This is DCS wanting me to condense a 220 page book into ~1500 words of a reflection piece. This is part of my homework in order to become a forensic interviewer.
Section 1:
In reading the history of child welfare in “Child Welfare Values,” it is not immediately obvious how this would impact my approach to forensic interviewing. The sins or ignorance of the past is either repeated, or an attempt is made to correct practice after more is learned about developmental needs and the horror stories have amassed.
It is mildly interesting to know that it was back in the thirteenth century we saw the evolving of case law to start the intervention of overlords, or perhaps stated today as “Big Government,” the authority to intervene on behalf of children. In the course of my work as an assessor, I am often scolded by parents about “their rights” as it pertains to their children. They, seemingly, are unaware of the precedents established that distinguish “contingent” verses “absolute” rights.
What gives me pause most often is the presumption on behalf of the authors of the social worker's inherent understanding and acceptance of the premise that they can always act within the best interest of the child. This presumption so jarring after citing the inability of humanity to center on a perpetually true or agreed upon set of moral values. In perhaps a fit of blind irony, it goes on to attempt to prescribe normative practice, and continues to rely on the safe vagaries of broad language. For example, the system “must protect children,” “must be culturally competent,” and children should be placed in the “least restrictive, most home-like environment.”
Practically, protecting children is as varied as each child and their social or physical environment. It is a problem that cannot be nailed down, and infinitely begs to be refuted. We can and should try to protect children, but I suspect the insisted imperative emboldens a kind of naivety to regard one's own opinion or directive offered in service to the presumption as paramount. In establishing rapport and goals, it would help to define what that protection looks like for them, so they can understand what it is they are a part of.
To be “culturally competent” is nearly impossible as well. We acknowledge we have not grown up in someone else's home. The culture we are born into changes quickly, and we may no longer feel like we have a grasp of it. We have incredibly misunderstood and ineffective means by which to address biases and internalized fears regarding the out-group. For every one person to acknowledge their ignorance and display a willingness to change, you have the vast majority working with people in ways that make sense to them, and if that results in disproportionate statistical aberrations, none the wiser are the families being impacted until the discrepancy makes the news. At least when it comes to interviewing, one might be able to probe the child's perspective of what is normal for them.
Finally, the “least restrictive” environment that is “most home like” is an explicitly practical question that almost never gets achieved. We certify, or allow other agencies to certify, wholly inadequate foster homes. That “foster care drift” was as bad a problem 30 or more years ago as it is today is an abdication of duty. Maybe we need an entirely different take on where kids should be going when they get removed, and maybe if we are not prepared to address the larger holistic poverty and mental health needs, we need to act more as managers than broadly caricatured social workers. As such, managing expectations might illicit better responses from kids not being led to believe the picture is nicer than it is.
Section 2:
A comprehensive list of physical and behavioral indicators can aid in identifying injuries and shaping questions for children. In interviewing, I would take pains to include informed, not motivated, questions related to the suspected trauma. The hardest part it seems in being an interviewer will be to not take the generalized knowledge or observed tendencies, and read them into every interaction or overplay the explanatory power. The further I read into the section of the behaviors of children who are neglected, I recognize from my own childhood behavior, and can still feel the impact of in my adult life. To the degree it is related to “neglect,” per se, or personality traits that accompany many other facets of my behavior is not precisely clear even to me. Finding ways to allow the conversation to be enabling the child to explain and understand the situation for themselves seems key, as we literally already have the story written for them on how we suspect or would like to believe their situation is operating.
Despite tools such as the risk assessment, people are dynamic. The operative word in any explanation or scenario presented is “may.” Even with the presence of several indicators of abuse or neglect, the child may not view their experience as such. Children might not remember or be able to define what has happened to them, and use it to protect themselves from tarnishing the image they have of their parents. It becomes incumbent upon the interviewer to not just listen carefully to how the child describes their experience, but to probe the parents. Keeping in mind that trauma can go back through generations, it can lend itself to a better case plan and setting of goals to know if the current situation was brought on by an acutely stressful event, or a series of negligent learned behaviors.
