There are times when every part of life seems to be narrowing to one inescapable point.
[Content warnings: mentions of self-harm and suicide.]
For a long time, my idea of leadership was shaped entirely by my childhood as a missionary kid (commonly referred to within the religious community as an “MK”). Leadership meant the strange and sometimes off-puttingly intense performances of those teens who had been willingly conscripted to help run camps, study groups, volunteer teams, and so forth. They were usually only a couple of years older than the kids they were shepherding through the evangelical experience, and they were often judged by the peppiness of their attitude. As in, if they weren’t constantly smiling, upbeat, and attempting to rally the flagging spirits of tweens or teens in the throes of 8 A.M. communal breakfasts after a late night playing capture the flag (and losing) … then they weren’t good leadership material. If they weren’t intensely serious (you know the posture, leaning forward with elbows on knees, looking directly at a struggling teen with familiarity and steadiness) then they weren’t good leadership material. I pretty much stopped participating in all student-leader activities as a senior undergraduate when I realized I was simply performing what I thought a good leader ought to do and be.
Sure, I want to be a leader, but not that kind of leader. But am I leadership material?
I’ve always wanted to be both liked and respected, but when the two are mutually exclusive I’ve historically chosen to be liked. I pulled pranks with the best of them, goofed around as both a college instructor and librarian, and prided myself on not showing my “home feelings” at work. This (as well as other factors, I’m sure) has led to me being something of a dark horse in my best moments (pulling off good grades, accomplishing my five-year plan to the letter, budgeting effectively with spreadsheets and etc.) and something of a worry in my worst. I can handle stress, anxiety, and depression up to the point where I … can’t. And that means that by the time my family, friends, and coworkers know that something’s going on, it’s already at a crisis stage. An extremely unwelcome surprise. I’m not unpredictable … if you’re one of the four people who I rely on for strength and calm (two of them being my therapist and the nurse practitioner who manages my treatment plan).
As a teen, I attempted suicide but didn’t tell anyone about it. Or about my years dabbling with self-harm. In my mind, these were themselves attempts at communication, and for no one to be watching close enough to notice was further proof that my life was meaningless and insignificant. Only in adulthood do I see how totally messed up that is. And how unkind to those who didn’t get the message. But that’s how a lot of religious (and Midwestern, and Southern) families operate: the silences are supposed to speak for themselves, and woe betide the imperfectly translated silence if it held some kind of expectation.
Recently I received an official verbal warning at work (which, confusingly, was delivered, witnessed, and signed in written form). I’ve had a lot of time to think about the reasoning behind it, and chip away at the natural resistance anyone feels to being called out for deep personal flaws. The most difficult charges to accept were those that (I believe) misinterpreted my actions as deliberate floutings of authority*. Were they? I have to admit I’m wary of gaslighting** anyone else the way I’ve been gaslighted by others. A big part of me wants to go on listing all the reasons why the warning and its contents or delivery were unjust and unkind, but underneath the immediate fear and frustration I felt in the moment was a very different and much more important emotion: betrayal. As in, I had betrayed myself. I had given someone in a position of power and authority over me cause to distrust me, and to doubt my both my truthfulness and my leadership potential.
It has also put the brakes on my hopes to become a leader in my field. If I can’t even work well in my currently simple and unimportant position, how could I ever hope to one day lead a team that would both like and respect me? If I can’t even do the little that’s asked of me well, how could I hope to tackle bigger responsibilities?
I’m being honest with you here because I struggle to find voice for my feelings in the moment when they’d be most useful. And because I never want to find myself where I was a month ago ever again: Alone in a house and isolated from the whole world, neck-deep in a depressive episode that had nothing to do with COVID-19 and everything to do with the narrowing of my world to that one inescapable question. Well, COVID-19 had contributed to the isolation, in that I was stuck in a foreign country and feeling an urgency to get home to a work environment wallpapered with mental health triggers. I’m great at handling change when I know it’s coming; or at least my StrengthsFinder results in 2010 had me believing so. When I can’t manage my environment––when the change is as sudden and inescapable as a written verbal warning for flaws I’d no suspicion of until that moment, a warning that completely upended my sense of self and security––is when I’m most vulnerable to my own brain chemistry.
Even now, as I type this, I feel a self-loathing that runs so deep that it makes me wish I did not exist. A team of behavioral health experts and close friends and family are working hard to pull me out of this funk, but depression is a force beyond anything a neurotypical person can imagine. Earlier this week I was just minding my own business and getting ready to make dinner, not even thinking about anything other than hunger, when it hit me most strongly. I went from mostly fine to utterly un-fine in the space of less than ten seconds, and immediately got on the phone with my mother so that I’d have a voice other than that voice in my head.
Certain friends can’t quite understand my relationship with my parents. Why do I keep trying to connect with them when they don’t support me in my identity as a queer person? It’s because they’re always there in a crisis. They’re always there to help me figure out how to get home from a foreign country in the midst of global chaos. Or move. Or survive the worst night of my life. (Every night during a depressive episode feels like the worst, and last, night of my life.) And because they remind me that there are good people who I might have pretty important disagreements with who still are 100% worth keeping in my life. That’s the kind of leader I want to become. The kind who still has something to give despite fundamental disagreements.***
Since my return home and throughout both self-quarantine and the stay-home directives that have followed, I have been reading The Manager’s Communication Toolkit by Tina Kuhn. Her credentials are important, of course, as is the fact she’s … well … not a man. (Nothing against you, men, but I’ve read a lot of managerial advice from men over the course of my MLIS. There’s a certain aggressiveness to it that I don’t buy into.) More importantly, however, is the book’s subtitle: "Tools and techniques for leading difficult personalities.” I am not content to be, as the recent warning would indicate I am, a difficult personality. If I am to survive my own brain and thrive in the world of libraries as I so desperately want to do, I must change. There is no alternative. Either I must change my vocation or I must change myself, and I still believe in the work that libraries are doing in the world––especially in the long, troubled wake of pandemic. I also still believe that I’m not entirely at the mercy of my brain chemistry. I don’t have to keep performing I’m-fine-ness in order to be trusted to do my job well. I can still make good choices.
I can still be a good librarian.
* The specific causes for warning were “Lack of communication and not receiving approval prior to submittal” (of an application for a cool library-plus-space opportunity and “Disrespectful response to instruction.”
** Gaslighting can take many forms, but at it’s core it involves the conscious or subconscious attempt by one individual to cast doubt on another’s memory and interpretation of events. It is most damaging, perhaps, when the gaslighter and gaslightee are bound by a relationship with a built-in power imbalance. The Cooper Review has a great (and humorous) infographic that lays bare one of the key reasons it’s so common: Most people who benefit from its use don’t even realize they’re doing it.
*** And like, don’t get me wrong, it’s a big deal to me when someone addresses me as I am and not just the way they want me to be, or because my body conforms to a shape we’ve been conditioned to equate to gender. I will fight for the safety and recognition of my fellow LGBTQIA+ found-family members as long as I live. (I can’t resist a little drama even when I’m dead serious. Forgive me.) I am working on holding two mutually exclusive truths in my mind at one time without letting either of them dominate: My parents love me, AND my parents are not okay with me being queer. It’s a work in progress.