[xx-11] Deconstructive

This isn’t a “real” blog post. I’m just doing a breakdown of a bad conversation that accelerated the stages of how conversations fail, so I want to put the slide show together, so to speak. I impress upon you, this is more plodding and “academic” than of any particular intrigue or insight. Slide show here: (Finally!) 1. Weak proposition and intent. “I think I might need a road trip.” [Context: I’ve been calling around for someone with the time and constitution to grab a moving van. The previous day, she expressed a busy and tumultuous circumstance and declined. She expressed regret at not being able to help.] In response I asked, “Changing your mind and volunteering?” I then follow it up with an offer of food, gas, and/or money. She declines to answer. She speculates about the weather being imperfect for the trip. I become frustrated, but attempt to play it off with a joke about cars and their propensity to melt or not. Here’s one of the most important and operative points for me. I’m very frustrated at this point. I did not choose to throw that frustration in her face. I did not call her names. I did not accuse her of anything. I chose joke. She asks what town it is. I answer. She asks if I’m working. I say I’m watching TV. She says she’s going to Google where the town is. I start to show a crack in patience. It’s approximately 20 minutes of what I refer to as “the dance” people get in when either the goal is unclear, or someone introduces more uncertainty than perhaps the task requires. I explain whatever direction we’re headed, it’s 3 hours of a pain in the ass and if she’s not up to it, I again release her from any obligation or feeling of guilt (as if I control such things.) The peak irony: Here’s where the exact words you would use are employed to describe the exact opposite of what you think is happening. Out of control, they become “Make America great again.” “I don’t want to waste your time being wishy washy.” - Great in theory. We’ve spent pushing 30 minutes with my legs bouncing ready to go at your implying you wished to help. “I don’t feel pressured.” - A comforting sentiment were it believable given the regret expressed the day previously, as well as the current teetering conversation. “I just am particularly particular about the roads I take.” - Presumably this reluctance is what prompted the hesitation to help in the first place. I am unaware of this hitch. It’s the sole measure in her point of view that materially changes the nature of the task, upping the time, gas, and precariousness of driving a vehicle with at least one known issue that could see it stalled on the trip back. “I’ll go if I can take a dumb long scenic route.” - As a condition, I merely choose to accept or reject it. I chose to reject it after asking how much longer it would be. She apologizes and claims she is being weird. I explain I’ll wait the extra days until my original person to ask will be free. [In a “perfect” world, this is about where the scene would end and you’d think everything went okay. I press on instead and inquire about her avoidance of highways] A half hour or more has gone by, my “excitement” or “anxiety” or “of course dismay” is peaked, and I offer thoughts that “we both know” regarding the likelihood or not of dying on the highway, and why snow is not what we’d be driving in, and the danger of being in the rain on winding back-roads is significantly higher than the highway. Here the 2 sides of me are competing. I want to respect how relative to the larger reality irrational, but real, your fear is, but can’t help but note you’ve suggested signing me on to a riskier proposition in service to your fear. It occurs to me in this moment, and some might consider this “doubling down” or “the precise moment you fucked up” that this is a person who I’ve discussed at fair length potentially living around on a sustainable space of the land or employing to design structures given her expressed interest in architecture. So I step over the cliff and say as frankly and specifically as I know how, “For both our sakes, I’m not good with dangling carrots of opportunity, so if you know you can’t, please don’t pretend.” We can speculate a few choice words that could have been smoothed over, but to me, we just had a giant pretend conversation about completing a task that’s important to me, and potentially time sensitive, with any number of confounds that could fuck it up by taking too long. (It gets sold out from under me, perhaps. The weather is even worse later. etc) If something as straight forward as “ I can drive with you” verses “I can’t drive with you” can get so messy so quickly, god forbid we ever deal in money or leases or plans that involve more exacting shots at clarity. Then comes the snowball, as you can get the impression she felt something else was coming too. She says she has to go make food and that I should take Byron. Mind you, I’m experiencing a level of frustration that niggles the back of my head the rest of the night and sent a forlorn wave of “fuck it” that fueled too much drinking for no reason in particular. Like it or not, such is the impact of “dangling the carrot” of doing something real and worthwhile and then ripping it away in service to feelings I’m in no position to navigate on top of the task at hand. I don’t blame her for this, but someone with that power you have to be careful how/if/and when you interact with because they will orient you away from where you want to be, both in civility and productivity. In my long-winded breakdown explaining how I do and don’t work, she does not believe I think she has an understanding of me. She is correct, I don’t. She never would have messaged me in the first place if she did. [Context: We’ve been acquaintances for less than 15 hours in person over the course of a few weeks. She showed immediate enthusiasm and drive to help me accomplish tasks related to the land, so I dove in quickly regarding asks or laying out longer term plans. She’s been forthcoming with her opinion regarding her intelligence and perspective and expressed a short novel’s worth of struggles she’s overcome or is currently dealing with. I supposed straight-forward companionship and physical tasks would foster growth and resilience.] I make a specific caricature of her intention. This is a specific fuck up even if the ball was already rolling. To her, she was trying to help. See “Say Anything Else” paragraphs 11 and 12 for recent thoughts regarding that idea. “Um. That’s across the line.” My inability to see all these lines people draw in the sand has had me dismissing them for years. In what primarily serves as an explanation of how to better communicate with me, I failed to communicate with her, except unlike me, she’s unwilling to give me the benefit of the doubt, as we’ll see in her accusations that will follow when I attempt to apologize later