It will always be important to keep in mind that just because a child may have experienced neglect or abuse, it does not mean it was with the deliberate maliciousness of the parent. Whether it be developmental disabilities or the consequences of poor information or stress, the goal is to figure out the underlying truth to the situation, not impede or unduly malign the process that could lead to rehabilitation. The working assumption is that families are best together and need to be supported with more or less intensive services. Identifying supports and character traits of different family members during an interview could lend itself to preservation or the formulation of a healthier environment.
Section 3:
An ongoing, and telling, experience from reading this book is noticing when it explicitly states the error we continue to make as an organization. New workers are routinely assigned to sex abuse allegations, and it is not always clear they have the knowledge on how to approach the situation or interview appropriately. Even relatively seasoned case managers can find themselves at the mercy or whim of their supervisor on what or whether to speak to a child about, particularly when that child's parent will not allow them to be forensically interviewed. In my own work, I have immediately paused and probed for ways to address the allegations so as not to impede progress on the investigation later. That the process to become forensically interview certified, or even take the classes, is so diffuse seems to lend itself as to why these errors perpetuate.
The hallmark example of the ambiguity embedded in humanity is illustrated by the authors. They state that many children exhibit emotional and behavioral indicators from sexual abuse, and in the next line, state they also exhibit many of those indicators without sexual abuse, neither the absence or presence can be relied upon to determine definitively one way or another. What we do, and this is a daily occurrence, is allow our faulty inductive biases to dictate how far we are going to pursue a case. We have literally created case managers who create cases in service to their aggressive bias feeding. How would we address this more appropriately? Perhaps in bypassing the confirmation trap by being proactive and rehearsed in our skepticism we could allow the infinite sea of gray as it pertains to human behavior to coalesce around tendencies which beget safer environments. We pillory clients for their “thinking errors.”
A section on guilt makes me think of court. Judges want you to have remorse and can lighten sentences when they believe you. Here, we are told guilt is not enough to control or prevent re-offending. What comes after and how do you measure the potential? Surely society does not colloquially consider the child molester ever capable of rehabilitation, and then maybe this is why the section is so short.
The authors tell us about the factors that might help mitigate the fallout of sexual abuse. Being positive and supported by caregivers and receiving therapeutic or medical help at the time of the abuse or disclosure are direct tangible steps. Indiana seems in crisis to find therapists on it's best day, leave aside ones who can navigate sexual abuse. “CPS” or “DCS” have such dramatic and damming connotation in the minds of the population that the idea we might be supportive or positive is immediately squashed. That we react, often chaotically, all but assures we will never build the kind of supportive or therapeutic culture that intelligently deals with these issues. That we do not believe we should even try, or prepare those on the front line in a timely and deliberate manner, would be an unforgivable sin were it not so intimately human.
Friday, January 24, 2020
Monday, January 13, 2020
[834] Imperfect Indirect Impulses
I've been waiting weeks to try and write this blog. I've finally come across the inspiration to start.
The theme is about being “infinitely indirect.” After watching Dave Chappelle talk about who he watched to try and be like during his Mark Twain prize acceptance speech it hit me. Even my heroes.
We start and continue to exist explicitly indirectly. The vast majority of what constitutes the universe isn't any one individual. You had no say in the circumstances of your parents meeting. You didn't pick your genes. You didn't choose your adverse or love-infused experiences. You're bombarded with forces we're only beginning to barely understand, and you produce feelings and words you think you have some control over, for reasons you can't quite explain, but the second you contemplate too deeply the abstractness of it all, you might plummet to fatalistic or nihilistic depths.
But we have these instincts. We see people we want to be more like. Whether it's how they look or how they sound. We know when we're pulled towards someone or something. One of the reasons I offer as to why I don't earnestly pursue stand-up is that I'm not convinced I have anything to say that's any funnier or any better than the people I idolize already, Chappelle among them. I want to be like Chappelle in other realms. I want the authentic power of my words to be felt. I want to make my friends laugh. I want the people around me to know it was them who shaped what I can or can't become as much as it is my dogged effort in perpetual spite of the world.
