Years ago, in the dark times, I clung to the life raft of sAfe FOoDs. There was a parasite involved, some prayer, and more than one dose of ciprofloxacin. It was suggested then, and again last year when my potassium was remarkably low, that I seek out bananas. Like a good, compliant, and often hyper fixated human, I have imparted significance on my yellow friend. Most days as I leave the house (or the hotel), it’s usually with a banana in hand
.
Recently, my emotional support banana became the theme of a yoga class, in which I shared a bit more about the peculiar nature of being me. It might seem selfish or self-centered or narcissistic to talk about my own emotional support banana, but frankly it becomes not only an area in which I receive emotional support, but a way in which you can remember how absolutely and ridiculously different we are.
Modern insanity sounds like venting resentment. Don’t believe me? Let me know which one of the following sounds like you:
“My partner doesn’t pick up the dog poo even though I do the cooking and the dishes and the car washing. It’s the least he could do.”
“My boss won’t give me the best teaching slot - she hired a new teacher instead of offering it to me - even though I respond to all of her emails, promptly, jovially, with abundant emojis.”
“My dental hygienist just will not let me clean her teeth.”
(just me?)
Reciprocity is extraordinarily weird. Like any expectation, it’s a down payment on future resentment, but direct reciprocity is one of the most bizarre ways of keeping score I’ve ever encountered.
And it’s everywhere.
And it’s the root of your kind suffering, my friend.
Or. It might be.
Years ago I nearly lost a friend - after a decade - when she bravely said, through frustrated tears,
“You just never call me out of the blue to see how I’m doing.”
She was correct. I abhor calls out of the blue. I’m afraid someone has died. I need advanced notice, like a plan or a postcard or a text.
“Calling you for a chat later - pretty much no one has died other than Sinead*.”
It does not occur to me to do the thing I dislike to other people, because I am not a narcissist.
(I’m pretty sure. Although I do worry that I might be the same way I sometimes wonder in my approach to TSA if I might actually have forgotten that I packed a weapon in my luggage.)
I also don’t like texts that say, “thinking of you,” that do not provide context, because I invest way too much time wondering if your text is a cry for help because you have been detained by a foreign government and you know me well enough to know that only I would read into the virtually invisible subtext that you are in distress from such an innocuous message.
For the record, I have since started texting my nearly-estranged friend out of the blue because she asked me to. Because she likes it.
Because reciprocity is the devil’s love language.
I love flowers, and I don’t love paying for them. I love snacks. I love knowing that the tiny scrap of paper I handed you seven years ago has taken up residence on your mirror and is sun bleached within an inch of legibility. I love to know that I matter with the same intensity that you do, just not in the same way.
Here are some ideas about how to love me:
If you surprise me I might die. I’m not sure, but I am fairly certain. I’m an alpaca by nature. If you really love me you will plan to surprise me but then give me adequate warning so I have shaved both of my legs and brought sufficient layers, and can look surprised for the camera and also not require medical assistance.
If you love me, you bring a banana to class - real or imagined - you agree that maybe my words make sense when strung together, you know that styrofoam is my kryptonite and would rather go hungry or eat from a questionably wrapped bit of aluminum foil than ask Mother Earth to remember this meal in perpetuity.
If I love you, I do not ruin your surprises, or give you a long-form poem and several screenshots about effective proximal parking strategies near our meetup spot unless I know that you would also rather stay home than parallel park while under scrutiny of the cool kids, who are the only people to ever turn towards you in such a precarious moment.
If you love me, you avert your eyes.
The golden rule has really, supremely been misheard by most of us. Dear god don’t ask me to attend your wedding and hurl me into the kind-eyed crowd who just wants to know ‘what I do for work’ or ‘if I’m married,’ and instead please let me swab decks, or solve problems, or push cars out of (or into!) a bog.
The way is to be bold, and say what you need, and share how and why, and also to have grace for the fact that for 30 years of my life I’ve needed to lie down without much warning, and sometimes it has been at the most in opportune times.
Please know that I want to go to dinner, and that the answer is Chipotle, always, because my test-taking anxiety rears when asked and it’s the universal answer. That or Whole Foods. Or anything that is like either of those things. Or a banana.
For me, it may just be a prophylactic emotional support banana, for blood sugar and potassium, and the business of the peeling and chewing without the drama of decisions. Just until the dust settles.
I’ll add a note to my phone in your contact. Your dog’s name. Your wifi code. That you love muffins and blueberries and can’t do gluten, and randomly one day I’ll send you a pin - from Portland - of the most glorious gluten free blueberry win. Even if you’re in Dallas. Even if it doesn’t make sense.
These are my love languages. Lists and maps and poetry fragments. Too much information in some areas and not nearly enough in others.
And because of this?
Because of this I know better.
I know better than to treat you the way I want to be treated, and instead, endeavor to respect you the way I’d like to be respected.
With a list of ways you love to be loved.
And an emotional support banana.
Thanks for reading,
K