I need to see if I can find the thread by just talking about different portions of my day and last couple weeks.
My buddy is fostering a kid. The kid has seen more shit and experienced more trauma than most of us will our entire lives. There are detailed historical reasons for much of his behavior and little quirks. He's also capable of just being an asshole.
I like to think that over the course of exploring my own physical and emotional trauma, as well as experience with hundreds of people in a job as entrenched in trauma as it comes, that I have a pretty good radar for the subtle, but important, differences in people's behavior. I'm not quick to box someone into my first and worst idea about them. I'm constantly talking out both what I think they are doing or going through, and what my sense or gut is conjuring in me. At this point, it's like a professional reflex.
Nothing is ever so simple. Nothing is ever as dramatic as it feels. Nothing can't be brought to some level of resolution. Nothing is the end of the story. You should always be asking more questions. You should always be prepared to be wrong. You should not treat your ideas as so fickle and precious that they can't be swayed by new evidence or can't be changed when shown to be wrong.
One of the more exhausting things about being in “social work,” broadly, is that you have mirror neurons that you can't shut off. If you're not actually a blunted unremitting psychopath, other people's drama works on you. It's normal. It's the emotional leverage all weak and insecure people reflexively play on because it's what you do as a baby to get adults to capitulate to your needs. There is no perfect line between crying because you're hungry and bitching and moaning because you're underdeveloped and pathetic.
I get so fucking tired of always being in social work mode. You'd think my world consisted of the machinations of every most dramatic person I've ever met. I'm the ex-boyfriend who, no matter the amount of time, patience, money, or support is still “wrong” for whatever words might be used to describe the negative feelings I perpetually conjure. I'm the one with the “wrong attitude” for having some basic respect and expectation that I should know what to do with my time and be able to feel as though I'm being heard about how many other things I'm working on or obligated to. I'm getting subpoenaed for deigning to touch the case that churned though 7 different caseworkers or providers given the aberrantly combative and mentally unwell people involved. I get whispers that my psychotic mom is curious about me and still willing to tell my dad he's turned me against her, like I'm not the one who provoked a restraining order in a backwards-yet-effective way of preventing her from reaching out to me.
You know what I've been doing lately? Working. Not even working for money, yet. I've been painting and pulling up flooring and shopping for tools and supplies to keep remodeling a home. It's had its delays and there are many things that will be improved upon on the next one, but it's precisely one of the things I've been wanting to learn and do for many years. As with most things, it's infinitely more accessible than you might assume. It's a fair amount to invest in both time and money wise, but it can be done. It can be done pretty quick and it can return more money than I need to cover the basics for a year. Apparently, we're getting into the house flipping game 5 years sooner than the model house-flipper friend/family acquaintance, and he's doing quite well for himself.
I've always wanted several irons in the fire. Counseling is a lot of hurrying-up-to-wait even if we have 3-5 clients, technically. The wait for bureaucracies to get us in systems and call us back is not great. It'll keep inching along, but we ain't getting rich overnight. Home remodeling is one of those, once you're up and doing it, you just do it. The house needs to sell, but there's nothing stopping us from buying what we need and working. That's been generally gratifying, even if energy gets derailed when a kid wishes to be an asshole. I thought I'd be moonlighting as a sales guy for a minute, but I couldn't manage to blow enough positive smoke up people's asses and maintain my sense of self-respect. The fuck ton I've had to blow to try and get my heat working suggests I could still stand to have a modest regular income not based on my plasma.
I really do try to not forget how regal of an existence I maintain. It's all the more viscerally palpable when a disrespectful kid talks endless shit about things he has no means for understanding how to appreciate. I have to constantly remind myself that I can afford to eat the food I want because I've worked to keep my bills low. Each time I say, “I have that tool!” I've saved time, money, and testified to my long-term values and desire to be of tangible and perpetual utility.
I am a certain kind of tool. Never seemingly the one people want. I'm not sure this is so much about me and what I'm good for as much as it is that underlying universal need that's not being met. We have as much access to information and tools as we can ever hope for. We'll still be like the lonely girl on OKCupid who will message me occasionally for entertaining compliments I'm not inclined to give when her fuck-buddy/boyfriend/husband is boring or annoying her. What are you really after with your poly-whatever “evolved” pretense? I'm just a whore who enjoys the idea of a partner who can be basically chill and work with me. I'm not falling in love with you, and you're on OKCupid, you're exceedingly average looking or part of a bulbous left-swiped montage. We're past 30 and live in the mid-west, that's about as good as it gets.
See, I exercised my utility there, but no one likes it. I tell the annoying, hurtful, truth-as-far-as-I-can-tell that has no place in the modern coddled and entitled mind. Oh my god, did I call people fat? That's like, fat shaming, right? No wonder no one loves me or wants to talk. Why shouldn't you be bothered to tell someone cute they're cute? What's wrong with compliments and flirting? Immediately, the narrative takes place of any critical thought or inquiry. I don't care the topic, the age-group, or presumed taboo, there's a ready-made playbook for those unwilling and unable to contend.
My match will be the one I can talk to like I talk to my dudes. If I have to stifle myself until you've left the car, we ain't meant to be. If I have to get self-conscious that I've brought “too much” to the conversation, you're not talking about the things I'm talking about. You're either not capable, not interested, or not worthy. I get older every day, and that's one more reason that I can't spend time worrying about whether or not you “get” the page I'm on. It's not defiant hood-rat meming away the haters. It's dude who's trying to work, enjoy food, and act as though he's responsible for the world.
