I am a nice person. I come by it honestly. My grandmother has significant Alzheimers, and one of the things people notice first is that she asks every few minutes if she can get you anything. My mom is the nicest lady. She is the queen of bringing snacks and sharing. She once held my place in line at an outdoor concert she was not attending because I got lost on the way. In the rain. She also packed me a picnic to eat at the show with chicken salad wraps and garden veggies. I was like, 31 at the time. My mom loves me and she is thinking about me. She is on my team and she makes sure I know it. She drove two hours each way once a week for months to stay up all night with my sleepless infant. My mother shows love by showing up quietly and taking care of things.
I am my mother’s daughter in this way, I think, or I am when I’m at my best. I’m not perfect, and sometimes I’m a jerk, but in general, I try not to make problems for other people. I always, always, returns my shopping cart, even in the pouring rain. Sometimes, nice is easy. I can smile at babies and hold doors open for other people all day long and it doesn’t wear me out. There is a kind of nice, though, that makes me tired. There is a kind of nice that I wear like amour. It’s the kind of nice that isn’t helping me. There is a calculation involved in doing things that are objectively, inarguably helpful to galvinize against hypothetical criticism. There is a persona of niceness to be preserved at the expense of my own comfort. There is a guilt in paying attention to myself when there are other people with needs around. There is some laundry to be done in my niceness.
I once offered to murder my friend’s dying decade-old pet fish with a frying pan while she was on vacation because watching it get slowly eaten by its tankmates was stressing her family out. That asshole fish lived for another few months and she still reminds me of what a cold blooded killer I am. For her, I am a fish murderer. Whatever she needs. Forever.
But do-it-yourself pet euthanisa is probably not the number one choice most sane people would make under these circumstances. Who in the world volunteers to blacken their soul in such a way? And who would ask for such violence on their behalf? No one did. Me and my frying pan showed up uninvited. Have you met me? I’m a boss with a frying pan. BANG! Shhhhh! Harmony restored. Harmony is important to me because other people’s needs are constantly in my awareness. There is a tickle that won’t go away. I have to check on people. It’s the way I’m wired.
I don’t think very fast in real time social situations, so I am sometimes satisfying other people’s needs before I have had time to figure out what mine are. It’s the default switch if I’m not paying attention. I am up and changing the poopy diaper while my husband gags, not because I love touching poop, but because there is poop, and the sooner there is not poop, the better for everyone. People tend to like me because they don’t like touching poop. Who doesn’t want people to like them? After a while though, I notice the resentment more and more.
My husband, my mother, my sisters, they will tell you the resentment I’m talking about is not new. I have long been unpredictably angry when a seemingly innocuous thing is put on my plate. Other people close to me have been treated to an inside view lately. It’s not cute. My boring, chronic, still-not-fine-yet health problems are the kind that can be ignored and pushed through. For a while. It always hurts. Most of the time I could show up and smile, but every now and then something really angry and sharp would come leaking out. It was an unexpected response from me. People looked at me like I bit them. Sometimes, I was so mad at them that I would have been happy to bite them. Leave me alone. I’m tired. I am not going to edit your report. I am not going to enter your data. I do not want to listen to this gossip. Go away.
I wanted it both ways. I wanted people to believe that I was handling it. I wanted my teams to run and my deadlines to be met and I wanted everyone to feel like I was still me. The tools to support this facade were endless. I own three different kinds of luminizing concealer. One is literally called “Well Rested.” I wanted to be seen as competent no matter what. I wanted to produce good work product because the children I serve deserve it. But more than anything, I wanted people to cut me a break. I wanted them to see me furiously paddling under the surface and know that I was exerting twice the energy to do half as much. I wanted them to psychically understand that I needed help, but I did not want to ask for it. Some people did and I am grateful to them. Some people didn’t and it hurt my feelings. Just because I’m all up in other people’s problems with a frying pan and zero invitation does not mean they are now obligated to show up at my door with their own heavy cookware. I expect I am not done learning this lesson.
I have some outlets for when I just can’t be nice anymore You know, so I don’t bother people I care about with my rage. There is a one way bridge in my hometown that provides one of two routes home for me when the entire blessed city isn’t under construction. A one-way bridge is treated like two-way four-way stop. East side gets a turn, then west side, back and forth. People are assholes on this bridge all the time. They gun it when they see you close so that they get to go first. They zip through four cars the same direction when people wait on the other side. Transgressions occur when people don’t take turns and that means that whoever just cut in front of you is coming towards you and has to look you in the eye when they’re done doing you wrong.
I love to drive over this bridge. I will go out of my way to go use it on a particularly bad day. It’s been closed for a while and I miss it. If it is warm enough to have the windows down, I tell each offender, “take turns!” It is concise and instructive. You are in the wrong. Here is how I would like you to behave next time. But the way I deliver my message varies drastically depending on my perception of your intent. I will give kids and people who look confused my teacher face. If this is your first clue that your behavior was unacceptable, let’s not have any questions about it. You have broken the rules. I only have a few seconds to make my point, and I have to make them count. The more I think the driver is aware of the rules and breaking them on purpose, the less I rely on my eyebrows and shift my emphasis to my hands.
I have a double checkpoint system to ensure that I am yelling at someone who deserves it. I am turning my crankiness into a traffic lesson. It’s almost helpful, if you squint. Is that efficient in its ultimate service to the greater good or is it twisted to need to cloak my darkness so neatly? It’s probably more of the latter. That’s why I’m talking about it. At the end of the day, I am very definitely still yelling at people because I’m upset about things that have nothing to do with them. I’m still hiding behind some weird shield weaponized niceness while I’m flipping people off, even if it took some bendy trips through logic to get there.
I am not offering this up as a humble brag. It’s not a cop out to a job interview question. I’m just too nice and helpful. Poor me. It’s a problem. Many of the worst moments of my life may have gone differently if niceness had not been my first priority. For me, awareness of this default switch has helped me make deliberate choices. I can change the settings if I’m paying attention. It’s not easy. I am slowly learning how to get dressed without wrapping myself in niceness to the exclusion of other things. A lot of my “nice” and “helpful” stuff is still my favorite stuff! I wouldn’t be recognizable without it. I will get it wrong on both ends of the spectrum while I try to recalibrate. I am not done over-helping and I am not done lashing out. Of course I’m not. The bridge in town should be opening back up soon and I’m really looking forward to that day. I still need it.
I’m working on it.