#251: The rainbow edge of annoying
Introducing: another graph
On New Year’s Day I called my mom in dire straits: Avi was somehow much sicker, despite having “turned a corner” from RSV a couple days prior. Our apartment was at the point of needing to be incinerated for both safety and religious reasons. We’d already been quarantined for two weeks; our holiday travel plans were cancelled. I did not know how we’d get through another weekend of hacking and groaning and gathering every last morsel of energy to do the bare minimum, which unfortunately involved a lot. The grotesque angle at which I held the phone for our FaceTime call said more than words could convey. My mom gently offered to fly out. It took me about 20 minutes to consider whether I could accept help that involved cross-country travel, then I basically begged.
While booking her flight, my mom worried aloud about how long she ought to stay. “I don’t want to be underfoot…,” she said. Underfoot is a word I’ve only ever heard my mom use, and it’s a regular concern. Sometimes she’ll be visiting New York with my dad and reassure me and my brother that we won’t have to hang out with them that much. “Mom,” I always say, “you are visiting! We want to hang out with you!” This time, the idea that I might consider her to be underfoot for two or three days during which she would be cooking, cleaning, caretaking, and cheering us up was so absurd I could only laugh. If anyone was going to be underfoot, it would be the miserable people she came to attend to.
My mom is what you might call underbearing. Largely I appreciate this about her. Despite being highly attuned to and interested in my life, she’s never made me feel guilty for basically anything since I became an adult, including the decade-long stint of rarely calling her during my twenties. Perhaps this is due to the loving relationship we’ve built (a lack of phone calls can mean a lot or very little), but mostly I credit my mom for trusting me to live my life, being passionate about living her own, and being socially aware enough to not want to be one of those moms who saddles her children with guilt. I’m very lucky. Still, sometimes I worry she’s taken that last point too far. I told her this over lunch last week. Weren’t there risks to being underbearing? What if I wanted her to be the one to call sometimes, or to be a little nosy? What if, in her attempts to never be annoying, she risked introducing a certain distance? She looked surprised, laughed a little, as if to say, who can win? (Which, fair.)
Maybe this was on my mind because, the week before, I’d gone through an intense round of negotiating how annoying I was willing to be in service of connection. I was texting a friend about the fact that I’d been feeling a little left out of our friend group lately, and was pondering why. Was it something I was enabling (a parenthood thing?) or something else forgivable, like the fact that some of these friends had a longer history with each other? I wasn’t looking to blame anyone, just processing a feeling. Still, it felt like throwing up on her shoes, and a few minutes after I sent the text, I tried to unsend it. Maybe I was just in a mood; maybe this was something I needed to work through on my own. But the window to take it back had passed. I confessed to her that I’d tried to unsend it, “lol,” that I was feeling high maintenance and pathetic. “NO NO NO,” she replied. “Don’t be afraid of being high maintenance. I am in need of maintenance daily.” This kicked off an hours-long conversation that, naturally, ended with both of us crying and saying how much we love each other.
Note that my friend hadn’t countered my assertion that I was being high maintenance. Note that she suggested, instead, that it was her pleasure to maintain me. This feels instructive vis-à-vis the question of whether being annoying can be worth it. Obviously this notion doesn’t scale infinitely—of course you can be too high maintenance, too involved, too needy—but this particular instance made me interested in the perilous proximity of being annoying and being our most present and vulnerable selves. My mom’s concerns piqued it further. I don’t actually find her to be distant; she is warm and loving. But her worry that her caretaking presence might bother us betrayed a self-negation I couldn’t accept. I wanted to pass on the same reassurance my friend had given me: Please, when the situation calls for it, dare to be underfoot!
