Why people get offended by me? Am I intimidating? What could go wrong?

I don’t know how to articulate this but there are often times when I say something to anybody and they get offended. To my knowledge, I am completely in my neutral voice tone with objective facial expressions. To simplify, I look more like a fictional character, Wednesday Addams. But, since she is in a fantasy series, everyone adores her peculiar nature; few guys want to date her, and her roommate wants to remain best friends with her. This is not the case when we deal with people in real life. People do not want to talk to somebody like that. They may appear arrogant on a surface level. As a result, many other people might become furious once they are encountered. So, am I intimidating?

Let me explain this with a real-time example. I was in grade twelfth and the internal exams’ results were out. I failed in all subjects, so the school principal wanted to talk in person. I wasn’t the only one whom she called. There were a few other students as well along with their one parent. In my case, it was my mother.

There must be 3 or 4 students being accompanied by their parents in the principal’s office and she was addressing them one by one about how many subjects they needed to improvise, or why they failed and such. When my turn came, she asked me the same, “Are teachers not teaching you properly? If yes, we can make arrangements to change their teaching patterns.” To which I replied, “No ma’am! That’s not the problem.”. Her reaction right after my statement was surprising. She said, “How dare you! No student has ever talked to me like that!”.

Looking at her screams, my anxiety levels skyrocketed. What exactly did I do? I just replied to her question. My statement was short, concise, and was simply a yes/no type of answer. What might have gone wrong that made her so mad? Even to this day, I sometimes ask my mother about the possible reasons, and she is equally clueless as well. Her response is, “Maybe she wanted you to just remain silent and answer nothing.”. So, if she wanted no answer, why did she ask me a question in the first place?

The experience of my encounter with the school principal is not the only instance when I offended someone. There are many more others, but some of those experiences just stand out among the rest. How many instances would you like to read?

This incident happened at my former workplace. I used to go to the cafeteria to have freshly brewed coffee twice during my working hours. After that, I would go to the attached washroom and back to my workstation. Once when I came out of the washroom, I saw a colleague holding my cellphone. He said that the phone seemed lost property and he wondered whose phone was it. I simply said, “It's mine. Where are you taking that to?”, to which he responded, “To the HR. Wait! Are you accusing me of stealing it?”.

He felt so upset that for many more days, he kept telling the sob story of “being accused of stealing”. I watched him doing all this patiently without uttering a word and one fine day, I lost my calm and told him in a slightly high-pitched tone, “I DID NOT ACCUSE YOU OF STEALING!! Could we just move on already?”. Can you imagine the dread? I was being accused of accusing him of stealing. How screwed up that was! It makes me furious even to this day.

There is another story of an aged person shouting at me over the phone because I asked him how much my college university would cost me if I applied for my (master’s degree) transcript, and that he would be the medium through which I would pay the money. His pitch was so high that my entire day was shattered. He yelled because he thought I was considering him to bribe and a kind of mediator between me and the university. I legitimately did not know through what medium I needed to pay.

Everyone's personality has a history. I would like to share mine. My background story may give you an idea why I make poker face which is downright annoying to the rest of the world. Not every individual could end up like me had they gone through a similar experience. Nonetheless, my situation is completely valid whether one believes it or not.

I grew up in a strict home environment. We weren’t disciplined through physical beatings but we would get yelled at quite often. We are a total of three children and I am the oldest one. I can’t advocate for every household but based on my experience, the eldest one faces the wrath the most. The parents become the parents for the first time and they truly don’t have any manual to read on how to raise children. I wish there was some guidebook on each child’s needs, but there isn’t.

I’ve always been labeled as a sensitive child. I agree with that although I’m unsure whether it was largely because of my parent raging at me quite regularly for accidentally tumbling down a glass full of water, getting excited for no reason; or just genetics, or the mix of both.

Ours was a different era. Back in the nineties, we wouldn’t question how little children were treated. Be it at home or school. The schools played a vital role in that. I got beaten many times just like my other classmates as tender as in class nursery for the minutest of mistakes. Just writing the letter ‘B’ on the wrong line was enough to be slapped hard multiple times. It was common to disrespect small kids since most adults thought this was how children were supposed to be taught life lessons. Junior high, and middle school days weren’t any different. Make no blunder or expect the harshest treatment possible. I wasn’t the teachers’ pet for obvious reasons.

Conversely, students who brought good grades were treated as high-ranks; their parents had all the expected respect. It was odd but people who scored marks felt that they had the right to disrespect and bully others. Ask any average or below-average student of my generation and you would find out they all wanted to score better to get that validation. Several factors distract a child, hence, how they score shouldn’t be the holy grail of their intellect. Nevertheless, it used to be and still is.

Students who were a combination of shy and introverted like me had to tolerate the most. Everyone would tend to provoke, insult, or bully them and they did not have the confidence to retaliate. Their parents were no exception. Some would spank, while others would pressure to top the class. Some had addiction issues and so, the child would suffer amid parental drama.

One of my parents have always had anger issues. They have their share of childhood trauma but due to that, I, along with my other family members, had to face their furious side every other day. If any of us wanted to convince them of something important, it was crucial to notice their mood. If they showed passive-aggressiveness due to work pressure, it wasn’t a good idea to go forward and talk.

My constant battles at home to do no wrong in my parents’ eyes, in addition to not being slapped at school, put me in survival mode for years. I developed perfectionism, self-criticism, extremely low self-esteem, and a low confident persona. It affected my grades year after year. Experiences like these made me hyper-sensitive to loud noises and I mostly thought if people were mad, it was because I did something wrong.

There was a time when I became an obese teenager with anger issues of my parent being passed down, continuing the pattern of generational trauma. In addition, being a young teen also brought attention to many which I didn’t want.

Therefore, I decided to blend in with the crowd. I would keep my dressing sense as common as possible. No fashion wouldn’t appeal to anybody. So, nobody would notice. It was my comfort zone. Alongside the way I showcased through my dressing style, it was also a conscious effort to make serious expressions so that people of the opposite sex stayed away.

Little did I know that it would scare everyone away, even those whom I wanted to talk to or befriend. I didn’t realise that such expressions are not welcome, because girls are supposed to please everyone and remain all-time smiling and nice.

How could I play nice, be a people pleaser, and also somebody who avoids desperate young boys and horny middle-aged men? The disadvantage, however, was they either got unnecessarily triggered by my seemingly “attitude” or plainly scared in the long run. On the exterior, I may not look like I struggled with low confidence and self-esteem but this is how it was. I have slowly made progress and am at peace with the situation in general.

I am no longer angry and I have no resentment towards anyone. But I genuinely cannot fix my face. At this point, I know I am screwed forever because the voice tone and facial expressions matter a lot and I can’t seem to train myself to perfect it. You have to either talk to me and find out what is in my mind, or simply stay away, judging what I might be thinking.

To summarise, my intentions while I interact with people are completely innocent. It is substantially frustrating to be involved with such people who over-analyse and judge my (no) intentions. Moreover, I keep on asking myself, whether I am the scapegoat of fate for meeting such abusive people all my life, or if folks in general simply don’t know how to behave.

Maybe I trigger some individuals in some way. Maybe my bland face, inexpressive voice, or situation in general remind them of something they witnessed in their childhood. Maybe I don’t need to overthink and blame myself each time somebody dumps their toxic crap.

In recent years, I have become more aware of life and know whose accountability falls where. I no longer feel that I am worthless but the one who happens to have met such individuals who project their low self-esteem and self-hatred towards someone like me. I can see that it is not my responsibility to make people feel better about themselves. Lastly, I truly feel that everyone should eventually learn this.