Trust in me, I'll give you a reason
Tonight in shower conversations, I talked to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch about how ambivalently I feel about the fact that I had to learn to signal my emotions beyond my natural facial reactions because otherwise people wouldn't believe that I felt what I felt (another inescapable form of social lying) and he assured me that by now it looks very natural and microexpressive and then I felt even more ambivalently about that. Does everyone just learn the right faces to make and then never mention it in polite company so that it just looks natural from the outside and each person secretly assumes they're the one acting? Concern, distaste, appreciation, perplexity. All the little noises you make to people to tell them that you're really interested in what they're saying. Did you really think that those gogglers knew you for yourself without any help from me? No, I had to give you an aspect they could understand, and a horn they could see. These days, it takes a cheap carnival witch to make folk recognize a real unicorn. I still have to tell people sometimes that I really am happy about something even if I am not demonstrating the socially normative level of shrieking and flailing. It is just so often exhausting.
spatch about how ambivalently I feel about the fact that I had to learn to signal my emotions beyond my natural facial reactions because otherwise people wouldn't believe that I felt what I felt (another inescapable form of social lying) and he assured me that by now it looks very natural and microexpressive and then I felt even more ambivalently about that. Does everyone just learn the right faces to make and then never mention it in polite company so that it just looks natural from the outside and each person secretly assumes they're the one acting? Concern, distaste, appreciation, perplexity. All the little noises you make to people to tell them that you're really interested in what they're saying. Did you really think that those gogglers knew you for yourself without any help from me? No, I had to give you an aspect they could understand, and a horn they could see. These days, it takes a cheap carnival witch to make folk recognize a real unicorn. I still have to tell people sometimes that I really am happy about something even if I am not demonstrating the socially normative level of shrieking and flailing. It is just so often exhausting.
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And then I read this: even if I am not demonstrating the socially normative level of shrieking and flailing. and realised we have serious cultural differences here. That's not especially socially acceptable in the UK, except if maybe you are the kind of person to whom it comes naturally and you've just achieved your life's goal. (I mean that goes double for round here, as I live in the North where socially acceptable is that eventually you will smile at someone when they have been here at least three years and properly earned it, accompanied by huge friendliness underneath. I'm from the south, though - I smile too much and give too much away, and people don't believe me when I'm sad.)