I had initially thought to make a post whining that my peers are too emotionally soft, have childish complaints given their status as working professionals. I even noted this to my therapist, that I wanted to meet someone who was capable of greater emotional range and resiliency than the people I have gone on dates with recently. However, I have now spent several days reeling from a conversation I had with my crush. It remains true that the childhood and familial trauma have hardened me to many of daily life’s injustices and that I am now working on finding gratitude and grace in the simplest of things. For all my lofty self-praise, I’m still human and can be affected, vulnerable, and have expectations dashed. Having recognized how a little indifference can cause me to spiral, I refocus my attentions on searching for the continued capacity to empathize, to find softness for myself and others.

I had spent the week dealing with issues at work that came down to coworkers poor communication skills and their frustrations that we could not deal with technical and contractual problems in the specific way that would vindicate their prior work on our shared projects. In other words, they found a solution that worked only for their team and no one else and were mad we had to take everyone into consideration. I had to deal with the same team on two different projects, under two different supervisors, and both supervisors complimented my ability to maintain a level of composure with the team. I let the supervisors know that I had also grown frustrated but took the time after work to process those feelings and this helped me see through the several weeks of issues. I was riding the high of those compliments into a pseudo-date with another public agency employee, whose hiking pic had caught my eye and the similar views on environmental policy and public service led to us meeting in person.

I say pseudo-date because when I got to his place it was clear he did not have the same thing in mind. I had gotten dressed to go out for dinner in downtown. As both of us were only a short walk from the downtown restaurants and as we had both mentioned being hungry, I did not feel that I needed to specify that I wanted to go eat. He invited me in and I figured, what the hell, why not. Given the assumed roles we’d be taking, I figured he may want to get the fun out of the way and then eat more comfortably after. Eventually we did make it out, only now stoned and more relaxed. We started out eating and drinking in downtown Long Beach before making our way over to the gayborhood bars.

During dinner, a friend had let me know he’d be out drinking at those bars and I told him I was with someone but wanted to meet up and drink with him and his friends too. Instead, at the first bar my date and I went to, I ran into said friend, his friends, a couple of guys I had hooked up with, and other guys who I had chatted with here and there. Although I figured I had handled each person except my friend casually enough, introducing everyone, I was disappointed to hear from my date, “Sometimes I go to gay bars and I just don’t feel like it’s my place.”

“Well, you have spent the entire afternoon telling me that you only have straight friends, so that does make sense. For me, I just need a place that is completely different from the uber-straight environment I have to work in.”

“Yea… I guess I just don’t see myself here.”

“Well,” I said sternly, “you’re here now.”

My friend left for another bar, but I didn’t go with. I told my date that we didn’t have to go and that he also did not have to finish the drink he had gotten. Perhaps I should have realized he wasn’t kidding about not going to gay bars often, as he was surprised by how strong his cocktail drink had been poured. I encouraged him to just leave it, pointed out that I had only gotten an energy drink and water since we’d left downtown and so he shouldn’t feel pressured to finish it on my behalf. He didn’t listen.

On the long walk home, with his inhibitions lowered by sex, drugs, and alcohol, he began to disclose more about his friends. He didn’t have any gay friends, his ex-boyfriend and he had kept themselves separate from the community. Of the friends he was comparing himself to, he revealed that they were two tech workers in the Silicon Valley. “Oh so they’re wealthy?”

“Well, they don’t consider themselves wealthy because they didn’t grow up with this level of money.”

“Duh, no one grew up with that level of wealth. They’re literally top earners of money. You just said one half of that couple took 6 entire months of work to hike the Pacific Crest Trail and is now back in SF with his wife. If that isn’t wealthy, then what is?”

“Maybe, but I don’t like questioning how people identify.”

My inhibitions had also been lowered, the anger already there at the surface and I retorted, “That’s bullshit. That’s how people like that convince themselves that tax policy is unfair. These are two double income, high earners, no kids and the ease to just take 6 months off of work between jobs. Most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.”

I was able to appreciate the fact that a small fire, set by local transients, had broken out and interrupted my ranting. There was a person passed out near the fire, but I doubted they had set it. We watched it blaze and he even called the fire department. I was content to let it burn once I realized it was just going to cause smoke damage and there wasn’t much I could do. Perhaps I should have urinated on the fire instead of on a nearby tree. Regardless, this clear sign to change the topic did not take. After we resumed walking, he started in again on his wealthy friends.

“I just admire that they’re having this mid-life crisis. Like, I don’t know that I picked the right career or that I’m really fulfilled by my job. Don’t you feel like you’re in a mid-life crisis?”

