I'm an "Abnormal" Person Too: Reading 《滌，這個不正常的人》 #1

In November 2018, before the election, I was chatting with a senior from grad school about the referendum. She mentioned that I'd always been suppressing my emotions, that my feelings always came like a trickle, and she reminded me to spend some time going back through my childhood memories and looking for the cause, saying this is the starting point of all self-exploration.

I'd always thought "I'm normal", but there were those things I could tell were "abnormal reactions", bubbling up constantly like bubbles in boiling water. For example, I felt ashamed and guilty when I decided to drop a course, and had to keep telling myself "it's just a choice, nothing to do with right or wrong." When I made mistakes one after another at work, I'd count "embarrassment one, embarrassment two, embarrassment three" and be afraid of making another, when it really wasn't a big deal.

And 《滌，這個不正常的人》 was a bomb that blew open all my deepest memories.

I've collected many unbearable "bangs" too

One time you met a person carrying a mattress at the top of the stairs, and you couldn't get past him. You pressed your back against the wall and faced him, waiting for him to pass. ... Hearing this, it seems there was a dividing point in Di becoming "like this". (p139)

... It seems it was also when he was twenty-three, one day he heard a very loud "bang". A very loud "bang", and he said he couldn't stand it any more. That "bang" wasn't the first one he'd encountered, but the thousands-and-hundredth. (p140)

Those unbearable "bangs", I've collected many, many of them too.
The events themselves don't actually matter, but "What's there to care about?", "That's your problem.", "It doesn't matter." are the source of every "bang". Like being unable to pass the person carrying a mattress, from things that look small to others I've received a lot of denial and dismissal. And I've been enduring it all along, still enduring.

At the same time, when it comes to denying your essence, people seem to take it for granted to stick negative labels on it: impulsive, careless, sloppy, doing things my own way, lacking perseverance. If you want to be a good student, you have to erase these wrong personality traits. So I've always worked hard to fix the problem. (There are times I resist too, for example I seem to be doing things my own way more and more?)

I'm a problem that has to be solved

Because I felt "those traits are wrong, and I'm afraid of being denied", I had to hide them so I wouldn't be disliked, and endure the things I disliked and not express my needs so I wouldn't be denied.

As a result, when I needed to say my real feelings and needs, I couldn't say them at all: "Will he look down on my dream? Will he find my feelings ridiculous? When I say what I dislike, will he dislike me, and think I'm hard to get along with?" I was too afraid of being denied again, and have always been avoiding the same situation happening again. I'm really good at it. Avoiding people who judge others easily, avoiding situations where I'd have to talk about myself, never saying "I hate" but always saying "I prefer".

So last year, when an important friend thought "I'm broken, and should be fixed", it was truly heartbreaking. Even though I know he loves me, he thought it was good for me, and he's a good person.

For a while, climbing was repairing my understanding of my personality traits. Like being tall or short, flexible or stiff, in front of a route there's no absolute good or bad, right or wrong; it's all two sides of the same coin. I also learned to recognise the nature of fear, practised facing fear, and practised that failing is okay. (〈What Climbing Taught Me〉 was already written a year and a half ago...!)

In the summer of my third year of university, I led a camp in Hualien and Taitung. One night, I went out for a late-night snack and some air with the camp leader at a convenience store. We weren't close yet, and I was easygoing, vague and careful in picking snacks and speaking, but he told me to pick what I liked and always patiently waited for my reply. Once, in the car from Yilan back to Taipei with my supervisor, when I asked him "Am I useless? (and so easily replaced)", he said straight out, "You're important." After I finished the graduation procedures with a senior, she sent me a message: "Good thing you were there today."

What I actually needed was just to feel that I was valued.
Just to be sure they wouldn't dislike me because of my choices (or hesitation), preferences or troubles.