If you accept the indirectness of life, you can behave more confidently in ways that perhaps create the environments that can indirectly lend themselves to more of what you'd like to see. I have a very deliberate manner. It has lent itself to certain kinds of drama and conversation that people don't even try with me. This is the kind of world I want to see. I genuinely believe people want a kind of freedom of play and expression and risk taking that modern existence provides zero room for. Occupying a rent-free space where you can create per your capacity to budget has significantly more potential to spin-off into worlds of like-minded individuals and their ideas than squirreling away in my modest rental, albeit for all of the convenient perks.
Parents I think understand this implicitly when they watch their kids grow up. I can't tell you how often I step into a household where they've got extended social networks, a nice place, maybe an independent business and some money, and one of the kids is seemingly born ratchet. Or maybe they were adopted and their genes didn't get the “it's okay not to get pregnant early and do meth” message. You can choose to introduce the chaotic indirect forces of someone else into your life, but you can't erase them. You'll contend with every second you negotiate reality away from the direction you're earnestly pulled. You'll wear it on your face and posture. You'll see it in the hapless faces that surround you. You'll feel the weight of the bleak settings under which you've trapped yourself.
The directness comes from that conversation and understanding of yourself. You have to get your voice and influence under control. You have to pick the goal, not have it prescribed. You have to establish that you have a voice at all, then decide it's worth expressing, then fight for it with every ounce of care or bother you can discover. I think I can never improve the world more than to be me all over the place. Maybe I tone things up or down depending on the audience, but it still has to be me. Maybe it comes out violent and harsh on first or twelve passes, but it came out.
I think the indirect destruction of ourselves plays out with things like fascism. We play with the obnoxious absurdity at our peril. The vast majority doesn't want what's happening in politics and around the world environmentally. Except, indirectly, it's the only story we've celebrated. Limitless growth, greed, and indulgence. It's one thing to read in the newspaper the virtue of a particular industry or to hear on the news the various touted “values.” It's entirely another to embody it yourself. There have always been canaries and hippies in some form or another. I can swallow the buzzwords and image-insecurity of my State job, or I can push, every day, when they pretend “child safety” is synonymous with meandering meetings, arbitrary power pinches, burned out employees, and badgering people not in a place to recognize or change.
I write blogs attempting to directly dictate the endless mess of words and impressions and seeming coincidences that make the stars align. I also know just enough that I'll never know the real impact they have. It still brings me joy to recall the drunk friends who said they read me, but will never say anything in the comments. It confirms there's indirect air swirling. It means my voice was worth tuning into in spite of so much else to pay attention to. When I let these go into the wild, like a child, they may end up dead in a drunk car crash, or they may provide the same kind of launch point that the people I admire inspire in me. But no matter what, it's okay, as long as it's exactly as I say it to the degree I attempt to understand it. I'm listening for the next line like I find my best joke material in the moment.
It's incredible to think that the whole world passes through you. Part of my undying confidence is a deep appreciation for that which I consider as fact. That we've conjured the internet is our best stab at appreciating the extent of the phenomenon. No matter who you are or what you're doing, you can instantly be an interpreted version of that for the entire world. How vital does it become to do as best you can? How important is mere honesty then? We look for heroes and representations because our best impulses have to be dug out and fought for. The general human disposition tilted towards remembering pain and experiencing suffering hardest is still at play. You can be someone's hero and fight. Everything literally dies without the fight.
I think we get deceived by the idea that things have to be “perfect” or unimpeachably moral. That's not honest. Even and especially your gods don't operate under that projection. The virtue signaling exhausts me. The cancel culture got very sick very quick. They started going after jokers and the story tellers and things snapped back hard, neatly glossing over any honest reflection on the impact or motivation of the aggrieved or targeted. I think we got incredibly lost in the search for an honest voice and representation, so we gave ourselves a stark-raving lunatic to beat us over the head until the fear of death pushed things into alignment. I think the people who defend the wildly irresponsible means we landed on for psychological course correction are those perpetually unable to find that voice and personal responsibility. Maybe they're broken and traumatized. Maybe they're just cunts.