Again, my derision and scorn were front and center, “What a privileged and frankly ridiculous take. So many of us don’t have that opportunity to take such an emotional look at our jobs. Perhaps that’s why we’re all angry, but I think those who can do something like that should feel grateful. I don’t have the opportunity to take a mid-life crisis, unpaid break without risking my mortgage. And even the fact that I’m paying down a mortgage puts me in a great position.”

“Well, you never wavered in your major? I changed mine five times.”

“I never had the opportunity. I picked my major at 17 years old and refined my career path from there. But I had to do what I could to survive.”

“You realize that’s atypical? Don’t you feel that you’re unsatisfied at your job? Don’t you feel…”

I cut him off, “No, I don’t FEEL that. I understand and empathize with you if you do. Truly, I know I’m being a hardass, but no, those aren’t feelings I share. I’m much happier finding fulfillment outside of my career too and letting my job be my job.” We had gotten to his place and said our goodbyes with that. I walked home wondering what it was that had upset me in the end. I summarized the above for my therapist and told her it seemed a combination of the constant whining about his insecurities and his decision to cast my situation aside and double down on his own feelings, almost to the point that it felt he needed me to mirror them back at him. I explained to her that I understood that I had to respect the pain I had been through and the strength it took to still build something of value, but that the date had ultimately been disappointing for me. She and I walked through a conversation on the varying levels of emotional resiliency in people.

I’m not sure that I would call it resiliency though. My therapist says I’m strong to have gone through all this trauma and still gotten to the point where I have this great career and education. She says I’m resilient, I just think I’m jaded. I often joke that no coworker will ever say or do anything as horrible as my parents did, no matter how angry they get at me. When a coworker is raising his voice at me or being particularly difficult, I just detach and watch them. In a very real way, I don’t have the sensitivity to be able to react emotionally to their frustration or pain, only to intellectually note the signs of frustration and pain. This inertness comes in handy, working with men of a certain generation, with short tempers and gruff attitudes. I have no issue having my ear talked off for a simple question, my intelligence questioned because I’m asking for a clarification, or my inexperience made front and center as they question how someone without forty years of experience could possibly contribute to the situation at hand. For all their ranting about their perceptions of the poor job I’m doing in that moment, nothing these coworkers say will cost me my paycheck and so there’s no point in defending myself. In that way, I’m so jaded by what my parents said and did, people who were responsible for my well-being and whose opinions did matter then, that my coworkers can’t get a reaction out of me; it’s also true that having grown up believing that at any moment the government could kick down our doors, deport my parents, and toss us all into foster care, it’s hard to care about things like a white-collar professional’s mid-life crisis. It is a telling and unfortunate fact that numbness, emotional inertness, is a strength in our industry.

I want to be clear that is the professional veneer I put on, the mask I wear for work. It is true that I’m quieter and more controlled than the usual person, see also uptight and closed off. That’s not how I’m looking to be in a relationship, nor am I looking for someone who is themselves rigid and emotionally detached. Unfortunately, it appears that as people learn I’m working as an engineer, very adjacent to construction and blue-collar work, they expect a level of emotional inertness in the relationship too, as well as a more aggressive person in the bedroom. Given the sexual assaults in my past, I get uncomfortable assuming that role without first getting clear and openly expressed consent, which seems to be a turn off for my sexually repressed peers. For a hook up, I am willing to continue the same masculine, macho bullshit charade, but I’m talking a hook up at the bathhouse. If there’s even a little conversation, I’m aggressively screening the candidates. For example, given the immense responsibility I feel to provide for my family, I avoid any potential dates that even hint that they’re looking to be spoiled or taken care of in an unequal way. Just the other day, a man on Tinder told me he was expecting to have emotional outbursts but that I was not allowed the same. When I told him I was looking for an equal partnership he responded by saying we didn’t have to bring so much wokeness into relationships. I unmatched him, annoyed at what he said, but relieved I didn’t have to wait until I was sitting across from him at a restaurant to be told my date was looking for an “older brother” to take care of him and sleep with him.

So I finally get to the point, which is that I shouldn’t front like I don’t have feelings either. I saw my crush again two nights ago. I had been planning to go out dancing in DTLA for Puteria at Precinct. He texted me early enough in the evening and asked me out for drinks or for Netflix and chill. I let him know I was already trying to go out but would take him up on the drink. It was a nice night and he had even offered to meet me in downtown, a couple blocks down from my place. I wasn’t sure where the night was going, but he offered to drop me off at home, not take me along to his place. I was a bit confused but said OK, sure, that would still beat walking home. He had his dog with him so I assumed this meant he wouldn’t try to come up but I still joked that his dog wouldn’t get along with my sister’s cats. No response. We said our goodbyes downstairs and I let him know I would wait to hear from him because he had now at several times just dropped our conversation in text messages or stopped responding. He let out an exasperated, “What?!” I repeated my point and he seemed to understand and we said goodbye.

