Performative Emotion in 2018

Alternate title: In which Courtney is firmly convinced that I have autism.

I’ve never been quite sure how to “do” feelings. I’ve struggled with it for a long time. Ever since I was a child, I know that I’ve demonstrated emotion, and that I’ve felt it in some way or other, but that often there was some disconnect between what I did and what I felt. Often, it seemed that by simply displaying the appropriate feeling, I would somehow be doing the right thing. This disconnect, and lack of sincerity, has always bothered me. I can remember, from the time I was very young, often crying, but being aware that I could end it any time I wished.
At the same time, I often find myself reacting far too strongly to minor stimuli which don’t seem to merit the response. I find that I can be taken over by emotion. At other times, I’m taken over by things that I have called “modes”. Self contained, so it feels, ways of being that, once slipped into, are difficult to escape. Some of these are natural, and some are unnatural. Other times, the distinction is blurry or meaningless.
Oftentimes, when I feel things, and the feelings are real, but not performative, I don’t know what to do. Or how to react. I don’t know what or how to be. And so, historically, in the presence of strong emotion, I have overacted. But, eventually, the performance of being emotional had an appeal of its own, and I became caught up in it. Other times, the performance oscillates above and below some line of what appears to be acceptable reality. When feelings are out of sync from this, reactions can be strange.

When I look back at my first post pubescent obsession, Ann, it seems pretty obvious in retrospect that most of what I felt was a performative emotion associated with a “mode”. I was feeling feelings that made sense in accordance with a part that I had interest in playing. However, as my desire for sincerity was real, and I associated more sincerity with emotion in those days, I interpreted strength of emotion as strength of sincerity. I relished in my victimhood. I was the spurned suitor, a manner of being which I could understand. It fit narratives. Life was certain. And maybe it’s that predictable certainty that kept me in that place for so long. To question those feelings would have been to have questioned many of the things associated with them and their underpinnings. Still, this was a mostly online fixation, and it didn’t spill over into the real world.

My next major fixation was, of course, Courtney. The heyday of that obsession being 2001-2004. At this time, I was struggling with the problem of duality, something which had been an issue for me from my early memories, but which had been made worse by the internet. To me, the internet world of ideas and thoughts and text was more “real” than what I did in meatspace. And so the things I was actually doing, social machinations, time with Lee, was just a distraction from some other, deeper, more abstract reality. And when the Courtney situation ended, I faced a problem. Dedicated to the notion of sincerity and purity, but unable to disassociate myself from assorted obsessions, all tertiary aspects of my life became linked to her. Performative affection, in a way. I think that this is relative common with young people. Every song was about the two of us. Every book was us. Everything to which I could assign a meaning had a meaning assigned, and what I couldn’t give emotionally (being fifteen and in another state), I attempted to make up for in bizarre internal sacrifices and internalizations. My obsession with truth and objective reality confounded the issue because, in my thinking at the time, any statement which was true would remain true going forward forever. I remember telling her that she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Obviously, while highly attractive, this was untrue even by my own subjective standards. But I decided to enforce truth by meaning it. And, as idiotic as this sounds, I’ve never been able to utter sweet nothings since that day. Much to the chagrin of women I’ve been with after the age of fifteen. At any rate, to change the meanings that I had associated with these associations was blasphemous. I was as upset, even realizing this at the time, with Courtney’s attempts to rewrite history, and to reassign meanings, than I was at the end of the relationship.
At any rate, the relationship ended, and quite rightly so. If it had merely fizzled, I don’t know that I would have really noticed. An internet relationship seems great when your life transpires over AIM. But now meatspace girls liked me. And, had I not been so hesitant to leave my house, I could have spent most waking hours with a very attractive one who liked me quite a bit. But . . . I had always idealized emotion.
Emotion has always fascinated me because I have never been able to avoid the conclusion that, somehow, on some level, I’m doing it wrong. Feeling emotions seemed to be the right thing, and the best thing, and there was something so beautifully SATISFYING about feeling things. Sadness had some elegant quality to it, it wasn’t yet the empty draining of actual loss. Courtly loss. Performative loss. And, so, I went on, at great length, about Courtney. To anybody who would listen. And in doing so, I nearly wrecked some of my friendships. Thankfully, before that I could happen, she had her own breakup, which, incidentally, happened just after I’d finally gotten over her. I wish I remember more details from this time period. What may or may not be significant was that, at this time, I was beginning to excel in meatspace. I was in the theater. And whether on stage or off stage, there was plenty of room for far-too-much emotion. I don’t know if that’s a meaningful correlation, but it is one which I’d never thought of before now.