The self-destructive impulse is alive and well in drinking and smoking. It's self-deprecation and overbearing power trips. It's the low hum of anxiety no matter how far you move in the direction you're being pulled. This is why we can't have nice things! You need some of that to dream bigger and push yourself, but anymore if you're not constantly distracted or flooding the mental memesphere, I don't think you know what's sitting there if all else was left alone. I don't think the power is appreciated. I don't think the capacity for change feels like it can voice the nature of its choices to hopefully create a world for the people who will never meet them but for what they left behind that should be worth finding. I don't know who built the roads or any of the technology I'm using to “be me” for the whole world. I do know I want to ensure whoever else might exist gets the same chance as I did. When did we lose that impulse? Who believes we should bear children into incoherent fear and death? We torture children like so many tortured children.
The theme is about being “infinitely indirect.” After watching Dave Chappelle talk about who he watched to try and be like during his Mark Twain prize acceptance speech it hit me. Even my heroes.
We start and continue to exist explicitly indirectly. The vast majority of what constitutes the universe isn't any one individual. You had no say in the circumstances of your parents meeting. You didn't pick your genes. You didn't choose your adverse or love-infused experiences. You're bombarded with forces we're only beginning to barely understand, and you produce feelings and words you think you have some control over, for reasons you can't quite explain, but the second you contemplate too deeply the abstractness of it all, you might plummet to fatalistic or nihilistic depths.
But we have these instincts. We see people we want to be more like. Whether it's how they look or how they sound. We know when we're pulled towards someone or something. One of the reasons I offer as to why I don't earnestly pursue stand-up is that I'm not convinced I have anything to say that's any funnier or any better than the people I idolize already, Chappelle among them. I want to be like Chappelle in other realms. I want the authentic power of my words to be felt. I want to make my friends laugh. I want the people around me to know it was them who shaped what I can or can't become as much as it is my dogged effort in perpetual spite of the world.
If you accept the indirectness of life, you can behave more confidently in ways that perhaps create the environments that can indirectly lend themselves to more of what you'd like to see. I have a very deliberate manner. It has lent itself to certain kinds of drama and conversation that people don't even try with me. This is the kind of world I want to see. I genuinely believe people want a kind of freedom of play and expression and risk taking that modern existence provides zero room for. Occupying a rent-free space where you can create per your capacity to budget has significantly more potential to spin-off into worlds of like-minded individuals and their ideas than squirreling away in my modest rental, albeit for all of the convenient perks.
Parents I think understand this implicitly when they watch their kids grow up. I can't tell you how often I step into a household where they've got extended social networks, a nice place, maybe an independent business and some money, and one of the kids is seemingly born ratchet. Or maybe they were adopted and their genes didn't get the “it's okay not to get pregnant early and do meth” message. You can choose to introduce the chaotic indirect forces of someone else into your life, but you can't erase them. You'll contend with every second you negotiate reality away from the direction you're earnestly pulled. You'll wear it on your face and posture. You'll see it in the hapless faces that surround you. You'll feel the weight of the bleak settings under which you've trapped yourself.
The directness comes from that conversation and understanding of yourself. You have to get your voice and influence under control. You have to pick the goal, not have it prescribed. You have to establish that you have a voice at all, then decide it's worth expressing, then fight for it with every ounce of care or bother you can discover. I think I can never improve the world more than to be me all over the place. Maybe I tone things up or down depending on the audience, but it still has to be me. Maybe it comes out violent and harsh on first or twelve passes, but it came out.
