Janeway and Troi

Disclaimer: If you are going to read this, read all of it before you think of commenting. This kind of writing is hard for me, but it is completely honest, every word of it. If the length seems overwhelming, don’t read it. The most important thing to me was that I wrote it down, and made it possible for you to read it if you cared to. You don’t have to read it or say anything for that goal to be completely accomplished. Thank you.


I just finished talking with Adam, and he said something to me that I feel I need to explore further. I was upset about something that isn't that important and he took notice of some of my self-depreciation. This is what he said in response, generally: “I don’t know how to explain it. People really do like you. I don’t know why you don’t believe me. (pause) You are like a combination of Captain Janeway and Deanna Troi. …. You are naturally a leader, and, for some reason I still don’t really understand and totally respect, people always innately feel like they can talk to you. [insert several examples from this year to make his point]. How can you not believe that people like you? People love you.”

While this, on the one hand, is a vivid example of just how our relationship works and how warped [no pun intended] the two of us really are, I understand what he was saying. He’s right – my whole life, people have felt they can talk to me, about, well…nearly everything, it seems. Example: In high school, a guy I hardly knew pulled me aside and proceeded to tell me all about the 23 women he’d had sex with over the summer and why. (That is easily the oddest one so far). And it really has been like that my whole life. Adults, when I was dramatically younger, people I didn’t have too much in common with, like Veronica, the gothic Wiccan girl who cracked the bullwhip at RenFests and desperately needed a friend in Middle School, different people from this year, all have shared a part of their heart with me when they needed someone to talk to. People at my church used to call me wise beyond my years. I never felt it was wisdom, truly, just an ability to listen.
And I feel differently about this…tendency sometimes. I’m proud, honored, sometimes, that people feel like they can turn to me when they are in trouble, that I will help them, no matter what. It was part of the reason I thought (think?) I could be a good reporter. (Things do get easier when people have a tendency to share their secrets with you).
But a lot of the time, I also feel like it only gets in the way. For people to feel confident in me, I have to be somewhat apart, far enough removed to be nonjudgmental. I have to be totally stable, a rock for people to stand on while the beach flows out from underneath them. I don’t mean to do this; I don’t intentionally create this distance, this separateness from people. But that separateness from them creates isolation for me. It is impossible to appear stable and to let down your own walls. Anyone who knows me well enough will tell you I’m a complete mess. But it is very rare to see me crack in front of someone I don’t intimately trust.
This leaves me feeling that I’m undoubtedly well-liked; I work at that every day, and strive to be a good person that others can come to when they need help in some form. But I also feel like, not to be too morbid, if I died tomorrow, few people would be able to say they really knew me. Not many people would be able to accurately say what I liked and disliked, what issues were important to me, what I was like in the time before they met me. I think, in that way, I’m the well-liked loner, if you will. I wonder what people would think to say at my funeral, what songs they would play. I don’t think many people would know what I wanted.
I don’t know how to break through my own walls, most of the time. And sometimes when I do, I feel like I’m playing a part. I feel like I would always be the supporting character in someone else’s movie.
I’m not saying this for sympathy. I honestly don’t know why I’m writing any of this, except that I felt I should, that I needed to be totally honest with myself, with you, who are reading this.
My friends, I am honored to have you. I honest-to-goodness don’t feel like I make friends very well, and so I cherish you, whether or not I have spoken to you in awhile. I am always here for you, but sometimes what matters most to me is that you are also there for me. So thank you for being there for me.
And I thank God that I have been blessed with a boyfriend as caring, considerate, and nurturing as you, Adam. You know me perhaps better than I know myself sometimes, and I never doubt that you would go to the ends of the earth for me. You make me feel like Helen of Troy, like the most beautiful person on the planet, and as though you’d be willing to fight for decades to rescue me. I have no idea what the future holds for us, but I love you, and I am blessed to know you.
Thank you, everyone.