Annoying: A love language

May is almost over. WHAT just happened? Why is everything weird? Is everyone okay? Are you okay? Just some things to ponder on as we go through this essay together 🫂 And trust me, we need (read: I need) that hug because I’m writing about a subject very close to my heart: Being annoying.

There’s a writer called Haley Nahman whose work I reference a lot in my own writing. I love her insights and the way she understands human behavior in a way that isn’t coddling or shallow. Recently, she wrote an essay that has taken up an ungodly amount of space in my brain. She wrote about annoyingness—particularly, how to figure out the unique ways that all of us are annoying.

Let’s get into it.

According to Haley Nahman, everyone is annoying in a unique, specific way. Some more so than others, but nobody is exempt. So take a deep breath and accept this universal truth: You, dear reader, are annoying. And also know that you, dear reader, are probably not as annoying as I am but I respect you for trying.

As we all know, people are annoying in different ways. There’s nuance. And there’s an exercise for it, obviously.

Build your personal brand of irritating

Start by naming five qualities that you’d want your ideal self to have. The traits you most want to be known for. It can be anything: Successful, smart, funny, intelligent, good looking, kind, outgoing. That’s step 1.

Step 2: Now, it’s time for some preschool-level shadow work. Look at your list of ideal traits, and then identify their opposites. You can use ChatGPT to do this if you want. If we take the same list: Successful, smart, funny, intelligent, good looking, kind, outgoing. The opposites would be unsuccessful, foolish, not-funny or dull, average looking or bad looking, unkind or rude, unintelligent, boring.

These are the things you most fear becoming. These are your shadow traits. The parts you deny, avoid, overcorrect for. Sometimes so much that you would do anything NOT to seem like them—including, ironically, acting in ways that are deeply annoying.

Step 3: The process by which you contort yourself away from those shadow raits is your signature brand of annoying. Congrats. Let’s all feel icky together. Aren’t you glad you made it this far?

It wasn’t too hard to identify the traits that I really wanted to embody. Here’s my list:

• Interesting
• Loving / thoughtful
• Intelligent
• Hardworking
• Fun / Humorous

That’s the person I’m striving to be. Someone who shows up meaningfully in conversations, who makes people feel seen, who’s sharp, driven, warm, and knows how to make people laugh without trying too hard. But with those traits comes their opposites—the version of me I live in fear of being mistaken for. A lot of my uncomfortable behavior is just me trying to run from those shadows in poorly disguised ways.

These are the versions of myself I dread being perceived as:

• Boring
• Self-absorbed or indifferent to others
• Foolish or dumb
• Lazy
• Dry / Humorless

I’m not annoying because I am those things. I’m annoying because I’m constantly trying to prove that I’m not. I stay in conversations longer than I should to show I care. I want people to think I’m funny.  I try to seem thoughtful but I tend to emotionally micromanage everything. I want to appear intelligent so I sometimes get pretentious. I’d hate the thought of seeming solipsistic (fancy way of saying self-centered or egoistic). None of this is malicious or calculated. But it’s annoying.

Disclaimer:

Of course, this isn’t the only kind of annoying there is in the world. Let’s not get carried away trying to redeem all forms of social chaos. Some people are annoying because they lack self-awareness or basic empathy. Some are annoying because they think they’re always right. It’s not always about inner wounds or a desire to be loved. Sometimes it’s just plain bad behavior. That’s not what I’m talking about here.

Choose your fighter

If you’ve ever been around someone who’s trying really hard to seem chill or magnetic or like the embodiment of vibes, you’ll know: it’s exhausting. I suppose it’s nice that most people aren’t annoying because they’re bad. They’re annoying because they’re scared of being misunderstood.

Recently, a friend started calling me a softie. Just casually, like it was a little nickname. You’re such a softie, they’d say, after I did something vaguely earnest or gentle or emotional. I laughed the first few times, but I also noticed myself bristling. It got under my skin in a way that surprised me. Not because it was untrue, but because I’ve worked so hard to seem like the opposite.

