FIELD NOTES: Emotional Capacity

On rudeness, thresholds, and knowing exactly when enough is enough.

One of the first things I noticed about this planet was the noise. The second thing was the people making it.

I had been briefed on human behavior before arrival. The IRD’s pre-deployment materials described humans as “occasionally aggressive but fundamentally cooperative.” I have questions about who wrote that section.

Three weeks in. A park near my temporary housing. I found a bench, sat down, took out my notes.
A man arrived. Stood in front of me. Said, “this is my spot.”
There was no marking. No reservation system. No evidence of prior claim. I looked at him, then at the bench, then back at him.
I got up.

I’m still not sure why. Some combination of surprise and the assumption that he must know something I didn’t. Maybe benches worked differently here. Maybe there was a system I hadn’t been briefed on.
I filed it under: local customs, unclear.

Nine weeks in. The metro. Rush hour, which I’ve come to understand means everyone is running late and furious about it in advance.
Someone came around the corner at speed. Hit me directly. I went down, my stuff everywhere, one knee on the platform.
He kept walking.
Didn’t stop. Didn’t turn. Just kept moving like I was a traffic cone he’d clipped on the way through.

A woman nearby helped me up. She looked embarrassed on his behalf, which I found interesting. The person who caused the problem was already gone. She was the one carrying the residual discomfort.
I filed it under: impact, unacknowledged.

Fourteen weeks in. A coffee shop. The man ahead of me in line was explaining, at length and volume, that his order had been wrong the previous day. The cashier, who said specifically that she had not been there the previous day, was apologizing anyway.
When he finally finished and turned to leave, he walked directly into me. Coffee went everywhere. Mine, mostly.
He looked at the cup. Looked at my jacket. Looked at me.
Kept walking.

I stood there. Wet. Holding what was left of it. Trying to locate the correct human response to what had just happened.
I filed it under: unclear what I was supposed to do there.

I brought this to my therapist. Not all three incidents. The pattern.

“Is this normal?” I asked. “Is this just how people are here?”

She looked at me for a moment. “Does it matter?”

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

“Whether it’s normal or not,” she said, “it’s happening. The question is what you’re doing with it.”

I thought about the bench. The metro. The jacket. All the things I’d filed under unclear and moved on from.

“Carrying it,” I said. “Apparently.”

She nodded. “Other people’s behavior is about their emotional capacity. What they can hold, what they can’t, what they’ve never learned to process. The coffee drying on your jacket without an apology is the overflow of someone else's interior life."

She paused.

“It was never yours to carry.”

“So what do I do with it?”
“That,” she said, “is the more interesting question.”

Last week. A cinema. The kind of small place that shows films nobody else is showing anymore, which is exactly why I go.

The man next to me opened his phone about four minutes in. Bright screen, full brightness, pointed directly at my face. I assumed he’d put it away. He did not put it away.

The second time I looked at him. He didn’t notice. The third time I said, quietly, excuse me, could you put that away. He said yeah, sure, and looked at it again two minutes later.

The fourth time I said it less quietly.

The fifth time I picked up my cup, took out the straw, and placed his phone carefully inside.

He looked at the cup. Looked at me. Looked at the cup again.

I watched the rest of the film. It was very good.

Twenty-one months ago, the Kira who got up from that bench without a word could not have done that. Now, she can look someone in the eye and say: your emotional capacity is not my emergency.

In slightly less polite language.

It took time to learn the difference between patience and absorption. Between being kind and being a surface people wipe their hands on.

The IRD didn’t cover this in the pre-deployment materials. They should update that section.

— Kira

P.S. The IRD did not reimburse the phone. I have a diamond reserve. I did not mind.