8. Disempowered by euphemism

I'll tell it to you straight.

Dear Reader,

It is often tempting to describe an undesirable situation in a gentler, kinder way so that we can feel better about it. So let me tell you something about myself. I am directionally challenged. I often find myself geographically misplaced.

Wording my navigational difficulty in such ways, though, makes me feel uncomfortable. I don’t want to gussy up a simple statement of fact. I’d rather not hide the problem behind prettier words, skirting around it instead of giving it any acknowledgement. Because to have any hope of dealing with my issue I need to empower myself to stand up to it. Spelling out a situation makes me better placed to manage it. But just changing the words to make me feel better about it simply takes away my power to deal with it.

So I’ll tell it to you straight:

I get lost.

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Photo by Daniel Jensen on Unsplash

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And yes, I’ve noticed the irony that the words I’ve used to describe my unfailing ability to get lost are all about location, direction or navigation.

‘Straight’.
‘…skirting around the problem’.
‘better placed’.

Euphemisms are often so clever (not a compliment!) that they often sound ridiculous. I’m sure we’ve all heard the phrase ‘vertically challenged’, meaning ‘short’. As an exceptionally tall person I have sometimes been called ‘gravitationally challenged’. This is just nonsense: a euphemism requiring explanation completely misses the point.

Euphemisms for getting - or being - lost often sound funny, sarcastic or tongue-in-cheek. When I am lost, though, I am not feeling fluffily and amusingly ‘geographically misplaced’. The things I feel when I am lost are not fun, not funny. Reader, when I am lost I am terrified. Heart-stoppingly, gut-wrenchingly terrified.

Will they lock me in this building overnight not knowing I haven’t found my way out of it?
Will I ever find my friends?
Will I ever get home?

You see, I don’t just get lost in the great outdoors. I mean I do, a lot, as a keen solo walker, but I just as easily lose my way in city streets, at railway stations – even in the short distance between the ticket office and the barriers – in supermarkets, in pubs on my way back to the beer garden from the bar, in restaurants on my way back to the table from the loo, in all sorts of places and scenarios in which other people seem to find their way without a second thought.

I often ask for directions, like to the loo in the pub. We’ve all seen the results of just such an enquiry: generally a load of ostentatious handwaving and pointing by the askee drawing unwanted attention to the asker. So just imagine how I feel just a few minutes later having to ask directions – often from the same person as on my way there – to get back from the loo to my table?

‘Could you help me find my friends?’ The embarrassment crushes me.

When I can find my way to somewhere, it’s surely not unreasonable to expect myself to be able to find my way back to where I’ve started. But in my – yes, directionally challenged – brain, the way back bears absolutely no relationship to the way there. I can’t reconcile the two. My return trip is generally a different route altogether.

Last summer at a beautiful campsite on the shores of Loch Ness I could not reliably find my way back to our camper van from the shower block in our whole three-day trip. My husband would kindly – and repeatedly, with growing amusement – point out that I had come back on a path that was 90 degrees out, never on the much more direct one that I’d set off on. I made friends with the neighbouring vanners I passed every time on the wrong path. It seemed they found me hilarious.

As a child, and the youngest member of my family, the thing I remember most about walks is not that they always felt such a long way for my little legs, but that I could rarely relate to my surroundings. Exploration was nothing without the context of where I’d started, or where I was going, but I never seemed to have a grip on these things, even it was just a quick stroll on the common opposite our house after Sunday lunch. From the moment we set off my bearings would be lost, just like that, and unless we were going in a completely straight line with the starting point still visible if I turned straight round to look back at it, that would be it. I never recognised any relationship between where I had come from, where I was going, where I was right now, or how to get home.

Until fairly recently I’d always thought that those people who know their way around anywhere were the exceptions to the rule – that they were somehow special in their seemingly innate ability for navigation. That they were unusual. My research tells me otherwise. In fact it seems that I’m the unusual one for not being able to do it.

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Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash

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I get lost. LOST.
Not directionally challenged. Not geographically misplaced.
I am not going to disempower myself by euphemism.
Because by facing my difficulty head on, perhaps I’ll one day overcome it.

Love,

Rebecca

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Would you rather have a difficult situation of yours coloured prettier by euphemism? Or do you, like me, prefer to tell it as it is?

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