I’ve put real effort into having a backbone, into showing I can take a hit and not fall apart. I know what it costs to keep going when things hurt. So being called a softie felt like they were seeing past the effort and were clocking the thing I still hadn’t fully made peace with.

Although I think that’s the kindness of it. Like they already knew, and it didn’t change anything.

In her essay, Haley references another interesting caveat. There’s a difference between your annoying traits and your difficult traits. What makes you difficult is usually tied to what makes you unique. A particular strength of yours. The thing people admire till they get too close.

If you like the fact that someone is super laid-back, you may also have to be okay with them forgetting your birthday. Someone who’s passionate might light up a room, and also steamroll it. Someone who’s sensitive can be tender and perceptive—but they might also be moody, or easily overwhelmed. A person who’s grounded and reliable might also be rigid, resistant to spontaneity. Someone who’s careful might overthink everything until you’re both exhausted.

I think one of my strongest traits is my ability to immerse myself in life and make the most of it. It’s why I’m very observant of the world around me, always looking for ways I can extract joy and meaning from it. I know my curiosity is a gift. It’s probably why I write. It’s definitely why I spiral.

My curiosity and hunger for meaning keeps me tethered to the world. But it also makes me a little insufferable to be around if you’re just trying to chill.

Because when everything has to be meaningful, the meaningless becomes a threat. I get weird about wasted time. I feel like missed opportunities are lurking around every corner. It’s hard for me to be content and satisfied, which is why you’ll find that recurring tension in my writing. I get restless. I have a constant sense that I’m not doing life right. That there’s more out there. That I’m missing something.

Often, the thing people love about you also contains the seed of what makes you difficult. Not annoying, but truly difficult. Annoying can be fixed, masked, softened. Difficult is baked in.

I think we see this most clearly in romantic relationships, where the thing you’re initially drawn to, like the way someone sees the world, or how deeply they care, or how quick they are to laugh. Eventually, it bumps up against real life. And then it starts to wear on you a little.

But I think that’s the whole point. It’s an opportunity to love people as whole people. You don’t get to love someone’s generosity without also loving that they sometimes overextend themselves. You don’t get their sharpness without the occasional slice. You don’t get their joy without the moments they act all crazy trying to chase it.

Thinking too much is bad for health, let’s take a break

Every time I write one of these deeply introspective, navel-gazing essays (let’s be honest that’s like 80% of what I do here), I hear the voice of Jemima Kirke, queen of blunt-force wisdom, echoing in my head.

Backstory: Someone once asked her what advice she had for unconfident young women, and she shot back, deadpan, with eleven perfect words:

“I think you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much.”

Someone throw a glass of ice water in my face. She’s so right I want to delete this entire essay and take up crochet.

I’ve written about this before, about what happens when self awareness eats its own tail and turns into self-absorption. There’s a difference between knowing what you need to be happy and well, and becoming obsessed with your own internal PR campaign.

After thinking about this, I started to feel like an insecure little freak. Like everyone knows I’m annoying in these five specific ways, and they’re all talking about it behind my back. I have to remind myself that no one cares and that thinking about yourself too much can be quite stupid and pointless. It burns brain-fuel (already in scarce supply in this economy) that you could be spending on literally anything else. Like crochet.

But apart from just the cringey-ness of thinking of yourself too much, it also felt like there was no winning. If I act like the worst version of myself (lazy, insecure, selfish) I’m exactly what I fear I am. But if I try to avoid being that way, by being thoughtful, articulate, emotionally competent—then I’m just being… annoying? Wow congrats, you lose either way. It’s a fun spiral. Highly recommend.

But it also made me ask: What exactly is so bad about being annoying? Is it really some unforgivable social sin? No one wants to be the person who tries too hard or talks too much. But annoying isn’t evil. It’s not even dangerous. At worst, it’s a little grating. At best, it’s human.

And what’s the worst that can happen if we’re annoying? Will it prove some awful truth about us? One that we already suspect? That we are fundamentally too much, too little, or somehow both? SO WHAT?