in the night. “If you think I would ever deliberately waste your time or not consider your needs you better think again, later.” In our exchange, I did not relay this idea. This shows a level of demeaning presumption and victim-hood that I did not try to paint her as doing to me. My caricature showed precisely a wishy-washy wasted conversation that gave me “productivity blue balls.” I expressed what I think is the “cool” way to approach doing or not doing tasks and explained that I, a statement about me, not her, do not do those in-between “well, maybe, kinda, if I can transform the task” conversations well. That line kicks off what I often refer to as “the fairly-tale land of mythical lore” about whatever kind of monster you see me as this week. I don’t think she considers my needs and think she wastes my time. In the spirit of Politifact, mostly false. Incidents of frustration and misunderstanding, particularly at such an early stage of friendship or engagement do not constitute the whole cake, nor encompass my general impression or attitude of her. I attempt to say that I didn’t mean to make her angry (again, as if I control her feelings anymore than she steered me into the bars that night) and hoped to give her leeway given the half a dozen sources of complications that seem to enter her life at any moment. She expressed again that she wants to help, is mad, and needs to eat. End of Phase 1. Begin Phase 2. I’m getting tipsy and conciliatory a few hours later. I very rarely apologize because I very rarely do things I didn’t intend to. My heightened anxiety at doing something important and maybe time sensitive helped keep me talking when I could have walked away. I lead with an apology. “I am sorry if I upset you. I appreciate all the help you’ve offered so far and truly didn’t mean to overstep in how I related how I felt. If there’s lines I find them well beyond my intention to do so.” Immediately, it appears things fly right off the rails in complex but meaningful ways. “It’s my fault. I know you’re manipulative and I let myself hope for somethign different there for a moment. You’re just going to need to back off on treating me like I’m dumb or weak and you know that, I think. If something isn’t going as planned when you’re communicating with someone and your only ideas on why are “they’re fucking stupid” or oh “yeah, they’re fucking stupid or awful” then why would that someone be upset you wonder? You look to not understand people. Specifically. It just gets annoying. My fault I know you just do you. I’m no perfect lady.” First, if you’re familiar with The Straw Man, you’ll notice that not once have I called her or referred to her as “fucking stupid” or “fucking stupid and awful” either in text or in person. I struggle to see where I called her “weak” or “dumb” as well. She’s doing what everyone does when they need to be mad for what is, quite literally, “no reason.” She’s pulling thoughts from my head I didn’t have, considering them shit and hateful of her, so therefore I’m bad. Second, as every time I do one of these digressions contends otherwise, she tells me I look to not understand people. Line by line digressions are me avoiding the issue I guess. Methodically trying to not look like complete and utter shit while making way for her feelings is the worst. Third, twice she says, “It’s my fault.” This is the kind of victim double-think that you absolutely cannot contend with. She’s asserting a kind of control or perspective that “should have seen me coming” or “accepted how bad I am from the get go” which are forgone presumptive conclusions she must carry well-before I say or do the “wrong” things. She’s not taking responsibility for how she feels. She’s owning the emotionally dominant idea that she’s already got it right and I’m just a source of ever-compounding evidence. I’m an annoying person with no desire to understand who thinks she’s dumb, weak, awful, and fucking stupid. Again, for me, mostly false, but if you’re not paying attention you can succumb to accepting this pattern of your place in relation to people who think of you like this. [Further Reading] I don't pretend to hold you in high or low esteem without having tested our relationship for what I hoped to get out of it. I reiterate my position on why the initial conversation was frustrating, reassert how I’d prefer she approach tasks we might accomplish together, and say I’m perfectly fine with her being less than perfect and crazy, but to maybe mitigate better. I tell her one of the storied lines of my life, if you think everything I do or say is mean or manipulative, I’m only ever going to feel like a burden and urge she go back and read her own words about her own self that I never expressed. She doesn’t know what to say, hopes the movie I just saw was fun. End of Phase 2. Begin and End in Phase 3. Phase 3 can be summed up in every pointless fight you’ve ever had with someone, but usually they have years of things to draw on that you’ve long since forgotten about or probably didn’t matter. 13 out-of-order text windows picking apart our conversations, more accusations, a challenge of an example of me EVER hearing her out. (A charge I’ve heard before, despite the idea that I simply heard, disliked, and moved on.) [Context: She suggested living out of a trailer. Having no trailers, the suggestion amounted to “Why not just move if you hate this state so much?” as it’s often suggested when people complain online about their state as if people don’t have jobs and families. She didn’t say, “I have a trailer for you to consider.” She didn’t say, “I looked up the cost of moving this free trailer I found.” She didn’t say anything that encouraged along the task we were in the middle of, accounting for a small shed build, she just threw it out there as a suggestion and it was subsequently thrown out until randomly Craigslist alerted me of a free trailer that I looked up and made the calls to figure out the price and hassle of dealing with. Did she help? Did I not duly consider or engage the idea of a trailer when it became a material possibility?] I decide that I am unwilling to play the “I’m horrible all the time it’s my fault for everything” game again, and am moving on. Well before we make it to the land of my alleged character flaws, you need to be able to refrain from making things up and hating yourself so hard that you can’t even read your own words about yourself. I won’t participate as a human punching bag for your insecurities, and particularly when I’m working on tasks that speak to my fundamental future security and ability to flourish, I’m not going to let this much junk pile up into my head that distracts me from those tasks. The lesson, my friends are my friends for a vital sanity sustaining reason. You primarily don’t act like this. Primarily. When you do, I extend you this courtesy. If it can’t work, I walk away.