I think the indirect destruction of ourselves plays out with things like fascism. We play with the obnoxious absurdity at our peril. The vast majority doesn't want what's happening in politics and around the world environmentally. Except, indirectly, it's the only story we've celebrated. Limitless growth, greed, and indulgence. It's one thing to read in the newspaper the virtue of a particular industry or to hear on the news the various touted “values.” It's entirely another to embody it yourself. There have always been canaries and hippies in some form or another. I can swallow the buzzwords and image-insecurity of my State job, or I can push, every day, when they pretend “child safety” is synonymous with meandering meetings, arbitrary power pinches, burned out employees, and badgering people not in a place to recognize or change.
I write blogs attempting to directly dictate the endless mess of words and impressions and seeming coincidences that make the stars align. I also know just enough that I'll never know the real impact they have. It still brings me joy to recall the drunk friends who said they read me, but will never say anything in the comments. It confirms there's indirect air swirling. It means my voice was worth tuning into in spite of so much else to pay attention to. When I let these go into the wild, like a child, they may end up dead in a drunk car crash, or they may provide the same kind of launch point that the people I admire inspire in me. But no matter what, it's okay, as long as it's exactly as I say it to the degree I attempt to understand it. I'm listening for the next line like I find my best joke material in the moment.
It's incredible to think that the whole world passes through you. Part of my undying confidence is a deep appreciation for that which I consider as fact. That we've conjured the internet is our best stab at appreciating the extent of the phenomenon. No matter who you are or what you're doing, you can instantly be an interpreted version of that for the entire world. How vital does it become to do as best you can? How important is mere honesty then? We look for heroes and representations because our best impulses have to be dug out and fought for. The general human disposition tilted towards remembering pain and experiencing suffering hardest is still at play. You can be someone's hero and fight. Everything literally dies without the fight.
I think we get deceived by the idea that things have to be “perfect” or unimpeachably moral. That's not honest. Even and especially your gods don't operate under that projection. The virtue signaling exhausts me. The cancel culture got very sick very quick. They started going after jokers and the story tellers and things snapped back hard, neatly glossing over any honest reflection on the impact or motivation of the aggrieved or targeted. I think we got incredibly lost in the search for an honest voice and representation, so we gave ourselves a stark-raving lunatic to beat us over the head until the fear of death pushed things into alignment. I think the people who defend the wildly irresponsible means we landed on for psychological course correction are those perpetually unable to find that voice and personal responsibility. Maybe they're broken and traumatized. Maybe they're just cunts.
The self-destructive impulse is alive and well in drinking and smoking. It's self-deprecation and overbearing power trips. It's the low hum of anxiety no matter how far you move in the direction you're being pulled. This is why we can't have nice things! You need some of that to dream bigger and push yourself, but anymore if you're not constantly distracted or flooding the mental memesphere, I don't think you know what's sitting there if all else was left alone. I don't think the power is appreciated. I don't think the capacity for change feels like it can voice the nature of its choices to hopefully create a world for the people who will never meet them but for what they left behind that should be worth finding. I don't know who built the roads or any of the technology I'm using to “be me” for the whole world. I do know I want to ensure whoever else might exist gets the same chance as I did. When did we lose that impulse? Who believes we should bear children into incoherent fear and death? We torture children like so many tortured children.
Friday, January 3, 2020
[833] Snip It Good
I want to talk about an incident from my childhood that I know I've
brought up before and referenced plenty, but don't know that I've dug
out all there is to say about it. I've found myself thinking about it a
lot recently, I don't know if goaded by my slurry of thoughts while
sick, or just because I'm starting to play my psychological life a
little fast and loose with my presumed future financial security.
I'm watching A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood. It opens panning in on a picture of a main character which Mr. Rogers says is having a hard time forgiving someone who hurt him. The physical mark on the main character's face not the source of inflicted pain.
If you don't know, because it's one of my favorite stories, when I was a child my mom made me pick out one of my stuffed animals for her to gut and cut up. I believe I had accidentally broken something of hers, and it was retaliation. I remember being filled with dread, thinking it unbelievable. I remember genuinely loving each of them, piling them on to sleep with every night. I remember them as friends, from the oldest given to me by my grandma, to the new ones we might've won in a game.