What’s striking (though not surprising) is how many women I know are fixated on not being annoying. We’re usually the ones who preface our opinions and apologize for our preferences. The men? Not so much. It’s not a revolutionary observation, but it does make you go hmm. Maybe it’s because women have internalized the idea that we should be undemanding. And what a loss that is! To sand down the parts of you that might, God forbid, take up space or piss people off.

The patron saint of annoying women

I first watched Fleabag during the pandemic, which like many of my 2020 decisions was emotionally ill-advised but ultimately kind of clarifying. I binged through the two seasons and loved it. If you haven’t seen the show (fix that), it follows a young woman in London who’s grieving a loss she can’t admit to.

Instead of processing it, she throws herself into sex, sarcasm, impulsive decisions, and café management. She’s sharp, clever, hot, and deeply unpleasant.

Fleabag talks to the camera throughout the show, breaking the fourth wall with side-glances, commentary, and real-time narration. At first, it seems clever. Then it was funny. Then after watching it a second time, it becomes increasingly sad.

She’s doing it because she has no one else to talk to. We are her stand-in for intimacy. It’s her attempt for someone to see her.

After reading Haley Nahman’s essay on how annoying behaviors are often just protective ones in disguise, the pieces clicked into place. Fleabag isn’t trying to hide her brokenness by being less annoying. She’s weaponizing it. She’s daring people to flinch. Say I’m wrong about myself. Say I’m not the monster I’ve already decided I am. She’s made a career out of being emotionally grotesque.

In the first episode, she shows up unannounced, drunk, and teary-eyed at her father’s doorstep in the middle of the night. “I’m totally fine,” she says. “Okay…” he replies.

Then she says flatly like she’s reading her own rap sheet: “I have a horrible feeling that I’m a greedy, perverted, selfish, apathetic, cynical, depraved, morally bankrupt woman who can’t even call herself a feminist.”

Her father then says: You get all that from your mother. And then he calls her a cab home.

That moment is the thesis of this entire essay. Because that’s what so many of our annoying traits really are. Just preemptive strikes. Here is everything I fear I am. Now you decide what you’re going to do about it.

Here’s what Phoebe Waller-Bridge says about the show:

“I think it’s the aspects of her character that make her unlikeable are the most important part. You realize she’s hiding her pain, rather than projecting an attitude for no reason. Hopefully, that’s what lets her get away with her naughtier, immoral side.”

My second favorite scene in the show was the moment was when she sat in a confessional booth and says to the Hot Priest (capital H capital P, no further explanation):

“I want someone to tell me what to wear in the morning. I want someone to tell me what to do. I want someone to tell me what to eat, what to like, what to hate, what to rage about, what to listen to, what to joke about, what to not joke about… I think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far I think I’ve been getting it wrong.”

And it’s like—YEAH. That’s what annoyingness really is. When I’m annoying, it’s usually because I want someone to validate me without having to ask for it. It’s a long, circular way of saying help me.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been ruminating on this week. I’d highly recommend reading Haley’s essay and maybe doing the annoyingness exercise for yourself. Think about the ways you reach out to people through your weird little quirks, but don’t think about it too long. Stuff like this starts to rot if you sit with it for longer than required.

I’ll be back when I have something interesting to say. In the meantime, here are five things I’m looking forward for to next week:

• The rains. Monsoon in Goa is peak cuddle weather. The dramatic clouds, the white noise of rainfall, the very unique and specific feeling of associating the start of the rains with going back to school and realizing you’re a whole adult that doesn’t have to go to school.
  
• But hold that thought, my daughter goes to playschool next week. She was 5 months old when I started this blog, so that’s feeling a little surreal. 
  
• Hugging my friends.
  
• Listening to Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls because it has become a ritual when it rains. I think you might know the 2004 concert I’m talking about.
  
• Watching a long list of TV shows with my husband after our daughter goes to bed.

That’s all. Life goes on. Go forth and be weird about it.