Unenjoyment
While I don’t quite understand the mechanism, there’s something about being sick and trying to get better that makes a small subset of people want to treat you badly. Whether they do it on purpose or by accident, it really doesn’t matter. People always think that intentions matter. They do matter, but mostly only when you’re standing trial for something that could put you away for a very long time. In matters pertaining to emotional violence and wreckage, it doesn’t matter what your intentions were. You simply shouldn’t be a shithead to other people, whether you intended to or not. It’s more than not nice - it’s a dealbreaker.
The worst types of people are those who, when you try to explain that you were scared or insulted or angry because of something they did or said, not only don’t apologize but then defend their actions by putting the blame on you. You’re always “too sensitive,” or “an exaggerator,” or best of all, “a liar.” Who am I talking about? Well, I can’t say, but I wrote an earlier entry about just such an experience, which you may have read, and now I have a new one.
Four days ago I decided to return to Turkey for a trip with a friend to the southern coast of the country for a relaxing beach holiday. I’ll admit - booking the initial trip for over a week gave me pause, mostly because I was supposed to be in Zurich getting better and seeing my doctor and all of those good things, but I thought hell, what can’t be more healing than swimming in the Mediterranean? What I failed to remember is that even the paradise quality of the Garden of Eden is completely dependent on who’s sharing it with you.
This person had in fact insulted me before - but with friends, that kind of shit happens, right? You give a person a freebie and then you move on. His offense was rather egregious (insulting my family) but I’ve been in a forgiving mood lately with my emotional healing process solidly on track with only the expected fumbles here and there. This is of course, not to say that I’m currently perfectly capable of handling people who choose to antagonize and offend me, especially when they are already aware of what I’m going through. A while back when Papaya was sharing with me a story of a person who was pissing her off, I said to her almost off-handedly that I had long ago decided to avoid people who caused me “unenjoyment.” There’s no dictionary definition of unenjoyment, obviously, because unenjoyment, like fashion, is sort of a personal taste thing. Like fashion, though, there are things that many people might agree constitute unenjoyment just as there are many people who might agree on what’s considered bad fashion. The key fact to remember is that not everyone perceives the same kinds of things as unenjoyment.
For me, unenjoyment is much more subtle and complex than straightforward hate or fear. It’s more like an irritating biting insect that buzzes around your ear and attacks you when you least expect it. You swat at it occasionally, but it never goes away and never stops its nagging, mostly because that’s its nature to be annoying in order to get what it wants. Such an insect is usually harmless, but on occasion it can transmit some life threatening disease that you saw coming, but you ignored because it was easier not to have to deal with it. How does this translate from simile to human being? The person who causes me unenjoyment can have all, some, or even only one of the following characteristics, and can also manifest these characteristics in varying degrees: delusions of grandeur, hypocrisy, poor work ethic, excessive self-righteousness, defensive default, laziness, superiority complex, inflated expectations (particularly of the friendship shared with me), abrasively public politics, constant demands for non-reciprocal respect, a lack of or distorted understanding of empathy, and a basic deficiency in reading body language and social hints. Note that this is my list - your mileage for what causes you unenjoyment may vary.
Now, I don’t want to paint a picture for you of some utter freak or homicidal maniac. In my experience, many of these individuals appear as highly functioning members of society. In fact, they probably are and continue to be highly functioning and fit well into their respective social circles. It’s not even that any of these people are horrible at all, it’s just something about their interactions with me that cause me great unenjoyment. These people are often surrounded by friends who can deal with them for whatever clinical psychology reason you want to use to explain the functioning. They have jobs, they appear happy from the outset, they are educated, and they can even be fun to be around, which is usually why I become friends with them to start. I am not sure if it’s communication breakdown, mismatched expectations, or simply incompatible personalities, but the common link among all people who cause me unenjoyment is just that - even if I valued their company to begin with, I eventually can’t stand to be around them because they consistently make my day a little darker.
The longer you hang around people who cause you unenjoyment, the more likely it is that you will develop a bad attitude yourself, or become depressed and irritable. These people may even start to consume the hours that you don’t spend with them, because you’re constantly thinking about how they’ve recently offended or disrespected you. Worse is that such people won’t even notice they’ve made you angry, freaked you out, or insulted you. Your attempts to relay this message in the nicest way you can are met with blank stares or subject changes or unfunny jokes.
