stephanie yang

battling jetlag and the side-effects of benadryl, i am curled up on my couch and wondering about how we perceive meaning through language. a friend is across the room, fiercely editing my latest film, while texting here and there with a new sweetie. as we strategize responses while trying to suss out lascivious innuendos, i am thinking a lot about how we communicate, or not, through snippets of the written word.

we assume in sending a text, writing an email, or even speaking face to face, that what we mean is transfered through the words we use, the phrases we choose, the tones we embrace. and yet. usually, the person on the other end can only perceive how they would mean it because no one gets the pleasure (or punishment) of living inside our heads. it’s like editing a film, i’m being reminded – because i know the story, i get told that i can be way too subtle — and am constantly reminded that i need to find the balance between clarity, simplicity and hitting someone over the head with the message. having someone else edit my work, for the first time, is teaching me this.

i think i am being clear with someone when i say “you’re amazing”, or “i miss you”, or “i love you”, or even the simple “thank you.” i assume that the person i’m talking to understands the depth of the feeling behind those words, the importance i ascribe to it.

i’ve been thinking a lot this past week about how i broke up with someone last year – how the words i composed in a final letter to her were supposed to be received (as loving and sweet) — yet, her response was simply, “i have nothing positive to say to you…so i’m just not going to say anything more”…which she didn’t until almost a year later.

i’ve been thinking about what i am wanting from the other person when i do communicate. what did i want from her? what do i want from others now – as i pass along a text, an email, a hug when we meet? what are the underlying motivations driving me when reaching out to someone else – as i attempt to pass on meaning through words? is what i’m saying true? necessary? and kind?

can there be communication without expectation? is it possible to express oneself in a way that doesn’t somewhere, somehow seek out approval or affirmation of some sort or more maliciously, hope to wound or silence? i am sure that i am overlooking other motivations of language – and i wonder now if communication can ever be neutral.

the “he said/she said” — or even “he didn’t say/she didn’t say” — game is a vicious circle i can spin in often. i want clarity and truth in my connections with others but i am curious to know if those are perhaps more elusive dreams than can be achieved through language alone.

this is definitely not a new topic to invade my brain but it is curious today that where i am going with it, is to a place of memory that rocks the absurd. i remember three conversations in which meaning that was ascribed to what was said, or was happening, traveled such a circuitous path that i was left angered and confused.

curious, too, that all three of these moments involved interactions with my mother.

moment #1: i’m on the phone with my mom, it’s my freshman year at college and in my head, i’m failing my classes — meaning, i was getting B’s…so i am upset, stressed and worried, and in that moment, i was crying and saying how scared i was about failing. so she responds: “you’re clearly upset about something, stephanie. are you pregnant?”

moment #2: it is the summer right after i graduated from ucla and was packing up my stuff to head off to new orleans for grad school – where i was continuing my studies in french literature and film theory. my mom makes the comment: “so i know how impressionable you are and since you insist on studying feminist literature, are you a lesbian?”

and my favorite. moment #3. i must have been in college and i’m at my parent’s house, sitting in the dining room for some reason….and i’ll admit i am not someone who fastidiously (or ever) makes a regular practice of cutting and filing my nails which irritates my mom. so she says to me this day, “your thumb nail is too long. do you do drugs?”

in those moments, i was just confused – trying to understand how things i was saying could be perceived in such incongruous ways — and yet, running my fingers through the viscosity of the memories today, i realize, my mother was just communicating her greatest fears about me: that i would get pregnant before getting married, that i was queer and that i did drugs.

well. 2 out of 3 were true…though not at all for the reasons she ascribed.