People Who Need People
I have one of those faces.
Not the kind where people think they’ve seen you before. I’m very rarely been told I look like anyone. (I was once called a poor man’s Carrie Fisher, which I’m going to keep as the definitive ruling on the subject, because how could I do better than that?)
No, I have the kind of face that inspires people to tell me things. Heavy things. Secret things. Intimate things. It’s been that way since I was a kid.
I remember, with uncharacteristic (for me) clarity, being 15 years old, and realizing people were just going to keep telling me things, and deciding to become a mental health therapist. I reasoned that at least then I would know what to do when these confessions reached me, and I could stand to make a decent living off it. Thankfully, it turns out I love knowing what to do with these confessions, and I love helping people, and it does make a reasonable living, so it all worked out.
And the training I got to get here included techniques to let me gently and kindly redirect people when I don’t have the space and energy to take in their stories when they turn up on my doorstep unexpectedly and uninvited.
Not so coincidently, two of my favorite post-apocalyptic YA books- the perennial classic The Giver by Lois Lowry, and recent hit Each of Us a Desert, by Mark Oshiro both have to do with being on the receiving end of the stories and traumas of a community, and the weight and struggle of that.
In both those stories, the young person selected to carry the weight of their communities is selected by outside forces. It’s a role forced on them, and they spend the book struggling with the relationship they have to the lived experiences they carry.
It mirrors many of my own early experiences. There was the bus driver who told me about how his experiences in the Vietnam war resulted in his wife leaving him. The woman walking her dog who told me about her domestic violence history. The friend of a friend at a party telling me about their history of self-harm. The popular girl crying in the bathroom, who knew I was safely removed from her social circle. I’m a dynamo at making space for people to tell me these stories when I’m doing it deliberately, but even when I’m not, they tend to find their way to my ears unless I’m actively evading them.
Because of Mark’s book (which I finished reading this month) and some other events I can’t get into here, I’ve been thinking about the way intrusive, situational intimacies come up in stories I deliberately consume, as well as the stories I put into the world myself.
There’s one version of these strange, need-based, un-asked-for intimacies that are absolutely ubiquitous in media I seek out.
An unlikely set of heroes are thrown together to defeat some evil or go on a quest or resolve a problem, and in the process they learn about themselves and each other and form nurturing, if complex, bonds. It’s familiar, it’s classic, and at it’s base it’s a beautiful, optimistic worldview. The appeal is the idea that if we were thrown together with some random people in a scary situation, that they would turn out to be safe and caring people at the end of the day.
I love those stories. They echo in the backgrounds of my own works. That optimism makes the risks that build relationships and interdependence possible.
But they’re such a small slice of what these situational intimacies can be, and I’m drawn to telling stories about the slipperier, sharper versions.
Right now I’m editing Names in Their Blood, sequel to Secondhand Origin Stories, and this story is rife with painful, needful intimacies. And, since it’s me, the way these intimacies intersect with disability.
One of the main settings in Names in Their Blood is a large fictional hospital called Coldwater Clinic. It’s the US’s only full hospital for genetically modified people. And wow does it leave me a lot of room to explore these sorts of interactions.
We can pad it with as much routine and professionalism as we want, but medical care and disability care are brimming with intimacy.
It’s a form of intimacy, for a surgeon to open a body.
It’s a form of intimacy, to provide urgent, life-saving first aide.
And to give or receive care that society dictates belongs exclusively to the youngest children.
And there’s the intimacy from patient to patient, sharing the bottom tier of a hierarchy ostensibly built for your benefit by people with grater expertise, holding the keys to your health or survival.
These are all strange intrusions into our sense of autonomy and coherency. They’re interactions that invite radical honesty and demand terrifying trust.
If you’ve ever been in a cohort of people pressed up against the further edge of their own limits, you’ve probably experienced some of the kinds of conversations that those situations unlock. They’re magical, in their way. People on the brink of their ability to cope can see and say things they usually keep locked down and numb. I tried to capture the insular sense of that in the “secret poker” scene of Secondhand Origin Stories.
I’m not just a recipient of stories, after all. I’ve been in broken down groups before, and enjoyed the desperate mutual sharing they invite.
I think the traumatized bus driver who needed to tell me his story lived on that brink just about all the time.
I wonder what happened when he’d bled his pain over semi-randomized strangers in the past. Were they helpful, spurring him to purge his pain over and over again, seeking satisfaction? Or were they rejecting? If they were, was he undeterred, or was his need heavier than the restraint of fear?
I love intimacy that proceeds from trust.
But I think I’ll always be fascinated by intimacy that proceeds from need.
After all, it’s what makes my therapy work possible. My clients (usually) choose me, but it’s a choice made under duress more often than not. They’re in pain, they need the pain to stop, the reach for the best bet they can find, and take a leap of faith.
They’re usually at least a little bit afraid of me, at first. I’m a stranger, asking them to unlock their heart, pick apart it’s workings, and lay it out for my inspection as well as they can.
I don’t want to give away the endings to The Giver or Each of Us a Desert, but I think it’s worth noting that the consent of the main characters in these works is always central to their decision about what to do with the stories foisted on them.
I’ve gone to great lengths to choose to take in stories, now. I’ve trained to tolerable them. I’ve done hilariously granular drills to build myself into a machine for inviting people to give them to me. I’ve dedicated my life to knowing what to do once I’ve been handed them.
And I’m going to keep writing about the beauty, danger, faith, terror and inescapably of needful intimacies.
As always, if you've enjoyed this edition of Shed Letters, please feel free to write back to me, and/or to share it with others. I want more penpals! And you can now get Secondhand Origin Stories, as an ebook, for free, on Itch.io here.
Hope I hear from you,
Lee Brontide