how close is too close?

Beginners (2011)

I try to decline invitations when I feel unable to be “good company.” If this seems noble, it’s not, it’s merely to avoid a fear that goes like this: if people see me at my worst, they won’t want to see me again, ever. So, I hide out whenever I don’t have the energy to present as the cheerful person I prefer to parade as. Being around people usually makes me feel better, yet still I choose to self-isolate. This is odd, since I’ve only ever felt closer to people after seeing them on a bad day.

Sometimes who sees us at our worst isn’t even within our control. 

The day I broke two bones was not a day I wanted anyone to see me. If I could have taken myself to urgent care, I would have, instead I was hyper-aware that the person driving me was perceiving me at my most disheveled. Despite the pain shooting up my ankle, I still cared what he thought of me, so, I tried making jokes (they didn’t land) and attempted to conceal how sweaty I was, this was futile, he’d just carried me down from the top of the hike where I’d fallen—so he knew.

When we arrived, I had the humbling experience of having to be carried into a bathroom where I was even more mortified to learn I’d bled through my pants. It could have been while I hiked up to the top, or while I was lying on the trail where I fainted, or while he was carrying me all the way down the steep hill—somewhere in there, mission control of my body was like, “you know what…let’s fire up the period!” Cool. 

After dealing with that, I rummaged in my tote bag for anything to make me look…well, prettier. Blame capitalism, or the patriarchy, but with actual blood, sweat, and tears on my clothing, I applied lip gloss and fixed my hair before he retrieved me. Turns out my vanity prevails, even when physically and emotionally wrecked. And throughout the four-hour wait to see a doctor, I maintained my cool girl act: a performance art piece I’ve been doing on and off since 2012. 

My Dinner With Andre (1981)

But after x-rays showed my ankle was not sprained as I suspected, but my leg and ankle had broken in 3 places, hiding how I felt was impossible. Every ounce of vanity vanished too, which was good since my ankle looked like a ripe grapefruit—no, like a moldy one because it was shriveled, black and blue. The nurse taught him how to wrap it in an ace bandage until I could get to an orthopedic doctor. He looked up at me as he held my bruised body part. With giant tears in my eyes, I looked at him looking at me, realizing I was being seen at my worst. 

This was all surprisingly intimate, too intimate. I kept people at a distance to avoid this; I wanted to be seen, but not like this. It tied my stomach into knots but what I did not feel was: lonely. 

Since the broken bones left me unable to walk or drive, I suddenly needed accompaniment everywhere. 

If I had to be seen at my worst by anyone, I preferred strangers. So I fired up my Uber, Instacart, and TaskRabbit apps, but when the fees from all of those and the co-pays from doctor visits began draining my savings, I realized I’d have to ask friends for help. This put a spotlight on the fact that, while I know many people, I’m close with very few, so occasionally I’d still be getting to know a new friend in my orthopedic doctor’s waiting room. It is difficult for me to even grasp people’s kindness, how they brought soup or made time to drive me, when they had no obligation.

One friend even texted a link to the GoFundMe page she’d drafted asking if the info was accurate and if she could share it. I burst into tears as soon as I read the description she wrote explaining my “situation.” I told her how moved I was that she had made it, but declined since it made me feel too publicly exposed. Minutes later, on the way to an x-ray, crying in a newer friend's car, I felt privately exposed, which turns out felt worse. If the crowdfunding campaign was like playing a concert in a stadium—vulnerable yet distanced—breaking down directly in front of someone was like playing a new song for an audience of one, deeply intimate, with nothing to hide behind. 

The day I fell was the start of experiencing this level of exposure. The more parts he saw of me, the more he trusted me with showing hidden parts of himself. My discomfort with emotional intimacy started to dissipate when more people saw me in my disheveled, injured state. Oddly, a bunch of people, or as the receptionist at my orthopedic doctor put it, “You're the only cast patient with a different driver in here each week.” 

I took this as a compliment, but looking around I noticed everyone with a cast was accompanied by either family or significant others. Was this due to obligation or proximity? Or was it because when we are hurt (at our worst) we feel more comfortable being seen by those who know us best?

Was I asking too much of people, not just for the rides to the appointments, but to see me this way? After college is it appropriate to have close pals? Her innocent observation made me question, how close should friendships be? And now that I'd opened the Pandora's box of emotional intimacy, could I even close it if I wanted to? 

Because I didn’t want to…
The twist ending of my summer break is that, in the end, being bad company felt good. Being seen at my worst was the best.

I feared people would leave if they saw this side of me, but when some stayed, it felt freeing. I’d experienced a form of freedom Zadie Smith spoke about in an interview with the New York Times this week. 

She defines freedom beyond merely getting to do whatever you want. She says it takes many forms, and one type she values is the freedom of having a place she can go and be completely herself:

"When you're out in the world, you can feel like a lot of your life is a performance. Even friendships that seem intimate sometimes have a performative aspect…when I retreat to the privacy of my marriage, that all goes away. I am absolutely myself. I'm sure [my husband] Nick would say in a basically grotesque way, terribly dressed, not washed, but I'm myself. I am free."

I’d stumbled upon a loophole to feel this particular form of freedom that she outlines outside of a romantic partnership: emergencies. Like a marriage, a crisis allows us to step off the social stage and cease performing. The key difference being, a crisis provides this freedom temporarily (until you're better) whereas a marriage allows it until death do you part. 

Without a crisis, am I allowed to be this known, or this, as Smith says, “absolutely myself” with friends? She elaborates:

“We try to portray some kind of idea of ourselves, so it’s just unbelievably difficult to actually know another human being.”    

