Secret secrets

A few weeks ago, I was listening to This American Life. The theme of the show was “Game Face,” and Act Four was about people who have an anti-game face. They are chronic blushers, and get red blotches on their chests and faces whenever they are nervous or anxious. As they described the symptoms and treatments of chronic blushing, I came to a slow, but certain realization that I am a chronic blusher.

Well, I knew before this. Sort of. I knew that my chest breaks out in large, bright red splotches all the time, and that the splotches are at their worst when I’m talking in front of people. I knew that this is not something that happens to everyone. People point it out to me a lot, and the fact that it’s worth pointing out means that it’s at least a little uncommon.

What I didn’t know was that it was a thing. I didn’t know it was a condition that I should pay attention to and potentially treat. I didn’t know I was supposed to care.

The This American Life story included interviews with a number of chronic blushers, and all of them were very self-conscious about it. They were willing to medicate or even have side-effect-laden surgery to make the blushing stop. I’m willing to bet that my blushing is mild in comparison to those interviewed for the podcast, but it was still strange to me that they were willing to go to great lengths whereas it never occurred to me to research options.

It was like they all knew something I didn’t know. Like it was a secret that no one thought to tell me, because they assumed I already knew.

This isn’t the first time I felt this way. There are a number of things that it seems like everyone else knows but no one has ever told me.

Take cleaning, for example. I am really, really bad at it. I don’t mean I hate doing it or procrastinate from doing it all the time (though that’s true, too). I mean that even when I take the time to clean, I am incapable of doing it very well. It does not matter how many times I run my broom across the floor or how many times I move the dustpan. I can’t get all the dirt up. It doesn’t matter how carefully I scrub the colander after draining the grease off meat. I can’t clean that thing by hand – thank goodness for my dishwasher. While other people might agree these things are a pain in the rear, I have watched many people complete these tasks successfully. They have the secret, but they don’t seem to realize it. When I ask, they just tell me the things I already know, not the things I’m missing.

There is also the issue of shaving. It’s kind of weird that I am bringing this up again after it was already mentioned in my May post, but there it is. I am really bad at shaving my legs. I blame a lot of it on my bad eyesight, but even when I wear contacts and take my time, it is pretty much inevitable that I’ll find places I missed. And even if I manage to get my legs completely smooth, the lower half of my legs are all spotty, showing exactly where the hair follicles are. Yet pretty much any other woman of any age I see anywhere does not have this problem. Their legs are smooth and practically glowing, and they accomplish this in less time that it takes me to do my mediocre job of it. It’s like they all know something that I don’t know. What is the big secret?

And then there is the matter of dating. Heaven knows I must be missing some key piece of information on that front. Yes, I know plenty of people struggle with this, but I don’t know of another person who has the same track record of non-starts as me. There’s nothing to talk about. Nothing to analyze. My dating history is essentially one long blank slate. Yes, many people have trouble making relationships work. But I don’t know anyone who has trouble beginning them. Not at the level I do. There has to be something I do, or don’t do, that explains that. Everyone else seems to know a secret that I don’t know, and I’ve spent ages trying to figure out what that is. No one has been able to tell me. Not even a therapist.

It’s not that I think people are intentionally keeping things from me. I think it’s more of an awareness issue. Whatever these pieces of information are, people don’t realize that they are secrets. Maybe people don’t have awareness of what they know and so don’t share the secrets with me. Or maybe people can tell that I do in fact know the secrets, and I’m not aware of what I know. My point is not to place blame anywhere or dodge responsibility. My point is just to describe how I feel.

All this ran through my mind as I listened to the rest of the This American Life podcast. At the end of the blushing story, one of the interviewers asked a doctor about how the symptoms of chronic blushing might be controlled without treatment. What affects the severity of the symptoms? What do people with mild symptoms have in common?

The doctor’s response, in a nutshell, was that they symptoms are less severe when the patients care less about them. Stop being bothered by the blushing, he said, and you’ll stop blushing. Well, that certainly explains my mild symptoms, I thought. I am self-conscious about a great many things both physical and social, but it just never occurred to me to care about the red splotches that appear on my chest. Even after learning it was a medical condition, I couldn’t get myself worked up about it. I was much more bothered by the idea that my lack of caring was uncommon.

The interviewer shared the doctor’s answer with a chronic blusher. Stop caring, and you’ll stop blushing. Her response was simple: That’s all well and good, but can you tell me how to stop caring?

I thought about it for a minute. How would I explain to her how I manage to not care that I blush? It didn’t take long for me to realize that I couldn’t explain it do her.

I smiled inwardly at this. It seems that I, too, have a secret or two that I don’t know how to tell.