I remember picking up and putting down my friends, trying to weigh what they meant to me. I settled on my most recent bear won from the claw machine at Fudruckers. We had the least history. Through heaving hollowed-out pleas, screams, and tears I begged her not to. I fell to my knees. She chopped off a paw. I beat the floor. She shoved scissors into its stomach.
I literally can't genuinely put myself back there without getting misted, every single time. It's the kind of “go there” place an actor might pick to sell a sad scene. It works. She regularly hit us with different things, manifesting as my flinch response until college. She'd scream and yell and pile on chores. But having me pick out a friend switched something off in me. It made me a murderer. It made me preside over life and death, and then to be forced to carry on like it was just desserts, eye for an eye, her thing therefore my “thing.”
In my adult life I've watched this “offness” manifest as a contradictory set of behaviors. I hated being touched, when it's all I want to do to be cuddled up or hugging. Comforting touch was so often betrayed, and besides, the things you're snuggled against can get torn to shreds. My relationships seemed rooted in that “useful thing” place. If you weren't good for something, you didn't exist. If I felt something for you, it was an irrational inability to cope with a flood of anger or otherwise. I was nowhere near in control. It's not that every good feeling or sense of care and belonging I experienced was overturned, but they could never settle into the same place. There was always the very real sense that it meant absolutely nothing.
This may sound unfair to the people who genuinely love me, but the thing about trauma is you can't really help it. You can work your trauma into a new scheme. You can teach your trauma to follow a different habit pattern. You can't make your trauma alter your feeling of it. I'm not going to regard the memory joyously one day. I'm not going to get back the years of feeling off and broken.
Today, thankfully after many years of writing, I incorporate my worst and most problematic senses about myself into a kind of instruction manual. (Arguably the only manual I bother to read.) I know you can read dozens of books on psychology and piece together the different slices of your mother's narcissistic and own poorly endured traumatic childhood. I can know which parts of the brain degrade so you become a batshit ideologue and the infinite ignorance that is being human which contributes to far greater tragedies than a lost bear. None of it contributes to my impulse to “forgive.”
I'm still a murderer. I didn't learn that through deep consideration in my freshman psychology class talking about the brain differences between personality types or those with psychopathic tendencies. I learned it like a child given a gun and told to point it at his family. It speaks to why I confidently say I'm likely the craziest, meanest, or some other extreme-est kind of character in a room. I know what's underneath as I'm telling a fun story, being hilarious, or otherwise mimicking all of the human things that make me get along in the world. I still feel, it's just “now,” when I think it can be trusted, before it flows over the generally cold indifference I hold for nearly everything and everyone when the circumstances call for it.
It's why when I designated “real friends” it was worth the navigating if that was a wise thing to do. The purpose was to help thrust me away from that, designate the examples I'd want any future friends to live by. I didn't take it for granted that everything was superficiality and incidental time spent in close proximity. It was significantly more idealism than naivety, as I already knew the cold and distance, I just thought if given the choice people would choose what I was after. I suppose when they get disgusted or complacent enough, they do.
It's why I'm steadfast in my posture regarding “I don't really change” as the world finds its reasons to be pissed off at me and keeps its distance. You know who else doesn't really change? My dad. He's there for me like I want to be there for people. I always refer to the “friends that stick around” who continue to keep an eye on me or like a post from time to time. Something there hasn't changed between us. Whatever that is, it's the pulse that I ride into all my future dreams about who I'm surrounded by or why I'd bother to create. You don't reduce yourselves to so many “things” as interchangeable space and time fillers. The murderer in you, I suspect, sees the murderer in me, and doesn't give me shit about it.
Forgiveness, as I've said in the past, seemed always about forgiving yourself. A self-serving piety for placating over obsessive thoughts that are causing you harm. Do I forgive my traumatized brain? Do I look every insincere instance from my past with some wizened sense about not knowing any better? No, not really. I learned that I could make that choice, and thus all choices, and never let the lesson take root. I abused my shitty relationship with my mom to drum up a lot of other antagonistic and shitty relationships with other people. I'm still a genuinely mean and shitty person just begging for the proper circumstances and excuses to be anything besides the soft-spoken mumbler walking you through your trash-person drama.