I usually end up thoroughly severing all relations with people who cause me unenjoyment. It might seem like an excessive reaction to simple unenjoyment. I mean, I don’t hate these people. In fact, most of them I really enjoyed spending time with before the fatal moment. It’s just that I will be forever unable to give them what they need to cause them to stop dishing the unenjoyment my way. They want something, you ask? Let’s be fair - of course they do. Everyone wants to reap the fruits of a relationship with someone else, either as a friend or lover or teacher or mentor or leader or follower. I can always offer friendship, but what I can’t provide these people with is higher self-esteem, unconditional respect, complacent agreement, a soul to save, company for constant misery, or love. I’ve been working hard to rid myself of my own variations on these needs, or finding ways to discover personal fulfillment without the help of others. The last thing I need in the world is someone who thinks that I am the solution to even one of the shortcomings of his or her own troubled heart.
And so it was that I had to cut short my holiday in southern Turkey to get the fuck outta Dodge. I won’t exhaustively detail why I needed to get away from this person, or why he pissed me off. It’s really all irrelevant, because like I said, my unenjoyment may not be someone else’s unenjoyment, so it would probably not have the same impact on you as it would me. Suffice it to say, that as I put ever not so lightly (as is my style) in my last email to him, (despite hoping he’d drop the subject altogether and not contact me anymore - but alas, people who cause unenjoyment don’t understand that), he’s a chain smoking fascist asshole and I choose to not be associated with him anymore. No, it wasn’t the nicest thing to say, but I was at my wit’s end after numerous straightforward and non-profane indications that I wanted to be left alone, and that he promptly ignored. The problem with the unenjoyment is that it never goes away that easily. There is always the rebuttal, the defense, the accusations, the superiority, the trivializing of the victim’s emotions and fears, and so on, ad nauseum. You really must wonder how the situation might have been different had the person just said, “I am sorry I offended you and your family,” or, “I am sorry I scared the living shit out of you,” from the get go, or, “I value your friendship so maybe we can discuss the matter further in person.” It’s a sad fact of the universe for me that a person who causes me unenjoyment will, by nature of the definition, never be able to put themselves second in order to save a human relationship.
Leaving the offenses unmentioned, I still can’t omit the gem of the entire last three days of unenjoyment in southern Turkey. After directly asking to be left alone a number of times and being ignored, I finally resorted to angry body language to 1) save my voice from having to repeat my request twenty more times, and 2) attempt a different method of indicating “go the fuck away.” I buried my nose in the book I’d been reading the entire holiday and sat on my bed while he continued to ask interrogative questions. It was at this point that he articulated the demand that has come to define the spirit of unenjoyment for me, that jewel of a statement that lords over all friendship, respect, and common courtesy.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
Why, I don’t think I’ve heard that request since I was 8 years old. Even better, I’m pretty sure there are only two people in all the world who have ever had the right to say that - mom and dad. I remember deliberately placing my book on the bed and replying, “Excuse me?” I guess he got what he wanted, but perhaps not with the reaction he intended. Of course, as it goes, he later insisted that I misinterpreted him or overreacted or didn’t hear him or all of the above. He wrote in an email response to my first message, “What I meant was, ‘You aren’t looking at me when I talk to you.’” While I’m not surprised I’m still saddened that he’d try to play down what he really said as if it was a statement as innocuous as “It’s dark in here.” It wasn’t, he knows that, and his attempts to cover it it up are almost more unenjoyable than the original offense.
I hadn’t really decided whether or not I was leaving, but at that moment all was decided for me. Shit always goes down at the worst possible time, of course, and to prove it, Ramadan had just started and all flights out of Bodrum, Turkey were either fully booked or several thousand bucks for a one way ticket to Zurich. In the end, it all comes down to how much you want to get out of your current situation versus how much money and effort you’re willing to spend. For me, money and effort aren’t always connected, which is a bit erroneous but that day, it still worked out for me. I ended up sitting at the Bodrum airport for nineteen hours (or rather, living at the Bodrum airport) awaiting a flight to Istanbul, then spending another four hours in Istanbul waiting to board a flight for Strasbourg, France. Once in Strasbourg, I discovered no one spoke English but I knew enough crappy French to catch the bus to the tram to the main train station where I caught the second-to-last train back to Zurich. It took me about 48 hours to get home.
When I walked into the office sweaty and disheveled with my luggage still in tow and saw Kiwi typing away at his computer, I said, “I have never been so glad to be back in Zurich.”
“Jess,” he said, “I think that in the future, whenever you have an idea about something you want to do, you should ask an unbiased third party whether or not they think it’s a good idea before you actually go and do it.”
That’s some advice that causes me great enjoyment.
Photos from my trip to Ephesus before all this shit went down are here.
