[845] Chat Attack!

When it comes to communicating, seemingly, there are no rules. This is not the same thing as saying there aren't physical limitations, tendencies that appear across languages, or shared history and similarities. What it means is that there are no guarantees that what was invented in order to communicate isn’t as incidental to the time and place as anything. The intentionality doesn't matter, and the verbs and nouns imprecise. The fact that this is written in English is almost perfectly for arbitrary reasons that you could list indefinitely. What I put into it, for all of its words, will be what I get out of it emotionally, psychologically, or what you can take away from it in your own organization of messy and incomplete understandings of yourself.

Communication at all is a miracle. To be understood is divine. I heard some quote somewhere that equated “true love” to being understood. Don't we have myriad depictions of what we consider perfect love stories and couples who seem to “get it?” There's a world of built-in implications and expectations that, for different people at different times in life may or may not be reasonable or realistic. I say I often relate to the old women who've been through a few husbands. There's a broad attached/detachment and joy you try to bring into the moment and your partner, and a lot of pre-sifting when it comes to things you're going to bother worth considering a problem.

I've written nearly 850 blogs. If we averaged an hour per blog to write them, you get about 35 days worth of crawling around my head and attempting to find where I'm at. There is no consistent theme to them. I'm just in the moment, the words springing up as though they were there all along. Often enough I get done writing and a headache will go away, or my heart will slow down, or my stomach will quiet. I didn't know what I needed to say in order for those things to happen. I don't know even that I needed to say anything particularly specific, but I needed to talk. I needed to anchor. Right or wrong, achievement unlocked, special badge for “clarity” or “calm.”

I don't know that I ever expect to be understood. I reiterate how important a single line in a movie or song can be and how it can resonate. Stream-of-conscious doesn't mean automatic coherence. My deepest moralizing or good-will might soak the page until it drips helplessly at your feet while you don a befuddled look at “what I was trying to do.” I write and analyze the ride. I deconstruct where I think a hiccup in thought or how I'm relating to people or the world took place. I certainly don't trust that what I'm saying is perfectly clear or unable to be misinterpreted, and it's why I offer the only thing that can remain constant, honesty to the moment.

I realize now that for most of the stress in my life it came from an inability to inhabit the present moment. Often enough, my present moment is very frustrating. Or, I haven't taken a hold of it to decide that it doesn't need to be that way. When you discuss past trauma and it manifesting in a dozen ways throughout your adult life, predisposing you to health issues, mental problems, and attachment difficulties, it's because your current brain is still traumatized. Who wants that to be their present moment? Or consider someone on the verge of relapsing. Work they've done to stay sober didn't “fix” their brain. They didn't communicate the severity of the consequences to a brain that's in disrepair. It needs tools and an environment to distract and build upon.

My community dwindled, my prospects zeroed into a work life I'm not crazy about, a remote living environment, and a habit of semi-compulsively watching, reading, or dreading the moment the awareness of how good it might be feeling is going to go away. So I anchor and continue to explore. So I talk to myself, because I don't think your brain needs the entirety of mine to cope with as well.

I don't consider it a bad thing to be misunderstood, but an opportunity to find shared language. It can also be the line you come up to and realize you don't want to cross. I know what my boundaries for acceptable communication are. I know the difference between processing and flailing, and even if they might both need to be engaged in sometimes, I'm not going to contribute unless we're going somewhere. My experience “debating” religious ideologues prepared me for the futility of honest exchange arrested by ideology. We don't assume we're under our own spell of assumptions though. It's easy to point at religion or fascism and see the deadly consequences, smug looks, and broad scary cringe. You, though? No no, you're reasonable. You're being as clear and specific as possible. You can be held harmless. You don't even raise your voice.

I know that I have my own superimposed mythology to cope with life and my place in it along with everyone else. I try to formulate that mythology one line at a time. I try to recognize when I think I'm getting something right, count the times I'm getting it wrong, and weigh actual values of engagement and achievement. I try to read old blogs to see if I'm keeping a common thread of progress towards stated goals. I try to remember the frustrations of my present moment that existed back then and that I might still be carrying. It's an incredible amount of work that you can start to take for granted if you forget where you've been or built better habits over time. I still suspect somewhere in my life I'll rock a solid body that starts to feel “normal” too, and forget I didn't “just go to the gym” or “just eat better.”

One of the biggest disappointments I have with regard to my old friend group was the inability or unwillingness to relay the actual problem at the time. This building resentment grew until everyone felt the time to air grievances and disassociate could be relegated to facebook chats and comments. This prompted people to pile on after a rape allegation. So far, one person has apologized for “how that all played out” and recognized the unfair and impossible circumstances that were created. Does it take away my responsibility to try and understand where people were coming from or how I contributed to how they felt? Absolutely not. Is it fair to expect me to change for the better, acknowledge and respect where they're coming from, or feel particularly responsible when I'm not given the same chance to be understood or respected? Absolutely not.

As such, I can understand about myself that I'm willing to be continually misunderstood. I'm willing to maintain an open disposition and discuss anything, but it's going to come with conditions of specificity and measurable metrics for success. I write until I'm done, therefore successful. If you need to talk just so someone will listen, I'm down. If we need to talk to come to an agreement on chores or expenses or whether a party can be held without things getting out of hand, I'm there. If we need to closely examine physical boundaries and how we speak to each other or hit on each other, sign me up. Never will it be acceptable though to attempt any or all of those with your mind already made up about who I am, who you are, and the congeniality of your position over mine. We're probably both wrong and should figure out how.

And I suspect, once we get over the major hurdle of our assumptions and held-harmless positions, it'll be the littlest of things that need adjusted, and the work of doing so will contribute to built-in better habits. They have to be built, because again, there are no rules. They have to be reinforced and reintroduced. If you can find a better thing to apply an anxious or compulsive mind to, let me know.