I’ve circled this topic before. I’ve written about the risks of being socially avoidant, of being indirect about what you need, of being independent to an antisocial degree. This lesson adds a new dimension. If those essays are about the general fact that being prosocial sometimes engenders being annoying or annoyed, this one suggests the goal is to be as close to annoying or annoyed as possible. Allow me to explain with a graph, as is my recent addiction:
If we think of “involvement” as a spectrum that traces the distance between someone who is hyper-remote/independent and someone who is utterly suffocating/overbearing, you might think the goal is to net out somewhere in the middle—to balance the risks of being too independent with the risks of being annoying. But I’d argue that you only risk being annoying at the very end of the spectrum, and that there are pretty great benefits up to that point. For example, when a friend is going through something intense (death, birth, breakup, etc.) and you wonder whether to reach out, which can be uncomfortable, versus say nothing, to avoid the risk, the answer is always to say something. Distance costs more.
There is a sweet spot, then, and it’s inherently risky. You are getting in someone’s business, you are potentially oversharing your own, you are intersecting your unwieldy personality with someone else’s. This is not a safe middle ground, but a scary leap, a thorny offer. To be so close to annoying is to be utterly vulnerable, alive, present, involved. You may even cross over into the red zone, but this is a risk you have to take. There may even be something magical in that overshooting—“a rainbow edge,” as Donna Tartt once put it, in a Goldfinch passage I never forgot, “where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur … the space where all art exists, and all magic.” The surfaces, in this case, are you and the people you love, pushing into each other just enough to connect and stay there.
Other words that fit on this spectrum for which the same rules apply: under-share/over-share, under-try/over-try, under-care/over-care. My fear of causing annoyance often governs my relationship with all these forms of participation, and while we’re very familiar, as a culture, with the risks of being annoying, we can’t forget the costs of total safety from those risks.
On the last day of 2025, I published a podcast in which I promised (among other things) to stop talking about being sick on the newsletter. I was afraid of becoming irritating and pathetic—I guess I’ve been feeling pathetic in many contexts lately—but multiple people commented that they liked knowing what was going on with me. Either they were also often sick, which made them feel less alone, or my willingness to share something humbling made me feel like a real person. I’m sure some see it differently, and I apologize to them in advance, but I’d rather be honest and possibly annoying than neither, so I rescind the promise. (See the beginning of this newsletter for proof.)
I saw a great Substack headline the other day: “Growing up is becoming who you were at 12, except this time you like her.” Some of the hardest-earned lessons of my adult life have been about returning to who I was before I first experienced teenaged shame—when I was, more than likely, at least a little bit annoying, but in service of authentic feelings. What did it feel like to think, talk, do, and be without constantly referencing some unsubstantiated guidebook for how to be lovable? Once I became a teenager, I furiously filled my journals with entries about feeling left out by this or that friend, wondering what they were thinking. I never considered that I could just ask—that through that very process, not necessarily through the answer, I might find the love I was looking for.
Last week’s 15 things included a sweet entry point to poetry, my favorite New York cookie, a mind-blowing YouTube essay, a highly divisive poll involving NOSES, and more. The rec of the week was how to survive winter with a toddler.
Last week’s discussion thread was about texting. You guys had so much to say!!
This Wednesday will be another episode of Dear Danny.
Hope you have a nice Sunday,
Haley
As a chronic "underbearer" I've been reflecting a lot in the last year on what that's cost me in terms of closeness with friends, opportunities at work etc. and trying to become more comfortable with showing my neediness instead of shriveling at the thought.
The phrase "the price of community is inconvenience" was huge in 2025; for me, for this year, I've been adapting it to the mantra "the price is Being The Inconvenience" - Time to become a thorn in everyone's side!
this made me cry. so much to say about this topic!!! i got multiple surgeries this year — double mastectomy and reconstruction and a touch up — and i felt so scared of how much i needed people and their support and help. help with my own hygiene (milking my bloody drains, showering), logistical and childcare help with my son (i could not lift him for cumulative months!), emotional help with feeling OK about my drastically changing body!!! it sounds soooo corny but i was really touched and honestly shocked by how many people responded when i reached out for support — people who wanted to both help materially but also bear witness to what i was going through, who literally just wanted to sit and watch tv with me or do a puzzle with me! i cry thinking about it honestly. we all need to be maintained!!! and i think i also gave people something too, not just took — i showed people something ugly and scary and vulnerable which i think in turn made them feel more comfortable doing the same with me (and hopefully others).