The next day, I caved and texted him first, a simple good morning text. He said good morning and then let me know he had gotten up a little later than planned, was already late to an early morning brunch with his friends. He ended up drinking early and by noon was letting me know he was drunk. I said no big deal that way you’re sober by evening. To which he responded yea, drunk all day but in the mood all day too. I laughed and let him know he should have taken me over to his place last night then, but that I was down to go over too after I finished a gaming session with my friends. He seemed surprised I was open to that, I was equally surprised he had even mentioned it, but then he stopped giving real responses to what I was saying. To my messages, he just started lol’ing and lmao’ing and leaving it at that. I told him I’m sure we were both difficult to read to each other and he stopped responding. I didn’t pursue the conversation either, annoyed at his lack of responses.

I went off to the gym and fumed a bit. I wasn’t sure in the moment why it was bugging me so much. Eventually, I gathered that it was annoying to me that I was over here putting my vulnerabilities on display and he was giving me one word answers. In his inability to meet me halfway, I am reminded of my parents’ reactions to me when I would clearly and elaborately explain myself and they would say they didn’t understand, they would zero in on the wrong thing, or would generally dismiss my feelings. With my mother especially, there’s a refusal to be held accountable, and, as my feelings would be in reaction to something she had said or done, she didn’t want to understand my perspective. In truth, this dismissal of my struggles are what irritated me with the earlier date, as he had dismissed me saying I needed to get through to school and start making money just to survive and focused back on himself and his feeling about needing to switch careers. There’s the element of pride of course, but also then on my end, the inability to see how these relatively minor struggles could actually take up this much air.

I paused writing for a while and as the Emmys happened this weekend I saw Michaela Cole receiving her dues. I have before mentioned that I can’t watch I May Destroy You, knowing full well that it’s about sexual assault. Twitter brought me to an article in Vulture in which she beautifully summarizes what I’m getting after: “I’ve never had a garden. We never grew up like that. I don’t particularly mind, but I think there is something in growing up in concrete and not understanding putting fingers in soil, growing things, foundation. My family has rented our whole lives. You’re always on fragile ground because it’s not yours. It gives you a drive, an ambition, because nothing is certain. That is a resilience no person with stability can replicate. You can’t forge it. There’s blessings to the struggle.”

So it is that I struggle to relate to the people who are now my peers. I told a coworker I can only listen to so many fintech bros tell me about their stock portfolios before I roll my eyes. He had been telling me he felt pressure toward a more extravagant lifestyle and I wondered who his friends were, letting him know that most of my friends did not have white-collar jobs. These coworkers of mine and their friends, these aren’t the kinds of people I grew up with and have always had a level of comfort and affluence that I couldn’t, as an immigrant child, aspire to. Perhaps now I can, but that does not take away that I am the oldest, American born in a family that started here with just a mother, her brother, and her daughter. The specifics of how and why they ended up here are for another time, but I grew up without any sense of familial connections or roots here. Add to that my family’s extreme dysfunctions and I have never had a sense that anyone cared about my feelings. First and foremost, those are my personal responsibility to process, control, direct as I need to suit the situation. Never am I to just let them wander free and express themselves, there simply was no space for such liberties in my youth, any outburst threatened calling attention to my mother’s immigration status. So while I do blame my mother for teaching me to suppress my emotions, for needing that out of me, I can’t deny that it felt necessary. How different would life had been if I had told that child psychologist the truth, had brought Child Protective Services to our doorstep?

Yet it is so clear to me that I desperately want and need connection. As I age, it is critical that I develop a healthy relationship to my feelings and honest expressions of them. There is no room for pride in this post. I am so desperate to connect to someone with whom I can connect, who can empathize with me and I with them. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to take seriously some of the issues that are brought up my by white-collar peers, to not jeer at them once I’ve had a drink in me; I can’t hold that against them. Again then, a reminder to have grace for myself, to accept that I will still react to certain triggers, echoes of my parents’ behaviors in the people I meet; to have grace for my coworkers and dates, sheltered as they have been they have not had to develop resiliency but it isn’t my place to judge them for that; and to lead with love, to be open and vulnerable whenever possible, because just getting by isn’t worth it, I need to fill my lungs with air and breathe in the full extent of life.

To that end, I’m signing off for now to drive around in pursuit of a cheaper, hopefully more satisfying cup of coffee than where I’m posting this from.