The Echo Chamber
Feeling alone and unheard seems to be the norm for everyone in my social circle. What are we going to do about it?
Content Warning: This story contains mentions of d**th, depression and s**cidal thoughts.
My boyfriend was never depressed. He never had anxiety. Once I asked him, “you really never thought it would just be easier if you were dead?” ‘No,’ he said.
My boyfriend is actually a marvelous person, and that is not an exaggeration. He is sweet, considerate, patient, and above all, kind. He is a very rare form of man. He has his quirks, which I love. And he is attracted to me. (How lucky.) When I met him two years ago, we talked about intersectional feminism and “politics” like human rights, abortion access, and the treatment of the homeless in America. He was well informed. He was educated.
This year, the pandemic came. He spent time living with his parents in order to be close to me. He watched his parents during the presidential election, and he talked to them after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and David McAtee. He is a person of color, and he spoke at length with his family about Black Lives Matter and the discrepancies of justice in this country. He argued with his FOX news watching father about the validity of Donald Trump’s opinions. And he went into a state of shock.
We talked about this in the days following George Floyd’s death. He said his parents wouldn’t listen to him, and he couldn’t believe how people in general had just ignored this tragedy. He was frustrated, and after weeks of trying to talk through it with them, he gave up. He said he had never really known just what his parents were like, what they believed. He became anxious and depressed. He had trouble sleeping. I’ve always described my boyfriend as a very reasonable person, and I think he struggled to see that he just couldn’t reason with them. This was the first time he had really tried to engage them, and he believed he had failed. He never said it, but I could see his disappointment.
The tough thing is that with clarity comes disenfranchisement. It’s heartbreaking to see someone you love lose their innocence. It was tough to see that this sweet and optimistic man became jaded, guarded. I felt so bad for him. It was never what I would have wanted, but I know the reality. When we spoke about how insensitive people were, how they would do everything they could to willingly misunderstand or ignore things, and how upsetting that is, I said, ‘I know.’
I’ve seen people detach themselves from me and social situations my whole life. I didn’t have the words to describe it, but I was an intersectional feminist from the time I was thirteen years old. I got into bitter screaming matches with my parents over their slut shaming tendencies and racist ideology. They threatened to send me to military school. I was kept from leading a normal social life. I have never been more depressed and suicidal than when I was at thirteen to fourteen. My parents are FOX news watchers. They both voted for Trump. My father describes himself as “socially conservative.” It makes me want to gag.
My parents have never agreed with me. There wasn’t a single time they decided I was right. They would jump through whatever mental hoops they had to so they could come to the conclusion I was wrong. My mother would just excuse herself, after five to seven years of fighting. My father would fight and come to his own conclusions and loopholes. As an adult, they no longer have the power to ground me, take my cellphone, or cut me off from others, so they threaten to throw me out of the house. That’s happened four to maybe five times. My mother, who I consider one of favorite people to spend downtime with, doesn’t want to hear what I have to say. When I bring up anything that really matters to me, she will silence me every time…and yet, I am an only child. We have no close relatives (except one cousin in Spain).
It makes me wonder, ‘if not me, who?’ Who are they listening to? Who do they have respect for, if not me? It seems to be — can you believe it — my grandparents, who are dead. It reminds me of the argument that the conservatives fight for the unborn because they can offer no opinion or dissent. My parents’ only living elder is my great-aunt, a very well-educated liberal woman, who blew up at them when she found out my parents voted for the idiot in office. Then I got a lot of backlash for telling her about it.
This point reflects the feelings of many leftist or liberal adults I know:
“If I can’t convince the people closest to me, how can I convince anyone else?”
“If I can’t convince the people that love me, how can I convince anyone else?”
So many of us feel dismissed by the people closest to us. I understand why — we’re asking the hard questions. Why are people treated like that? Why do you allow this double standard? Why do you think there is no difference between the experiences of different people some of the time, and yet you insist on it other times?
They’re inconvenient truths. It’s uncomfortable to think something more is expected of you, and that you are not a freestanding individual, but a moving piece. This has led us to separate into safe spaces: with the people who will listen, versus the people who won’t. For example, I’ve had a friend tell me it was impolite to discuss ‘politics’ when the two of us were alone in her kitchen — she is easily categorized into the ones who will not listen. There was nothing that I could do to get her to have a conversation with me about things that really affect me and my loved ones. The ones who will listen are the ones I feel I can trust. We may not agree on everything, but we have respect for one another, enough to listen patiently and consider that they have thought carefully and at length about something they feel so strongly about. I have several friends like that, and I am absolutely lucky to have them. They have helped me grow as a person and consider different viewpoints. But when I look at my boyfriend, who has tried faithfully to make those connections, I see a downtrodden man, it’s hard to keep from crying. Once an eternal optimist with faith in other people, that outlook just dissipated.
I used to have a lot of fight in me. Although I’ve been depressed and anxious my whole life, I thought I would go out and find people who were on the same path, that wanted change, that wanted progress. I thought I would go out into the world and make waves. Turn after turn in my career and at college, I came up virtually empty handed. So I was silenced there as well: no matter how many people I spoke to, the message seemed to be that this was all about marketing and making money. Any suggestion that global phenomena or systemic barriers were preventing people from being happy or succeeding was quickly brushed away. Bootstrapping messages were repeated over and over again. You can call me a hopeless idealist, but it’s not the worst thing I could be. The difficulty lies in that I was surrounded in my work life and private life by people who didn’t believe in me, or what I believed in. I thought it was what I was meant to do, what I was meant to be. There is still some small hope and some small spark there, and an attempt to do whatever I can. But it has been over ten years of fighting.
Now to see this man with a heart of gold, slightly bitter and let down, it is so hard not to cry about it. He is my biggest supporter. At times when I thought I couldn’t take a single step further, he was there to give me the perspective I need. I know no person is infallible, but he was so warm and so full of faith in others that I think I believed he would be the one to save us all. Now I find that I have to save him, and I want to. My heart feels cracked, knowing to some extent we both feel there is very little hope in changing other people’s minds. He mentions Canada and moving away all the time; There are lots of merits to this point. But I could weep, knowing that neither one of us feels heard, and that neither one of us feels able to bet their life path on it. There are times when I am so burnt out and so tired, that I can’t disagree with him. I can’t be ‘on’ all the time. So I sit in silence and acceptance. It’s painful, to say the least.
It is okay to mourn this small death, the death of innocence. Some days I am so motivated to fight and to move forward. I do the best I can, and I’m sure he does too. But it is also okay to acknowledge that fighting is not easy. All I can say is to know that you are not alone, and to find your community. To my lovely and emotionally strong boyfriend, I am here for you every step of the way. For my friends who feel like they are screaming into the void, tell it to someone (even the internet), but especially a therapist if you can. Just because you are unheard does not mean your voice doesn’t matter. It can be hard to tell yourself that, over and over again. And you should address your feelings with your friends and family. If you have children, please make them feel heard. Why do you think that “you were raised by Karens, I was raised by _____” TikTok trend is so popular? We’re all jealous.
Create your safe space, and then occasionally allow yourself to be vulnerable by talking to others. If you were denied over and over again, that doesn’t mean everyone else will deny you. We can’t pretend all people are the same. I struggle with it, but I’m trying to take baby steps.
I know it’s hard. But there are many of us out there, still continuing to fight. We must. There is no other option, because our lives are at stake. I’m sending you love. Thank you for reading.
— Lorelai