I wanted to try…after tasting this level of emotional intimacy, I craved more of it. I wanted to see all of my friends in their totality too. I felt ravenous to know everyone's “worst selves,” but that’s invasive. I now see this desire was a desperate attempt to maintain the closeness and consistency with friends my injury had induced.

When I got my cast off, I felt the lowest I had in months. I thought only in dramatic extremes—like, was the cast the only way I could feel emotional connection and without it I’m left with loneliness?

Or, as I put it to my therapist that week, “I feel like no one actually knows me and the people who do all leave.” She poked holes in this, saying, “friends likely know you better than you think they do because most people see through bullshit.” 

This felt slightly soothing, to think perhaps friends saw through my act all along, but what helped more was examining the evidence: some friends who I am certain saw the worst parts of me…stayed.

Noticing that people stuck around, proves being “absolutely ourselves,” is safe. Granted, using acceptance from others as proof we can be more authentic is a crutch (ideally we can do this without external validation), but as someone who just benefited from actual crutches, there’s value in getting propped up until you can stand on your own. 🩼

After being extra supported for months, learning to stand on my own was jarring. It wasn’t sustainable to have this higher level of consistency and therefore closeness with so many friends permanently; it was circumstantial. What felt like a comedown from a high, was actually just a transition into a new phase of my injury—one where I could be more independent again—and therefore the cadence in communication changed from when my situation was acute.

I see now, the embarrassing truth is that none of this was about maintaining emotional intimacy at all—what I actually was grasping onto was: attention. 😬

People came out of the woodwork when they found out, some I hadn’t heard from in years. It felt like I was getting all my Make-A-Wishes granted when people showed up in ways that I’d dreamed of from them, like the interior designer friend who came over to make my space feel better since I had to spend more time in it. Or the chef who made a meal, or (let’s call a spade a spade) all the way back to day one of this: the person I used to have a crush on being affectionate and sweet to me.

Turns out, breaking bones had an upside: care and concern, so when the distraction from that lessened, I was left with the downsides: the strain it put on aspects of my life.

While I had been frozen in place, people had a hot summer. I wasn’t returning to how things were in May. Emerging felt disorienting: a friend who’d just begun dating someone last I saw him was fully in love when I saw him next; the manager of one of my jobs, who I adored, had been replaced when I returned to work; the tea shop I visited monthly closed; parties were missed, babies were born… and as I caught up, I became aware of how fast time moves the older I get.

Being in a cast made me feel like a kid—not because I was getting it signed, but because wearing it got me more attentiveness, supervision, protection, sheltering, and care from friends than I’ve ever gotten as an adult. It made me feel youthful, nostalgic, and held. I only noticed this when it was gone, like the way I’m just starting to understand the privilege of youth as it too, fades.

Admitting all of this feels more excruciating than breaking a bone, but if I learned anything this summer break, it is to tell the truth of what’s going on…but perhaps you’re thinking… umm I thought you didn’t want to feel ‘publicly exposed…’

And to that I say, you’re right, this contradicts that—but I tried to write about anything else… I have dozens of drafts on other topics but they all somehow ended up somewhat about this. Because the only topic I’ve ever been able to offer you here these last 10 years is my real-time experience and lessons. And I do hope I am offering something, because you have given me this self-awareness—I never would’ve gotten through all these layers to the truth in my journal, but writing to you got me to dig deeper. It took me six weeks to press send because I worried spilling my guts out was self-indulgent, which It may be, but I publish in hopes that there’s something universal within the personal. Because when I feel socially disconnected, my parasocial or fictional connections are there for me. Consistently.

The benefit of age is, I know my range. I’m not going to write the most profound prose, it’s not elegantly penned, I can’t be brief to save my life. I don’t know how to write about the national political landscape or the human rights crises going on in the world now, against which my issues seem so small. So, I do as they say: write what you know. And what I know right now is self-awareness—not self-help, or advice, just awareness. But if it is personal growing we’re after— self-awareness is the first step to change, implying there are (annoyingly) more steps. 

Healing my preoccupation with vanity or trying to control how I’m perceived is frustratingly slow, as is healing my bones. But I’m making progress on both, or, as my doctor put it while looking at my x-ray: “See that line? Still broken, but enough cartilage has grown that you can walk on it.” 

I don’t know what the next steps are but I am w a l k i n g (!!) 

** I made a zine (!!) about this, well kinda…

It is about self-awareness and noticing patterns that aren’t working and learning to pivot even if it’s frustrating. It’s about staying on, as Didion says, ‘nodding terms with our past selves.’ And learning from mistakes, even if it takes us a couple tries.   

This is what it looks like! Eli made this cover with a drawing Captain did in his sketch book. If you’re a paid subscriber, congrats! I’ll mail you a copy! Toss your snail mailing address here in this special link. 

And, all paid subscribers will get not only this one but all future printed zines I make.(Next one coming in February!) 

If you’re not a paid subscriber but want a copy, become one and you’ll get a secret email asking for your snail mail address too, and I’ll pop one in the mail for you!  

AND come to the launch party on FRIDAY September 27th: RSVP here!!!!

Madelynn De La Rosa

made this fun flyer for it and

Verônika Lewis Shülman

is hosting a live podcast talk with me about it
+ a bunch of my friends will be there
+ I just made funny gift bags!
+ I barely left the house all summer so this is especially exciting.

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2 podcast episodes below, 1 of them is with

Simi

about the zine!

Love,

Katie

Thank you so much for reading this one. I really mean it. : )

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PODCAST LATEST EPISODES…

on ig: @katiedalebout or @letitouttt