Even in Kyoto

A couple of notes that have been bouncing around in my head as to this dynamic:

For various reasons (mostly my own alienation issues growing up, and maybe a bit growing up in a very mixed cultural environment) it was often really easy for me to default to a mode where someone else's emotional language was accepted as the default, and mine was accepted as the abberation. Heck, part of it is just that I find how people think and feel about things to be fairly fascinating (this is part of the reason I like learning languages so much - I love that bit when I transition over to thinking in different shapes). But I sometimes wonder how much my own predisposition there tended to set up a dynamic where under stress well of course we're in their language - we've already agreed that's the real language real people speak, and I'm just weird, and do my best to get by as a second language speaker, right?

But I don't know, of course, because it's also just a thing people do under stress.

There's a lot of stuff about gender dynamics and affective labor in here. I think I've come to view my affective labor a lot like I view my cooking - it's a skill I've put a lot of time and effort into developing, and something I really enjoy using for the benefit of people I care about. But it's mine, and it is not something other people get to own or be entitled to. I am not emotional caretaker on tap, and my feelings are just as real as anyone else's. I might be more able to put things aside for a while - but if it starts being a pattern in an unbalanced way, I'm going to bring it up. (And if we can't talk about that in a productive way, well, really, my opinion of the other person is going to descend.)