Making Connections

5 min read

What follows is a piece of writing I did before I left the city I lived in for 40 years. I was feeling very disconnected at the time. I think a lot has changed but mostly my feelings around ‘real’ connections, are the same.

I think there are many different kinds of connection.

The connections I am interested in most are those between people.

For me, a ‘real’ connection with people, means feelings-to-feelings. It’s all about emotional connection.

I do not need the same level of emotional connection with everyone. It depends on the relationship, or the relationship I’d like with a person.

If I walk onto a bus, I don’t really need an emotional connection with the bus driver. Well, that would likely be difficult, as we are probably strangers. However, we’re both people, with the same underlying needs. This is one of the reasons I try to treat everyone, as a person. This may seem like an odd thing to say, of course, they are a person, but I wonder if society is full of people doing things, perhaps because we have to, which reduces us, our purpose in life, to other people, to being the thing, the thing that we provide?

I think we need some form of communication to make a real connection with each other, but then I think we’re also a society with a level of politeness that acts as a defence from making authentic connections.

Calling someone “sir” or “madam” for example. Enough of this! I think it serves no purpose, it doesn’t serve to connect with people, it establishes a hierarchy (not even a real meaningful one) and I don’t think it really is polite, it has no care in it really, it has no respect, it’s culture, but practically culturally meaningless.

Importantly, it taps right into me wanting to push away the person using this sort of communication.

I don’t think the language of ‘politeness’ is necessarily about real, healthy boundaries either. Boundaries are not walls, they are complex, doors but doors with handles that are best placed on the inside, so we have control over how much we open them.

It seems to me that our society has a culture of people wanting to connect with each other, but being too afraid, normally understandably, of connection. So instead we tend to focus on other kinds of connection.

Why am I doing this right now?

Well, I feel unseen, unheard, lonely, isolated.

I originally wrote this post on my Facebook profile. So why bother writing it on Facebook?

Actually, one reason is because I like to write. Another is when I do it, and do it publicly, it feels more real. I struggle with the idea of just writing to myself. This is because I don’t like writing to myself. I don’t like connecting with myself, it’s painful. Yes, that’s a problem, one which I don’t really know how to resolve.

Social media is supposedly all about connecting with each other. Yet it appears to me, at least, that it’s also set up to encourage a culture where we can say we’re better connected, but in reality, it’s more like we’re dancing a different dance in front of each other, standing far apart, flapping our arms.

In this situation, I could stop, and just listen, watch the other person. I may learn something. However, I don’t think this is connected. Feelings-to-feelings.

Two people, both want to connect with each other, but they don’t know enough about each other. Maybe one person tells the other a lot about themselves, and maybe the other person listens a lot. This can be a good thing.

I am wondering about those 2 people, imaging them as not just a body, but a kind of atmosphere in and around them both. It’s a multilayered atmosphere and there is both conscious and subconscious control from both people over how far this atmosphere extends, importantly toward each other.

In order to connect though, for some level of emotional connection, some of both of those people’s atmospheres have to overlap. We have to actually touch, to connect, just not necessarily physically. Actually, I think physical connection can often be a means to avoid emotional connection.

There are probably many permutations of disconnection.

Generally though, we all start off as strangers. We might think we understand something about each other at first, based on culture, sex, gender, body language and so on. Those things can be valid but I think the problems arise when we just go with those impressions of each other. This, I think is essentially an aggressive approach, not physically aggressive necessarily, I mean it’s aggressive, because a person has decided that their view of another is right, to not listen.

If the other person keeps their atmosphere, their connection points, away, then this may be reasonable and it is their right to do so.

Is it what they really want though? If it’s not, then what’s stopping that connection from happening? Everyone has their important, valid, story behind that.

So we may have two people, who want to connect with each other, but are afraid of doing so, because experience says they may be harmed. There is a lack of trust, in a society with a culture of lack of trust, because some people do bad things to others, and then when we meet strangers, with little to go on, except they might resemble, in some way, someone who did something bad to us before.

This is sad but it can be overcome. It just takes time, and sometimes taking the time can be really painful.

Ah yes. The complexity of connection. As complex as each person.

Connecting (in one way) to disconnect (from feelings), I think is a lonely place to be.

Though it may bring some pleasure, it’s not necessarily fulfilling.

An answer, to me, personally, may be to “go out and do some things I enjoy with people”.

Easier said than done if you’re not a trans woman, who is probably autistic, with mental health problems, living on her own, in a part of town where people don’t just drop by, or even ask to, with barely any social life, during a pandemic. I don’t think that’s even the full list.

I do often blame myself, sadly. I see opportunities to meet people, yet I don’t even go out of the house. I am unfair to myself though, because I’m comparing myself to other people, and most people are not in my situation.

I am probably the only person who can fix this though. Sometimes I want someone to come along and make things better. It ain’t happening, and really, I don’t want that, it’s disempowering, Rescuing. I could get it I think, I could be really dramatic, go out and take risks, hoping that out of all of the things that might go badly, something goes right.

Instead I take few risks at all. I’m too scared. Too scared to connect because actually, it feels like nearly everyone out there doesn’t really want to connect, maybe even can’t. I don’t know of course, because I’ve not met them yet, but what I do have is enough lived experience, to tell me that I have some pretty safe assumptions about how people might view me, and they aren’t good. Not here. Not most places.

So I have to go where the risks are less and the opportunities to connect are greater.

Except there are no guarantees that will work, I don’t trust my judgement, and the whole thing is terrifying. It feels easier, to lock myself up in here, hide myself away, even with the pain of that, because it’s what I already know.

I cannot keep doing this though. I’m standing at the edge of a leap of faith, sobbing my eyes out, standing on a ledge and I’ve been attempting to make this isolated, rocky outcropping, home, when it’s not.

One step forward. Can I really take two steps back then? Possibly not, not with a steep, high wall behind me.