Swapping subject positions

When I've reached out to people "in exile", I've often found that the most effective way to reach someone is to let them inhabit a new subject position, in which they get to be the hero and I can be the recipient.

For example, there’s a student in my cohort who started out in a very scary place. If you’ve seen the movie Carrie, she was like Carrie’s mother. My lovely Christian friends even came up with an affectionate nickname: the “Swamp monster”*.

I’m not going to play hero. I felt helpless, and I wasn’t the first person to reach out. A friend of mine was: she was the first to see potential in Alex. Nicole was the first to truly enjoy her company; she was the first to love her. I later got to borrow Nicole’s point of view and liked her too.

I wanted to avoid condescension at all costs. It was Alex who found a way of relating to me. She saw me as the helpless foreign student who needed help adjusting to British culture: that was her excuse for spending time with me. You’ll be glad to know that she also saw me as a lousy Christian and thought she could probably teach me a thing or two. In fine, she thought that I was lonely, and offered to take me hiking on a Saturday. She cared for me, and after a while, she enjoyed my company. On occasion she would say something like: you're just like me.

Me? I tried to stay in the zone, telling myself: "That’s good, you’re doing awesome, you stay in that zone kid, just stay humble and just send Alex some friendly vibes". We ended up spending so much time together that we started to genuinely look forward to seeing each other. The mutual condescension vanished after a few days spent together. She lightened up considerably and now gets on with practically everyone. And I’m proud as hell because it seems like I was one of the first persons** she ever smiled to. AMDG.

Edit: upon reflection, I hate this post. It does not do any justice to the present state of affairs. I love Alex like I love myself, with the exact same friendly indulgence. It's true, we didn't hit it off initially. It was a deliberate course of action on my part: I was trying to be good. She was trying to be good to me. And then Grace hit us from on high. I love you Alex. Thanks for your trust.



* To their credit, they did this for a reason: they were convinced that Alex needed to be snapped out of her attitude, and that this type of banter would achieve it. They wanted to knock off her rough edges. The name calling was not really vicious, it was meant as a wake-up call, they did want her to fit in. But when that did not work, they just settled with not interacting with her at all, they did not know how to relate to her. While I thought that this was brutal, I was also very bad at relating to her, and just did not interact with Alex either.

** Not the only one though. It took a whole village, and three years, to get her there. I don't know the others personally, but her church did help considerably, and for this the happy-clappy "born again" have my eternal respect.