I think I get treated pretty reflexively as though I'm not deeply feeling the levels of hatred I tend to engender from “people.” I stress the word “people” and not “individuals,” “friends,” or “clients,” and even “friends” retains a precarious position. I'm fucking exhausted in trying to cope with so much negativity and hatred for what I stand for. As I keep searching for the depths of why I clench my jaw, it's with dire and chaotic “hope” that it will reveal itself to be something less insidious and more controllable than what I feel the truth to be in my bones.
I've already lost, in a sense. I know “feelings” win. I once wrote that “sincerity” wins. It does, but so many useless and helpless and unaccountable feelings are felt that they dictate the rules well before you get around to owning them or expressing them in a real and sincere way. So, I lose. If I genuinely express the depths of my feelings, I fucking destroy people. I'm unforgivable, and I've succumbed to the baby emotional leverage they were looking to evoke all along. A six-foot steel “irony” placard gets to shoot its way from my dickhead, and the cycle repeats. Sincerely share, try, demonstrate – get shit on, blamed, condescended to – retreat, write, speculate, explore – Try to relate, create – get called names, ignored/silent treatment – isolate, read, plan – find reason to get up and go out or make small investment - general life “fuck you” setback – wait, wait, wait, wait.
I'm not as hung up on people being little emotional whiny cunts as I sound. It's more heartbroken. That thing I feel in my bones? It's the practical door closing for a means of addressing it in my overall “world domination” scheme. I could have any number of “Great Man” traits and unique spin on what it takes to succeed, but I won't transcend my environment, I'll just be iterative dictations molded by it. I can't escape. I can't buy my way out. I can't implore them to “do better.” In my bones, I've got this solipsistic nihilism about “others,” so vague, so-named, and their ability to be self-aware and accountable. I'm at their errant mercy. How else do people fall to a “woke” or otherwise disembodied online mob of judgment and hatred? People aren't even awake to how full of hate they are and insist I must empathize with in every waking moment. But their perspective, like so many babies, is going to shame and exhaust the world into submission.
There's a 1/3 shot I'm going to have to tell someone to shut the fuck up during a movie in a theater. This is anecdotal, but the trend has held for several years, dating back to Episode VII The Force Awakens. It's one of the little absurdities I like to use as indicative of the debauchery perhaps only a Larry David could really convey. You'll never guess who's the “wrong” one between me telling you to shut the fuck up and you talking. It's me! Of course, I'm not wrong, and you should shut the fuck up. I earned money. I paid for a movie. I have as much a right for nominal escapes into stories as the next cunt. There's a deal, a contract, and a reasonable expectation. That this paragraph exists at all I hope testifies to how generally hopeless and ridiculous it feels to exist as me having to defend silence in a theater. Maybe your experience is different and you're wondering how we collectively forgot how to stop sign. The underlying principle and shame is the same.
I've been put in a position to have to strong-arm for my paycheck! Because I thought there were deals and expectations and things like getting paid on time were a mutually understood shouldn't-really-have-to-explain-or-defend-this kind of thing. Fuck me though, I had that wrong too! Think those who held the keys are ever going to feel guilt and offer an apology for prolonging my literal shivering as I've tried to navigate my heat situation? Fuck no! I was rude in politely asking when I might expect to get paid, giving them a chance to disburse it in chunks, and once offering to work for functionally free if that was required (not an offer taken up on). Fuck me again! Right!? Who would fucking dare to offer to pay off my debts or account for the whispers of unfairness and impropriety by meticulously scheduling ways in which they could contribute without disrupting their life otherwise? WHAT A FUCKING MONSTER FOR EXPECTING ME TO BE ON TIME AND CLEAR IN MY DIRECTIONS!
You don't give a fuck about me or my life. You never have. You, “people,” are the pageantry. You are the artful decadent façade of living forever through your earnest and deep feelings and reckless indulgence masked by words like “passion” or “believe.” You are the things I'm talking past. You are the things I'm constantly reminding myself not to exploit by lending my awareness or capacity to your chaos. You can continue to resent that, but it's not going to make it any less true. And, for “them,” as I was literally told not weeks ago, “It's not really about whether or not what you said is true...” Ok, sweetheart.
I'm a pretty natural flirt. I sense out the lines of decorum and seek to plant muddy boot steps on the other side. I know the difference between you falling for me and you falling for what I know you want to hear more than anything. I want to make the jokes that routinely cross the lines. I want to obliterate the boundaries of what I expect out of myself physically, mentally, and interpersonally. That involves playing a different game than the one on offer. That involves finding myself in the interchange between here and what I work on out there. I'm not going to be constitutive of your shitty and incomplete words. I'm not “just” what's ragged and left of being battered by incoherent seas of emotion. I'm hardly even merely the best or worst things I claim about myself. It's one of my superpowers, evolving, adapting, and creating the more comprehensive narrative that gives license to mild reprieves between cycles.
I hate nothing about myself. I know I'm just a different kind of tool for a different series of purposes than can be utilized or recognized by “people.” That's okay. My work exists in my own space, in the worlds of people who recognize what I am, and in the ongoing consequences of what I tried to bring to those living under considerably more stress and confusion or pain than I may ever experience.
We make things so much harder than they need to be. Quasi-co-parenting a teenager should resonate with anyone who's had or been adjacent to one. What are you mad at? We're out of Sprite? GUESS THAT'S THE END OF EVER DRINKING SPRITE AGAIN! Or, it's not, and we can go to the store, right now, if it's that serious, which it's not nor ever will be. Really, though, what are you mad at? Me? I find it hard to believe because you can't really see me, anymore than the teenager who wants to trash talk my truck which literally hauled his trash away the morning it also hauled his ungrateful ass to school. Trauma be dammed, I know when you're just being an asshole.
Apparently, you never can tell with someone like me?
