That's a Great Question, I'd Love to Tell You
54 pages • 1-hour read
Elyse MyersThat's a Great Question, I'd Love to Tell You
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness, ableism, and emotional abuse.
The Impulse to Escape One’s Self
The most dominant theme in the book is The Impulse to Escape One’s Self, and Myers first describes this pattern in her Epigraph by proclaiming that she has periodically had the “urgent desire to change everything about [her] life” (xii). This theme encompasses her constant desire for travel, her efforts to reinvent herself, and her impulse to run away from emotional discomfort. To support this theme, Myers adds a series of illustrations that are symbolic of movement, like cars and airplanes, as well as images of escape, such as doors and staircases. These pointed additions to the text emphasize the sense of displacement that dominates Elyse’s early life as she repeatedly engages in literal and figurative acts of escape.
For Elyse, this impulse stems from her deep dissatisfaction with her life and her own personality. She hopes that by physically distancing herself from certain aspects of her life, she might be able to become a “better” or more “normal” person. She follows this path in Chapter 5, when she attends community college in the hopes of performing a “Factory Reset,” through which she might “completely unpack [herself] and select only the best and easiest parts of [her] personality” (57). In short, her naïve goal at this point is to conform to neurotypical standards in order to become someone whom people will enjoy spending time with. This desire also motivates her decision to move to Australia and then, finally, to Omaha at the conclusion of the book.
The final chapter most explicitly connects Elyse’s various relocations with her emotional need to escape herself, for when she fully understands the depths of Jonas’s unconditional acceptance, she finally acknowledges that escaping her true self is impossible. Because she simply brings herself—her personality, her past, her perceived flaws—with her to every new place she travels, she cannot separate her new self from her old self. Notably, her desire to reinvent herself is motivated by her inability to fit in with neurotypical society, and for many years, she perceives this as a failure on her part. However, her efforts to mimic neurotypical mannerisms gives rise to a social mask that ultimately hinders her desire to assuage The Human Need for Unconditional Acceptance. Only after she stops pretending to be someone else can she be truly seen for who she is, and at this point, her impulse to run away finally fades. The book makes this conclusion explicit in the final chapter with the symbol of home, which is a direct response to the symbol of movement and the impulse to escape. Crucially, Elyse’s understanding of home as a place of safety and belonging is connected not to a place but to her future husband, Jonas. His ability fulfill her need to be seen and loved helps her to resist the impulse to run away.
Inaccessibility of Social Scripts for Neurodivergent Individuals
In many ways, Elyse’s lack of belonging stems from the inaccessibility of social scripts for neurodivergent individuals. Many stories in the book highlight the difficulties and anxieties that arise when neurotypical social norms dictate behavioral expectations that are nearly impossible for neurodivergent people to access, comprehend, or mimic. As Elyse demonstrates frequently, neurotypical expectations are most often displayed in unspoken rules and social scripts that neurotypical individuals understand and perform innately, as if these behaviors are “baked into [their] DNA in a way that [she] can’t replicate with any amount of trying” (150). Elyse’s inability to access these unspoken rules and scripts causes her to experience intense anxiety and panic attacks that hinder her connections with others and impact her life in painful ways.
Several early examples demonstrate Elyse’s failed attempts to understand and mimic these social scripts, as in Chapter 2, when her efforts to maintain the proper social script of platonic friendship with Marley prevent her from recognizing that his romantic feelings mirror her own. Similarly, she misses several crucial cues in her interaction with the Parisian sex worker in Chapter 6, experiencing a moment of severe embarrassment and discomfort as a result, and social debacles like these fuel her desire for an external guide with which to navigate situations that she finds confusing.
As the book illustrates, Elyse, like many other neurodivergent individuals, attempts to cope with these difficulties by quantifying the unquantifiable. For instance, she develops systems of measurement by which she believes that she can control her feelings, reactions, and words in order to better mimic social scripts and fit in with neurotypical society. She also learns how to take notes to mediate her discomfort in social interactions and decode the people around her. Although she must adopt a “bottom-up” approach to the world, her concept of being “Just The Right Amount of Observant” (150) helps her to adopt unique strategies to navigate social systems that are designed to exclude neurodivergent individuals.
Crucially, the early chapters indicate that Elyse views these difficulties as personal failures that she must learn to correct or hide, and this issue leads to her recurring need to run away, abandon her old life, and reinvent herself. She believes that each subsequent change will bring her closer to becoming the kind of person who can fit in with neurotypical society; at the very least, she hopes to more easily pretend and blend in. However, her attempts at masking her differences prove painful in and of themselves and hinder her ability to make meaningful and lasting connections. Over the course of the book, she slowly abandons the need to mask her own personality, and she is aided by the small number of friends who see and genuinely like her for who she is.
The Human Need for Unconditional Acceptance
The final major theme, the human need for unconditional acceptance, is deeply intertwined with the first two themes. Throughout the book, Elyse’s struggle to be seen indicates that this is a particularly intense desire for neurodivergent individuals who often find themselves misunderstood or excluded from neurotypical society. For Elyse in particular, the inability to conform to society’s expectations creates feelings of failure and invisibility. These feelings motivate her impulse to escape her authentic self out of fear, anxiety, and sensations of overwhelm. As a result, she is prevented from connecting with those who would willingly love her for her authentic self.
Elyse’s anxiety often dictates her actions in ways she cannot control, hijacking her body without her consent. These experiences are threaded throughout the book and form a significant barrier in her attempts to connect emotionally with those she cares about. Many examples in the book demonstrate this barrier, such as Elyse’s experience with Marley in Chapter 2, her panic attack in Chapter 5, and most severely, the moment in Chapter 21 when her fight or flight response triggers her to run away from Jonas. This anxiety arises from feelings of shame or embarrassment over her neurodivergent inability to blend in, and this inner block frequently prevents her from making genuine connections.
She is also hindered by lingering trauma from her negative experiences with the unidentified boyfriend who reappears at key points throughout the book as the unnamed “he” or “you.” Because of these experiences, Elyse both wishes for and fears the idea of having and being “more” than what she currently accepts in her life. She believes that gaining more affection, attention, or love will overwhelm her, and she also feels that it is not safe to ask someone for a greater emotional contribution to a relationship. She does not feel the degree of commitment she needs from her unnamed boyfriend, and she therefore senses asking him for “more” would never be a viable solution to the dissatisfaction that she feels in their long-distance relationship.
Conversely, her experiences with Jonas instantly fulfill her desire for more, and she is astonished when she realizes that he meets her needs in this regard without her ever having to ask for it. Although she is initially afraid of growing close to him (as seen in Chapter 17 when she attempts to break up before they are even officially dating), she eventually realizes that Jonas provides her with the sense of safety and belonging that she has always longed before. He sees and chooses her authentic self, including the quirks that she views as flaws. In this way, her relationship with Jonas fulfills her need to be seen and loved and counteracts her impulse to escape or change herself to fit in with neurotypical society. Though Elyse’s feelings for Jonas do not magically erase or cure her anxiety, the book demonstrates that genuine connection and understanding can act as a safe haven from the difficulties and pain associated with striving to meet neurotypical social expectations.
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