People Person

        There is nothing in life that can’t be enhanced with better communication. Being an empath enhances that communication even further, as you can ebb with tone and body language to accommodate shifting circumstances. Light as a feather and heavy as a stone, I could walk the tightrope as the brooding spiritual guru and the radiant, goofy ‘life of the party’ to align with the needs of a situation. Although both archetypes tend to branch into different directions of the expression spectrum, I find the pockets of solace among introverts and extroverts alike. It’s pretty fucking dope actually, kind of like being famous minus being rich. I get invited to parties, vacations, weddings, cookouts, concerts, art exhibits, religious ceremonies, comedy shows, drug benders, road trips, other flight attendants’ work trips, baby showers, hikes, movie dates, coffee dates, and even swinger sex parties. As you can imagine, some offers get an instantaneous decline, but it is gratifying just to receive the personalized offer. Even if some of them are just fleeting gestures of kindness or veiled attempts at networking with a socially established popular person, sentiments of acknowledgment, appreciation, and admiration do not fall lightly on my heart. 

        As is the case with any asset, the disposition of the people person doesn’t come without its own handicaps. That being said, if you are a people person, decent judgment of character is paramount. Everyone wants to talk to you, to be around you and take note of the aura that surrounds you, to learn from you, or to just plain witness the inevitable entertainment that springs forth from your creative expression. A fraction of those people have additional agendas at work. Sometimes they are there to curiously probe for radioactive information about you or your associates since they know everyone talks to you, making it a tragic irony that since you are so approachable you are sort of always a suspect of conspiracy. Some of them just want to pawn you off as a status McGuffin to boost themselves up like social stilts across their media platforms. Some end up extorting you inadvertently as they are seeking your counsel and good company by giving off the illusion of a shared closeness through grand gestures of affection and gratitude--for them it is more of a courtesy than an actual gift. You see, the people themselves are a source of strength and weakness.

Recent events in my life have illuminated a recurring weakness I’ve had with the inadvertent extortion category of people. Working in aviation, I lead a life of endless departure while always arriving, seldom with the same people if ever. Even my closest friendships are rendered episodic considering the fleeting nature of my work life. On top of that, I am invited damn near everywhere by damn near everyone and can only choose to be in one place at a time. Ergo, my time is extremely valuable. I can’t afford to just give it away to whoever asks for it. Things need to be mapped, weighed and contemplated over gratuitously. 

I tend to fall in mind that this careful consideration and time management is a feat of the flight attendant, but it isn’t. Not everyone’s time is valuable, even if they talk like it is. Some folks toss it around like confetti. Perhaps they just want attention or to feel included, maybe they lack a sense of self-value and will give it to whoever will entertain it, or they could even be utilizing it as a tool for punishment in their social machinations (ie: “I agreed to go out with Tom to show Bob what happens when you don’t respond to my texts”). I’m sure there are tons of reasons unaccounted for. However, because I value time so greatly and assume others hold it in equally high regard, I’ve occasionally fostered a false-intimacy with people I believed were close to me--especially among fellow flight attendants.

Communication is a talent I’ve cultivated over many years, originally as compensation for my own self-image and financial issues growing up (But that’s a post for another time). Learning such a talent at a young age usually sends one down the rabbit hole of being an attention whore because they cannot handle the flash flood of ‘closeness’ they experience from others but, through the insight of decent mentors and teachers over the years, I was able to shift the power toward healing. Instead of simply making people laugh until they like me, I was able to disarm tension in intimate conversation and allow tiny verbal exchanges to be their own thespian stage for personal revelation with others. Talking to people one on one, information would spill out like a waterfall. 