My push for wanting “the world” is about hopefully shaping it into something that doesn't produce the underlying pathology that is me. I want there to be “people with a temper” doing like Mr. Rogers and practicing patience and understanding, not “people waiting for a reason to kill you” barely hanging on but for blessed exhaustion and endless distractions. I want people who see the best in everyone, not just their little selfish cohort, after being empowered to recognize their place in concert instead of opposition. I want to subvert the naked animal that tears each other apart. Unrealistic? Probably. But I wish I could carry on without always thinking I have some atrocity to account for, some endeavor that needs to transcend me.
I've always been a draw to the depressed kids. I've always played therapist. I've maintained a kind of fervent or manic optimism fueled by the overwhelming darkness of my jokes and perspective. I've been lucky to have my brain motivated more to dig than destroy. I've been lucky to catch glances and good genes. To consider the world a swirling ball of people like me in worse circumstances is to not have to imagine much beyond what we're currently doing to ourselves. To be able to inspire in spite of that, to be able to create something that lasts longer, yells louder, and beats to death that which actually deserves it is an ultimate game. It's one I don't think you can play in the confines of what's seemingly normal or stable. I still play therapist. I still hold the candle for those who've couched their depression in memes and #lifegoals check boxes.
Maybe I've been too hard on my kid self. Maybe the only reason I have who I have in my life right now is the result of doing the best with the tools I had at the time. Maybe my construct-o-house, collapsing pool hole, and boundless puppy-esc enthusiasm are a testament to the method I've deigned as the madness required for moving forward.
I'm watching A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood. It opens panning in on a picture of a main character which Mr. Rogers says is having a hard time forgiving someone who hurt him. The physical mark on the main character's face not the source of inflicted pain.
If you don't know, because it's one of my favorite stories, when I was a child my mom made me pick out one of my stuffed animals for her to gut and cut up. I believe I had accidentally broken something of hers, and it was retaliation. I remember being filled with dread, thinking it unbelievable. I remember genuinely loving each of them, piling them on to sleep with every night. I remember them as friends, from the oldest given to me by my grandma, to the new ones we might've won in a game.
I remember picking up and putting down my friends, trying to weigh what they meant to me. I settled on my most recent bear won from the claw machine at Fudruckers. We had the least history. Through heaving hollowed-out pleas, screams, and tears I begged her not to. I fell to my knees. She chopped off a paw. I beat the floor. She shoved scissors into its stomach.
I literally can't genuinely put myself back there without getting misted, every single time. It's the kind of “go there” place an actor might pick to sell a sad scene. It works. She regularly hit us with different things, manifesting as my flinch response until college. She'd scream and yell and pile on chores. But having me pick out a friend switched something off in me. It made me a murderer. It made me preside over life and death, and then to be forced to carry on like it was just desserts, eye for an eye, her thing therefore my “thing.”
In my adult life I've watched this “offness” manifest as a contradictory set of behaviors. I hated being touched, when it's all I want to do to be cuddled up or hugging. Comforting touch was so often betrayed, and besides, the things you're snuggled against can get torn to shreds. My relationships seemed rooted in that “useful thing” place. If you weren't good for something, you didn't exist. If I felt something for you, it was an irrational inability to cope with a flood of anger or otherwise. I was nowhere near in control. It's not that every good feeling or sense of care and belonging I experienced was overturned, but they could never settle into the same place. There was always the very real sense that it meant absolutely nothing.
This may sound unfair to the people who genuinely love me, but the thing about trauma is you can't really help it. You can work your trauma into a new scheme. You can teach your trauma to follow a different habit pattern. You can't make your trauma alter your feeling of it. I'm not going to regard the memory joyously one day. I'm not going to get back the years of feeling off and broken.