My relationship with Amanda, for all it means to me now fourteen years on, was not especially emotionally intense at the time. It was over the course of the first week or so, then she when on vacation for two weeks, and after that, I remember describing that my emotional defenses had been able to keep her out of that deep place that she’d reached. This is probably rather significant. It may have happened naturally, or it may be a negative adaptation that I’ve developed, or it could be many things. But my emotions for her were never as strong as the things that I felt for other people. Looking back, fourteen years on, maybe that’s the way that real human feelings work? You don’t need to show them off? But also, maybe you do. At least, maybe I do. More on that later.

Other relationships came and went, and I remember having had assorted strong feelings for assorted theater girls, but the next major life shakeup was Rachael.

I don’t know how much I can write about her here that wouldn’t be a waste of time to both of my readers (maybe all three if Nadine is secretly stalking me (and I hope that she is)). It also wouldn’t likely be a good use of my time. Still, I want to try on this lens.
The first time I saw her was in rehearsal for Little Women. She had on a green LOTR t-shirt with Frodo, and somehow her breasts looked so amazing and perky that I went home depressed that I’d never get to see them. I’ll always wonder what life would have been like if I’d tried right away. (Courtney has judged me harshly for the above paragraph)
At any rate, eventually she and I got together. Her mother pushed us together. I didn’t know much about her, but she was incredibly attractive, and so we went for things. This was when I was also seeing Amanda and Niki. She seemed like a pleasant diversion, and neither of us expected things to last long. Instead, somehow or other, I felt feelings for her like I’ve never felt before.
When I consider the relationship with her under this lens, there are really two distinct eras. While I was with her, I was really bad at showing how I felt. Really really bad. So bad, in fact, that things may have actually worked out with her if I had done so. I was also really afraid of my feelings for her. I suppose that, in a way, this may have been a time when my emotions were right. Having previously been driven by negative emotion, I wasn’t used to the notion that any good could come from positivity, and I responded negatively to the notion. But when I was with her, there was a feeling like none other. A kind of gentle, happy, peace. The likes of which I’ve not known before or since, and which may not be possible again for me in this world. It’s not a feeling that one can search for, I think, and it’s not a feeling that I know how to perform, or how to show, or how to explain. I just wanted to be with her. Doing anything. It was as though she radiated a vibration that somehow took my dissonant notes and brought them into beautiful harmony. How does one perform this? I really don’t know. And I never showed her. I never told her. I think that, in some ways, the feeling was more “real” than other feelings because I didn’t perform it. At least, not in any way that seemed to mean much to anybody.
After the breakup, everything that I did was performative, partly because I realized just how little she understood, and I realized that I didn’t really show anything. But instead of showing the feelings that I had felt, I demonstrated a bizarre caricature of feelings. I didn’t know how to perform what I was feeling. And over time, the performance and feelings changed, and I was somewhat aware of both, but I’m not sure if I understood why. It may be that the performance changed the feelings, or the other way, or somehow both. I really don’t know. And it’s too far removed to really tell. The uncertainty in this is one of its most frustrating attributes.
Still, the pattern made sense. My behavior post Rachael was, in many ways, an amplification of my post Ann and post Courtney states. However, in the case of Rachael, fewer things and/or pieces of media were associated with her specifically. Instead, it was (as I later realized) thoughts, ideas, abstract concepts, conceptions, and a lot else. This was even more destabilizing. Sixteen years after the Courtney breakup and I still have muddled feelings from Lord of the Rings. It took years before I could listen to Simon and Garfunkel again. Well, in the case of Rachael, the infected conceptions were . . . all of these ineffable things that made life appear to be worth living. Any emotional thing that I saw was interpreted through that lens. Maybe that’s why I’m so bad at consuming media anymore? The time line doesn’t quite match up. 2009 was a massive media year for me, books, TV, movies (at home), and writing. And Rachael was November ‘07. Wow . . . almost exactly eleven years.
There was regularity, though, in that was to behave. And it made sense. There was some certainty in the action, but as the actions drifted further and further from the feelings, I began to experience dissonance. I’m not sure what one would call it. Emotional dissonance? But almost cognitive. The dissonance between action and feeling filtered through foggy cognition. I don’t know.
In Rachael phase, again, I lost so much in terms of my social life, my friends, my relationships, but somehow whining about my feelings constantly was “pure” in a weird way. I don’t know where this notion of purity comes in. Maybe from my obsession with truth? They seem as though they may be distinct concepts, but they also function similarly. I really don’t know.