Ugly things they’ve done or thought, willingly or unwillingly, which have led to incalculable traumas and years of unresolved pain and confusion for themselves or their loved ones. Things they regret and could never forget. Things they swore they would never tell anyone and seem in utter disbelief to have said out loud to me once they realize the syllables have dripped from their lips. I am a pretty good talker, but I’m a great listener. Some of them needed advice, but most of them just needed a safe place where they can say what they think or feel out loud and assure themselves they’re not actually crazy. It is therapy in its purest. But I’m a person with problems who needs therapy from time to time too, and I am totally capable of slipping and falling and landing in surprise therapy sessions when I get too close to another people person just like anyone else. My closest friends are my closest counselors, and so I saw it as reciprocal and, therefore, healthy to have these exchanges of vulnerability.

The reality check came to me as a layered bundle. Can you guess what kind of person has all the light-hearted, fun loving, approachability and attractive traits of a people person? LITERALLY EVERY NARCISSIST AND CON ARTIST EVER. The ‘people person’ and the ‘fuckboy’ can be indiscernible at times. Any shady real estate agent archetype worth their stigma knows how to make you feel like you aren’t wasting your time in the moment, that your input matters, that you matter, and the meaningful exchange you are sharing matters on a more profound level than a pending transaction. But that’s exactly what deep connections are for some people: pending transactions. Their time isn’t valuable. They just act like it is to pawn themselves off as your peer, someone you can relate with. But as soon as that transaction is settled, be it an actual sale of something, receiving the appropriate feedback to conquer an unresolved issue, or achieving the desired passage of time until they can devote themselves to who/what they actually want, they’re on the next flight out with no explanation. No note. No text. No recollection of profound closeness. The forgetfulness borders on hatefulness. 

It doesn’t help that my default episodic approach to friendships plays right into these people’s hands, especially if they are also in aviation. A lot of people revere the flight attendant lifestyle, always waking up someplace new, every day a new beginning to be a newer better person. It sounds liberating in comparison to the gurgling miasma of the cubicle prisons people call offices. Flights attendants and pilots are people who always have the power to be somewhere else at the flip of a switch. Tis true, it allows the guardian angels of the world to be more mobile than the rest of us--God knows they need it. And yet, it is a haven for the very worst among us, the ‘fake people person,’ the cheating husbands and wives, the ten-faced friends, the avoidant mothers and fathers, the identity thieves, and all sorts of other extortionists. Of course THEY want to be somewhere new all the time. They’ve got to keep swapping their audiences out to keep their act fresh. They like to enjoy all the benefits of intimacy to others with none of the vulnerability. 

But for a people person like me--an actual people person-- these forge an extra obstacle to contend with beyond the conventional gallery of humans I come across. And it’s getting exhausting. It has been my kryptonite so far, an ever present attack vector to the very core of who I am. A conversation with my close friend, Ehlanie, brought this weakness to my attention, my proclivity to entertaining these nonreciprocal relationships, these false intimacies. I’m not being outsmarted by crafty super villains either, and yet there I go strolling nonchalantly toward what is clearly a stream of lava. Have I endured or conquered so many obstacles of extreme emotional duress that I don’t even know I’m being challenged or manipulated anymore? 

In each instance I saw myself as being patient with an emotionally complex person, listening and learning for the intricate ways in which they need to be seen and understood and loved, but was just being manipulated into giving them attention (attention I very much enjoyed giving at the time). Gripping the possibility that some of the profoundly cozy connections I’ve established over my lifetime are entirely in my head doesn’t exactly tickle. How many times, after all, can a man treat a toilet like a punch bowl until he realizes he never even arrived at the party? Food for thought.

        That being said, where do the boundaries start, and with whom if I’ve already established a closeness? What if they don’t even realize they’ve extorted me? And if they do realize and apologize, do I even have to change? Do they still need to be punished? When your presence and insight is useful to everyone around you, some degree of being used certainly feels like being of service. However, if I’m being honest with myself in this moment, the nervousness I’m experiencing over where service ends and extortion begins is being conflated by my own desire for assurance through admiration in the wake of feeling like a failure for not knowing someone I thought I knew. In ruminating over what I know myself to be, and in excavating deeply for all that has yet to reveal itself, I am struggling to reconcile having 1 less love and 1 more stranger who knows everything about me. People are easy, but the person... oh, the person...