Slightly edgy humor is all well and good—I prefer snarky, sometimes mildly inappropriate, bitter-ish humor, and find that it lends itself well to mixing in a bit of undercover honesty. However, this type of humor relies on walking the delicately-balanced edge between funny and bitchy… which means that if someone’s having a rough day, feeling vulnerable, or otherwise needing a little more love and a little less snark, it’s easy to pitch off the wrong side and cause hurt feelings.
I know this from both sides of the equation, being bountifully-supplied with friends who employ and encourage snarky humor. The good news is that my friends generally mean well (that is, they don’t mean to be hurtful and apologize if they inadvertently are) and speak up if they’re hurt by something that’s directed at them. The further good news is that I’m fairly sure that my friends are all generous and forgiving people, who are unlikely to become irreparably offended by an overly-barbed remark.
The bad news is that my gut has truly amazing tenacity, even in the face of thousands of hours (and dollars) of therapy, and remains pretty certain that the affection of everyone I know is so finely-balanced that any misstep on my part will immediately result in a total loss. That is to say, my gut accepts that my friends love me, and is usually pretty solid and willing to believe this… until it’s not. And then, suddenly, someone is mildly irritated and my brain leaps (gracefully, instantly, like an antelope… it would be lovely if it wasn’t so fucking self-destructive) to OMG-everything-is-irretrievably-ruined-forever. And if there’s a way for me to make this My Fault, that’s even better, because then I have the opportunity to berate myself for Ruining Everything by Being So Horrible.
I’ve tried so, so very hard to get past this, and the best I have been able to do is keep enough of a grip on myself that I don’t have an externally-visible breakdown. I still feel terrible whenever I think someone is upset with me, and usually guilty, and I still desperately want to keep circling back to whomever I’m worried about and either declare my abject-est of apologies for the billionth time or ask, again and again, on a loop, “you’re not still mad, right? you still love me, right?”. I manage not to do either of these things only through a fierce effort of will (which is, I suppose, one of the beneficial results of all the therapy—that I can muster the strength not to engage in these tremendously codependent and also wildly annoying behaviors).
In the last few days I’ve managed to inadvertently hurt the feelings of a good friend and M, and I feel like an asshole. I don’t actually think either one of them are still upset, when I fight my rational brain to the surface, and I need to just calm down and trust that friendship and love are not such delicate plants that they’ll explode into flame at the slightest touch of the sun. I know, I know, that this is the process that I need to go through, and that every time I fight through this it gets a little easier the next time. I can feel the fear and guilt and let it go without making a spectacle of myself (except on the internet, in front of everyone, ha), and Everything is Fine, Nothing is Fucked.
And it is fine, it is. But I am still sorry that I was mean, and I am worried that no one likes me anymore, and I am frightened that someday I will mess something up and everyone will decide that I am awful and I will be left alone forever, like Fezzik’s Hell, without the booing. I hate feeling like this, and I hate that there is nothing to do but just ride it out.
