[919] Slap

Many of us are taught “the basics” when it comes to engaging each other. Say “please” and “thank you.” Shake hands. Say you're sorry. Where and why these ideas came into being each have their own history and confluence of forces that pushed the behavior into our consciousness. You may have heard that shaking hands was a way to demonstrate you were unarmed or that it gives either person the ability to gauge nervousness. You might have had it beaten into you that apologizing is required if you're going to reside in a peaceful household.

When you're a kid, at least when I was a kid, none of the “normal” or “basic” things people did made much sense to me. When I was told to apologize, I wasn't sorry. When I said “thank you,” I arguably felt entitled or that it was “obvious” that my caregiver would feed me or buy me something on Christmas. My family meets and kisses on the cheek. It's a habit I never picked up. We know now a lot of the things we've built into how to interact are carried over from poor understandings of trauma as much or more from tradition.

By adulthood, I want to believe you develop an appreciation for why you do or say the things you do. I want to hear “thank you,” and I offer what I appreciate about people or situations regularly. The world feels bleak, and to know you were even acknowledged becomes a little lifeline. I figured out how to relate to being “sorry” and under what circumstances I actually was. Being a going-through-the-motions liar has never sat well with me. I know how to shake your hand, but I prefer flashing a peace sign, and I'll tip my hat to the pandemic for helping normalize that.

I'm watching this series discussing the “meaning crisis.” A neuroscientist and teacher of enlightenment practices explains why there's this drive to be “mindful,” and dozens of pop-psychological misunderstandings about how to attain enlightenment. He covers a wide breath of history and literature. Sometimes he's more intelligible than others. At bottom, he cracks open just how many “basic” ideas and definitions we had to come to before our language continued to evolve and confuse or distract us today.

You can listen to a dozen teachers tell the allegory of the cave. None of it will compare to being the person trying to tell the other fools what the shadows on the wall really are. How many doctors and nurses were prepared for this level of vaccine “skepticism?” How many scientists need to cry foul before something more intentional throws its body on the gears of mindless mass consumption? We're children without the basics. We have timeless myths that we don't feel for ourselves and don't weave into our lived experience. We take so much for granted. We leave ourselves one option, to be “shocked” by preventable tragedy after preventable tragedy.

I think about the ideas of mine I considered basic or foundational and why or if they have changed. I've never been particularly “passive” or “non-violent,” but it's never been persuasive to me to fight or beat up women. Do I know there are crazy bitches out there? Sure. Are there large and trained ones who I wouldn't have a prayer in a fight with? Absolutely. Even at the height of the violence perpetrated on me from my mom, if I wanted to hit back, it would have been more to get the point across than the first of a series of blows until she was dead. We probably lucked out that I only had to catch her arm one day to send the message.

I never believed I'd encounter a circumstance that would have me act violently towards a girl, let alone a girlfriend. I never had the language of a “spectrum” of behaviors or the idea that corrosive emotional slights and outrage build over time. I took it for granted that I'd heard, felt, or seen it all before, and that certain things were simply off the table for me. It was a dangerous and incorrect position to hold.

Much is to be made of “harm” today and who is causing it. I had to get exacting about the conditions under which I could and could not take responsibility for what feel most often like presumptive claims to my willingness or capacity. Were the series of reasons that led to me slapping a previous ex hidden from me? Being drunk didn't help. Do I remember what I was thinking? I was shocked and panicked. Did I do anything to escalate the situation? Well, I functionally dared her, handed her the razor, and watched her drag it 6 inches down her wrist. Different than being a little man who gets off on beating women? Sure. Considerably worse than that in other ways? I lean towards words like “absurd” given the cartoonishly inappropriate “solution” I landed on for “she's out of her mind and needs to be slapped back into reality,” like in the flash of TV and movie scenes that scrolled through my head. It wasn't going to work without the actual “pop” noise, and I miffed it landing the tips of my fingers, so tried from the other direction with my left hand with more, but still inadequate results.

