two more years of struggling with social relationships which have always proved to be an obstacle requiring immense willpower from me to overcome.

I am not like the rest of you. I am not comfortable at all around new people and in new surroundings. I fear slipping up and making mistakes, so I always always always act as if I know what I'm doing so that others will be less aware that I have committed a mistake. My way of dealing with too many new people at once is to shut them out.

When my friend told me today that you dislike me, I was not particularly surprised. You were never warm to me anyway. I was in fact startled to see how well you got along with her because I never had any hint that you were capable of that around new people. I may not have disliked you, but I did feel highly insulted and ignored and insignificant and all round unimportant (too unimportant to matter, too unimportant to mean anything to anyone, too unimportant to have my feelings looked after, too unimportant to bother being kind to, too unimportant to be human) when you situated yourself firmly between us and set up a human wall that prevented me from speaking to my friend, whom I have not had the pleasure of being assigned to adjacent counters until then (and whom I was almost desperate to have a decent conversation with, a hope which you readily dashed, thank you very much). It was my first real opportunity to work alongside her and you ruined it. Did you know that?

My mood was pretty sour but I tried to not let it show. I may or may not have succeeded – I cannot tell. Maybe you can. Maybe you could discern that I was a little distressed and very disappointed. Maybe you reveled in the knowledge that you had saddened me. Maybe you were selfish and wanted your new friend all to yourself, or maybe you were just innocently happy to have someone to talk to and did not realise the I too needed familiar companionship (in which case I'm sorry for any disparaging remarks I may have made about your kind nature). I don't know. I won't pretend to know what runs through your mind, how you think. I do not think that I will be capable of that anyway, given my social ineptitude.

Suddenly I began questioning myself again. Did I really matter?

What you should probably know is that I am highly susceptible to self-doubt. Every social interaction is conducted with a keen awareness of my own inability to interact agreeably with any amount of ease. My actions are either calculated or so spontaneous that I frequently (and most definitely unintentionally) offend others.

Was I like that with you? My friend offered that perhaps you dislike me because I first disliked you, which is certainly not true as I hadn't really formed an opinion until today. She suggested that I hadn't talked to you enough, to which I can only say that I do not ever recall you looking receptive to any conversation I might start.

Being that this was my first job, I was probably too focused on learning everything that I neglect to remember that I needed to plan every single one of my social interactions in order I prevent myself from insulting others or giving them the wrong idea that I dislike them (my eyebrows already have me at a disadvantage here). I don't remember much of my interactions with others back then.

Did I ignore you? Did I insult you? Did I say something offensive? How can I remedy this? I'm not sorry that I need time to acquaint myself with my surroundings, and I'm not sorry that I can only do this by shutting out the human element from most of my mental processes (hence my chronic inability to make friends in new situations), but I'm sorry you took things the wrong way.

Looking back, I think you may have crowed internally when your friend chastised me, leaving me rather embarrassed and mortified. I don't think anyone deserved that. I certainly would not wish it upon anyone I know, not even you or the one who had inflicted such wounds.

Maybe I was being subject to the bias against less attractive people (of which I am one of).

I'm not sorry that I do not like you, however, for we have not conversed at sufficient length and with enough breadth and depth for me to make an appropriate assessment of your person, and therefore can neither say that I like you nor dislike you. Therefore I do not like you, nor dislike you. I was leaning toward the latter, but something then happened that made me understand what had potentially caused your dissatisfaction with me.

I may have once again accidentally insulted you earlier with a slip of tongue that resulted in me calling for attention by a word which was less than courteous. I regret that. I'm sorry. I was not thinking. Believe me. I realised my mistake almost immediately after I said it but by then it was too late. Could this have been why you dislike me? Could it have been my tasteless "choice" of words?

What have I done? How can I fix myself?

Red, Pink, and Inaccurately-drawn Hearts

Here's what I expect, if I ever find myself a significant other, on Valentine's day: nothing.

I don't need a socially designated day of "love" to celebrate my relationships. I don't want a relationship which ups and downs are dictated by commercialised traditions which origins have nothing to do with their current meaning. I don't need a love that needs to be reminded annually that it exists.

If I ever fall in love with someone, I wish that they will understand that I don't need to celebrate this day because every day that our relationship still persists is a celebration in and of itself. If either of us wanted to commemorate our love, any day of the year would work as well as, if not better than (owing to the fact that I know for certain it has nothing to do with an obligation to act more like a couple on this arbitrarily determined day of love every year), Valentine's day.

If it so happens that one such day that we feel like enjoying each other's company is the 14th, then so be it. However, if it is because of the 14th that our relationship is suddenly treated with so much more reverence, then clearly we have different opinions and priorities.

The eve of Valentine's day, however, is a different matter altogether, given that it is the anniversary of the day of my birth. I would not be opposed at all to celebrating my existence, celebrating the fact that my parents loved each other enough to have me, loved me enough to raise me, that I may meet whoever it is who will (ideally but not realistically) complete me.

On the 13th, there will be no influx of couples giddy on manufactured love. My birthday will be full of other people's anticipation and my own fulfillment. It will be MY day to celebrate. A day for 1/365 of the world's 7 billion people to celebrate, not 1/2 of the same 7 billion.