Today, thankfully after many years of writing, I incorporate my worst and most problematic senses about myself into a kind of instruction manual. (Arguably the only manual I bother to read.) I know you can read dozens of books on psychology and piece together the different slices of your mother's narcissistic and own poorly endured traumatic childhood. I can know which parts of the brain degrade so you become a batshit ideologue and the infinite ignorance that is being human which contributes to far greater tragedies than a lost bear. None of it contributes to my impulse to “forgive.”
I'm still a murderer. I didn't learn that through deep consideration in my freshman psychology class talking about the brain differences between personality types or those with psychopathic tendencies. I learned it like a child given a gun and told to point it at his family. It speaks to why I confidently say I'm likely the craziest, meanest, or some other extreme-est kind of character in a room. I know what's underneath as I'm telling a fun story, being hilarious, or otherwise mimicking all of the human things that make me get along in the world. I still feel, it's just “now,” when I think it can be trusted, before it flows over the generally cold indifference I hold for nearly everything and everyone when the circumstances call for it.
It's why when I designated “real friends” it was worth the navigating if that was a wise thing to do. The purpose was to help thrust me away from that, designate the examples I'd want any future friends to live by. I didn't take it for granted that everything was superficiality and incidental time spent in close proximity. It was significantly more idealism than naivety, as I already knew the cold and distance, I just thought if given the choice people would choose what I was after. I suppose when they get disgusted or complacent enough, they do.
It's why I'm steadfast in my posture regarding “I don't really change” as the world finds its reasons to be pissed off at me and keeps its distance. You know who else doesn't really change? My dad. He's there for me like I want to be there for people. I always refer to the “friends that stick around” who continue to keep an eye on me or like a post from time to time. Something there hasn't changed between us. Whatever that is, it's the pulse that I ride into all my future dreams about who I'm surrounded by or why I'd bother to create. You don't reduce yourselves to so many “things” as interchangeable space and time fillers. The murderer in you, I suspect, sees the murderer in me, and doesn't give me shit about it.
Forgiveness, as I've said in the past, seemed always about forgiving yourself. A self-serving piety for placating over obsessive thoughts that are causing you harm. Do I forgive my traumatized brain? Do I look every insincere instance from my past with some wizened sense about not knowing any better? No, not really. I learned that I could make that choice, and thus all choices, and never let the lesson take root. I abused my shitty relationship with my mom to drum up a lot of other antagonistic and shitty relationships with other people. I'm still a genuinely mean and shitty person just begging for the proper circumstances and excuses to be anything besides the soft-spoken mumbler walking you through your trash-person drama.
My push for wanting “the world” is about hopefully shaping it into something that doesn't produce the underlying pathology that is me. I want there to be “people with a temper” doing like Mr. Rogers and practicing patience and understanding, not “people waiting for a reason to kill you” barely hanging on but for blessed exhaustion and endless distractions. I want people who see the best in everyone, not just their little selfish cohort, after being empowered to recognize their place in concert instead of opposition. I want to subvert the naked animal that tears each other apart. Unrealistic? Probably. But I wish I could carry on without always thinking I have some atrocity to account for, some endeavor that needs to transcend me.
I've always been a draw to the depressed kids. I've always played therapist. I've maintained a kind of fervent or manic optimism fueled by the overwhelming darkness of my jokes and perspective. I've been lucky to have my brain motivated more to dig than destroy. I've been lucky to catch glances and good genes. To consider the world a swirling ball of people like me in worse circumstances is to not have to imagine much beyond what we're currently doing to ourselves. To be able to inspire in spite of that, to be able to create something that lasts longer, yells louder, and beats to death that which actually deserves it is an ultimate game. It's one I don't think you can play in the confines of what's seemingly normal or stable. I still play therapist. I still hold the candle for those who've couched their depression in memes and #lifegoals check boxes.
Maybe I've been too hard on my kid self. Maybe the only reason I have who I have in my life right now is the result of doing the best with the tools I had at the time. Maybe my construct-o-house, collapsing pool hole, and boundless puppy-esc enthusiasm are a testament to the method I've deigned as the madness required for moving forward.
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