There's a very neat and forgone conclusion you can tie that situation up with. Drunk boyfriend hits girlfriend, bad, fuck that guy, we always knew what he was capable of... It doesn't ask where either of us was coming from. It doesn't account for the months, if not years at that point, of being emotionally invested in attempting ways to bring peace to her mind. A mind that was entertaining suicide seriously enough to describe to me how she'd go about it in detail. The moment doesn't speak to the amount of times you ask the person you care about to seek help, try different pills, take time off, or take your money when they cite concerns for the cost. If I told you I was crying, wrapped her wrist up in my red blanket (you know, because red) and immediately called the police, that would be me trying to garner sympathy and downplay my otherwise violent soul, right? A few days later I offered to let her stab me, only half-jokingly, because...eye for an eye? I had no tools and no ideas for what, if anything, makes that situation “better.”

It's been like ten years from that night and I still ask myself questions. Was I angry at her? No, I was terrified. Could I have done anything better? Not been drunk, not handed her the razor, not let myself be consumed by the hopes and dreams I had for our relationship that had been cracked and peeling for quite some time. I don't deny my actions nor expect anyone close with her to associate with me or really bother to understand how or why things played out. I've never been anymore or less tempted to fight or hit anyone, let alone girls, before or since. I just have a new outlier data point I use to contextualize when and whether outbursts of emotion seem more likely. If I'm angry enough to hit anything, there's likely a pretty serious underlying problem that's not being attended to. The irony then hits that even if you can identify, for over a year, the habits of an unhealthy dynamic, it doesn't mean you're going to immediately sever the tie and not find yourself punching a wall or throwing recycling bins.

What is a “basic” notion of “love” or “civility” that isn't understood, isn't embodied, and functionally doesn't mean anything? Why do we have “harm-reduction models” of “care?” Don't people who care try to “fix” problems, not drag scarred skin over slightly less jagged rocks indefinitely? I still don't see myself punching a girl in the face for any reason but self-defense. I don't think it's very “loving” or “civil” to try and partner up altogether if we're going to remain perfectly ambivalent to how our behavior plays out on the brains of our partners. We might not always know how things will play out, but also, as we find the language and identify the feelings before we just react, we need to acknowledge whether or not we're deliberately working to share an effort, or merely resentful our minds aren't being read.

That's how I differentiate my behavior and sense of responsibility, at least. I don't hate you for not being like me. I don't get angry that your interests or perspective is different than mine. I get angry when you tell me where I'm coming from before you show any interest in reading a blog or dozen. I get angry when nothing I say or do can return to my ears as an accurate account after passing through your lips. I know I can practice, through this, examining how to find one more day, if not hour, of patience or decision to make more in advance of things getting escalated in a less controlled way. I didn't drag out the drama of my last relationship, but I also didn't insist 3 to 6 months in that she stay primarily in her trailer. I didn't refrain from buying more expensive pieces in service to her garden I knew she couldn't appreciate.

I think sometimes people wish they could “take it back.” I wouldn't forgo my perspective for anything. There's plenty of people living in pain and daily screaming or violent situations that haven't learned what I have. I'm not better or worse then them but for my willingness to keep talking and trying to measure what and whether there's something better. I don't hate myself. I don't even necessarily blame people as consciously responsible for the conditions under which things deteriorated. When the flames die down is where I look for blame. Are you willing to own it? Can you keep exploring? Has it changed your behavior in a way anyone but you can recognize?

It's incredibly hard to balance your own confused, contradictory, internal state and dialogue well before you try to introduce someone else's. Complicate things with your culture's norms. Become extra-informed about all of the words you've been using incorrectly your entire life. Try to see the contextual forest for the tree of any aberrant display. It might not be gratifying to think of yourself as weak and conflicted, but those feelings can lend themselves to openness and humility. They can feed your propensity to take responsibility and power an otherwise dead or excuse-ridden tongue. It's how you build a “basic” engine for turning the things that happen to you into the things you can actually do. I can't take it back, and neither can you, and I'm not asking anyone to save me. Not even Jesus.

So where does that leave us? I'll be here, in my writing, in my field, trying to keep speaking and working towards what I wish to embody. It's not someone unsympathetic to how you feel, but you'd be a pretty fucked up person if you flatly accepted my behavior just because I told you, “I felt like it.” We have the same impulse and ability to check our behavior, even if we only want to trust it when it's employed against someone else. And at your core, only you're going to know if you're lying. That is, if you've managed to figure out how to speak to and own yourself at all.