At any rate, post Rachael, I really stopped producing a lot of new memories. A lot of my memory issues, my time lapses, my strange and overwhelming deja vu, my hideous and mind bending dreams, all began around that time. I really don’t remember a lot of what happened after her. And I wonder if, to some extent, that’s because it’s difficult for me to connect memories to emotion in the same way that, post Courtney, I was hesitant to connect media or things to emotion? I really don’t know. I can remember points of fact, often, but it’s quite removed from any experiential memory. I can no longer really derive pleasure from memories, and it’s difficult to really get any emotional responses from them. I remember things much as I imagine other people remember a grocery list. I can remember things that I read in Star Wars books as a teenage that seem as real to me as things that I know happened. I don’t know if this is significant. I also know that at age 13, the year I read all of those books, I noticed a sharp memory decrease. However, these things also tie in nicely with the depression thesis that I brought forward a year and a half ago.

I don’t seem to know that I feel things when I’m not showing them, but I also don’t trust the feelings that I demonstrate. To demonstrate a feeling, to perform it, makes it appear to lose sincerity. But to not perform it implies that there is nothing there. To what extent is a feeling “real” when we know the exact point within ourselves that we feel it up to? What is the meaning of a feeling that we chase after? I remember, once, wearing a pair of old Structure pants (that I had loved and worn in high school) and my blue Heavy Arms Gundam Wing t-shirt, going to Amanda’s little above-garage apartment. The one at her dad’s house. And I was going to watch Gundam Wing to recapture that feeling that I missed, that I often told her that I missed. But it failed. Utterly. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t recapture or rekindle anything. Eventually, I lost the capacity to appreciate things that I actually wanted because they seemed like insincere attempts to revive emotion, or as though they were the unholy objects used by summoners to try to resurrect someone QUITE dead. I say this with two Gundam Wing CDs next to me, the rest nearby, and the complete Sailor Moon series on a hard drive in the next room.

It seems as though I’m just thinking too much. About everything. And that I always have been. Perhaps it was the rejection of conscious thought, circa Rachael and around the time of JCMU, that mattered to me. But even trying to remember those days, to dredge up feelings and memories, makes me feel, quite physically, as though someone is grabbing my heart. It contracts suddenly and I feel the muscles in my chest and abdomen suddenly twist themselves into knots.
I often feel most at ease when I am pretending to be someone else. To perform the actions of a reasonable person makes me feel like one. Pretending to be normal, when I can lose myself in the performance, feels nearly as good as being normal. Or exceptional. Normal isn’t the right word. Bifurcated? I feel as though I am incapable of doing anything without a constant nagging reflection and awareness. Yet, however much I may admire the individual happinesses of some dear friends who manage happiness and a lack of awareness, I don’t know that I could stand it. Although, if it were to happen, the tragedy would be in the old Star Trek sense of “isn’t-it-so-sad-he’s-so-far-gone-he-can’t-even-see-that-he’s-gone,” sort of way.

I’ve gotten the phone number for a psychiatrist that my GP recommends. I’m going to call tomorrow or Wednesday (tomorrow is my busiest day) to schedule an appointment. It’s not counseling, which I’d honestly prefer, but it is covered by my health insurance. And, who knows, maybe a few pills will be enough to get me to a point where I can work through things. And maybe he’ll know a counselor who speaks English. Due to a quirk in Japanese insurance, counseling services are all out-of-pocket while Psychiatrists are covered. So is medication. I don’t expect that a few pills are going to solve anything, but maybe this is a reasonable first step towards getting things figured out. I really don’t know. But I’ve got to do something.