[931] Got You On The Run

I must continue to explore my unease.

I understand what it's like to deeply believe in something and wish to protect it. I broadly conceive of life, and the many ideas we might concoct during it, fragile. Fragility does not mean we can't weather blows or questions, and frankly, I've decided for myself a long time ago that nothing is so taboo or sacred that it can't be joked about or spoken to honestly. Expressing myself, exactly as I feel, as earnestly as the moment persists, is almost wholly responsible for me not being in jail or depressed and low-key suicidal. Every ounce of intense pain or instances of regret I have churned through every word they took to express. The intense scrutiny, reminders, reiterations, and recurring themes aren't just important in terms of coping; they are necessary for a life I consider worth living.

I'm moved to write a few hours after unpacking another one of my “you just had to go there” kind of digressions and explanations. I ripped through all of the superficial goodwill and fake smiles. I had to turn my critical eye to the things that failed instead of carry on like life is beautiful and because we're all friends here, no need to remark on the smell.

I don't understand why a habitually “corrupted” view of things and “good-natured belief and enthusiasm” need to be married. The food tastes bad? Say you like the silverware and compliment the chef for staying in business so long. I don't mean expressing “looking on the bright side” or “glass half full” sentiments. I mean when something is persistently and demonstrably wrong, there's immediately an impulse to cover it up. The dog shits in the floor, we lay a towel over it, and move right along with the more pressing calls of the day. I worry a lot when I see this behavior play out. I almost confused it for guilt.

I'm extremely sensitive to being put on edge. For better or worse, I've been highly trained in attuning to the rotten smell at the center of the problem which must not be named. I literally have a persistent stress response, like a creaky knee in the coming rain, when the truth of the pain and drama in your body refuses to be vomited out like so much poison. That was my mom, choking, endlessly, on her own vitriol, unable to clear the despair. If you didn't judge correctly how much had piled up behind her teeth, she might kill one of your friends or beat the shit out of you.

It is deep my disdain for this deference to the unmentionables. It provokes all sorts of chained memories related to the spilling consequences. What I find so much worse than how I physically feel or mentally suffer, is how shockingly ambivalent people are to acknowledging how much dog shit is festering under so many towels. When you wish to clean up the dog shit? HOW DARE YOU HURT MY FEELINGS! I encourage you to spend an afternoon in a mentally unwell person's home literally cleaning dog shit up, and perhaps the extent of the aberrant end of consequences will move your cowardly heart to stop letting the little piles fester.

When I think of the things people are struggling to discuss, I can only conclude we've gotten way too comfortable as a species. You won't own your poor time management skills? You won't bite the bullet of an expense made in haste that turned to waste? You won't cop to the idea you might communicate the wrong things at the wrong times, if at all? What you can't say about me, regardless of what you think of my communication style, is that I'm unwilling, late, or unprepared to get way more detailed than you may care to hear. I can also be concise if the moment calls for it. Blogs don't call for it. Work directions do.

I know fascists have co-opted the idea of “woke,” and I don't exactly struggle, but hate to even flirt with sounding like them, but so much has been made of “discomfort” over the years. White people uncomfortable with black people call the cops in bids to get them killed. Challenging subject matter in schools threatens rich kids paying out-of-state tuition, so it's gotta go. Bullying campaigns and trauma awareness causes the pendulum to swing so far the other direction it's unclear how much has amassed on the “things you can't say/joke/think about” board, but I assure you, it's literally anything that's ever given someone pause or freaked them out. I can genuinely feel it oozing into so many of my interactions, the sensitivity, the dare, and the kind of anxiety I couldn't imagine it would ever occur to the person on the other end to tackle proactively.

I have a right to offend you. You have a responsibility to handle me. That's my claim and cause every time I say the truth, you agree it's the truth, and then you fall back to the idea of what your pathetic bitch ass feelings are telling you. Be strong, grow up, and fucking deal with it. Better yet, own it. Own the fucking thing I said, that you agreed with, that you know is fucked up and needs to change. I don't need to stop telling the truth. I don't have to adopt every occasion under every circumstance to provide you what I consider the truth, but goddammit, I'm not a child. I speak up when I need to. I speak up when I can see the consequences and the proverbial shit that's about to get beat out of me.

You know what I don't do? Just levy empty judgments and accusations at you. I don't just spill mindless hate because nothing happened, I just hurt, and I'm lashing out like a trapped animal. I sit back, watch, listen, ask, reflect, reflect again, re-read, ask again, ask different people, rephrase, write shorter, write longer, wait, wait, wait, play nice, and then finally, I don't get paid, and I turn the heat up to 2 on a scale that goes to 20, and all of a sudden you're suspicious of my motives and long-term feasibility or loyalty? Fuck that noise. I'm loyal like an abused fucking dog, and I'm sick of that getting preyed upon through negligence or disingenuous posturing.

You know why I'm so prepared to flirt with boundaries or say what you won't? No one else will. No one else will, and we have to. You have to know how you're fucking up before you can contemplate the magnificent effort it usually takes to change. You have to have accurate-enough data informing your long-term planning and decision making. You must demonstrate more than a basic grasp on the concept of accountability if you want to do more than be feverishly kicking as your head barely remains above water. I have to speak to everything good or bad about me, or I don't find the motivation or direction to see my life and plans through.

I have YEARS worth of things I could engage in to “kill time” that are not a pointed persistent direction providing a meaningful example to set. There is a reason for the things I do or don't do. There is a running conversation in my head trying to put always new, but more-often old, information into the right categories provoking or tempering my behavior. I do almost nothing reflexively or “lightly” anymore. I've got some set of guiding principle or game or goal in place for every moment of my day. Nowhere on that agenda is “start lying to myself for you.”

It's a rage-inducing thought to be presented that choice so often and so fluidly. I'm not about exchanging knowing glances with my other corrupt cops as we convene to convict the innocent. I'm not prepared to sum up my conception of yours, mine, or our collective problems with aphorisms and exhaustive smiling. I don't fuck up when I say something you don't like or make you doubtful or afraid. I fuck up in treating you like someone remotely concerned with owning, learning from, and dealing with your fear in an adult way. Everyone's their own little mob boss, courting “loyalty” and killing snitches, as the dogs cake the rug in shit.

You know what I never did in two years working for DCS? Lie. I didn't have to. I know what the job is, and it's not to put up a false notion of the circumstances in service to my assumptions, biases, or in reaction to people who've pissed me off. By not lying, I never have to worry that when I'm subpoenaed for an old case I'm gonna end up perjuring myself or a file I tried to bury will magically appear. I don't fear some aggrieved family rolling up on me at the gas station ready to kill. I don't have to avoid eye contact with anyone I've worked with or under. I know people whose lies ended up in front of judges who had to call them out. I know people who didn't get fired for letting that happen.

I'm under no illusions about how dangerous liars are. Before commentators made it cool, I already coined The Big Lie. I know what lies add up to. I know they double-fuck you in that they first deny, then preclude, whatever you might rightfully do to make the situation better. Again, I refuse the invitation. Again, I need to reconcile myself and the angle with which I will or won't fuck with your liar's game, a pithy spin-off of the business-as-usual world writ-large. I refuse to believe that everyone I meet and everywhere I go is like this as long as I keep championing the standard I need to keep. I still exist. I can own if I fuck up payroll, meeting times, or didn't provide copy. If you call me on what I've fucked up, I'm not going to question your motives. I'll then apologize, pay you, and get to work getting you what I should have two weeks ago by my own admission. Fucking emotion addicts.