I must be pretty miserable if I’m writing 4 times in 3 days.
I’m realizing the extent of the “value” in my ability to consistently listen and observe. I put value in quotes because it’s a kind of value that doesn’t translate into as much money per hour as a FedEx employee makes. It’s the kind of value that is overflowing with platitudes by people who “can’t imagine” working in the social work fields. It’s a value that slaps you with irony when you realize how little someone you’re speaking to is capable or willing to do for you as you do for others. It’s like a secret you have to keep with yourself. Valuable in a sense that you know it exists, and you watch its power, but you can’t expect it when you need it.
The people who most often listen to me complain have learned to mostly wait it out. They’ve known me long enough to anticipate some regular level of anxiety or overwhelming thought pattern, but every year I get older the rants get shorter, the volume decreases, and whatever addled hope which provokes my despair dies atom by atom. People need to talk, right? They need to complain sometimes? “It” all becomes overwhelming or you have a flurry of feelings or things that confuse you that just need to come out in messy and incomplete ways. I think it’s a literal process built into our potential for well-being just like you get actual diarrhea or puke when you need to rush order the expulsion of disease.
Any expression of stress or confusion causes a sympathetic response in people who aren’t broken. It doesn’t matter how articulate you might even attempt to be in your expression, if you dare try, you’re basically begging the other person to feel bad, unprompted, uncontrollably, and whether they mean to or not, they’ll lash out. That lashing can take a few typical forms, from personalizing what you’re saying to diminishing. If you’re not aware they respond like this, you and them can get stuck in a resentful spiral of persistent miscommunication. I’m thankful I’ve danced that dance so many times I know when to pull out.
In any event, it’s still kind of disheartening. I want to be able to bitch too. I’m actually human. I know this seems hard to believe, but it’s true. I don’t want to be a perfect Zen master navigating an endless array of problems, personal, existential, or external, with a measured series of blogs and dedicated practice. Sometimes I just want to scream, or revel in the misery and hatred for all of the little people and their small lives that manage to have an outsized impact on my brain or weekend occasionally. Is that too much to ask? Is it not fair of me to wish to be received with the benefit of the doubt?
I give people credit. I get chastised for giving people credit. It falls to the same kind of “value” game. Do you truly value an individual and their capacity to change? No, truly, do you? If you don’t have a rock-solid conception of where you stand on a question like that, you’re either a decent counselor or you’re handing out paperwork and shooting the shit with a prisoner who will be back within a year of their release. You’re either working with messy, ratchet, families to put together a safety plan, or you’re targeting them for removal because you “already know” who they are from reading a report. You’re shooting first because you value your fear and life over any remote conception of oaths you took.
I give people credit, but I don’t trust them. I don’t trust them because I watch what they do with the credit I give. It’s that simple. I don’t trust you to listen to me. I don’t trust you to understand where I’m coming from. I trust you to be all up inside how you feel about things I say more than I ever trust you to read them or interpret them. What would make me think otherwise?
A familiar refrain at this point is to point out that you have to look for good things in order to see them. You have to, somehow, use whatever may be wholesome or righteous about someone or thing and use it to placate the negative consequences of their behavior otherwise. I think this is a weak mantra opted into by people completely terrified of speaking towards how far and wide negative consequences go. This is the “good Christian” narrative downplaying child ass rape. This is the “you’ve only one family” narrative that masks the complex machinations of generational abuse. This is every cliché offered to choke down hostile and exploitative work environments.
I see plenty of “good” things. [Side note, I happened to hear the argument of the last paragraph neatly following an argument that “good” and “bad” don’t exist, so, you know, take whatever you might from that.] But I do. I’m one who persistently writes about what he is thankful for and what is going right. I frame my shit circumstances in digestible bites and timeframes. I offer myself to initiatives and things I can help or work on. I did so 3 fucking times today! I offered to help these messy pipe-dream guys, and said I’d take on extra work with my guy who’s built things around my house, and tried to reengage the addict who needed his screening. I don’t get to be the guy characterized as constantly wallowing in misery or looking for an excuse to handicap my decision making.
It’s just kind of disheartening to consistently be at the end of people’s judgment at what I’m unable to do perfectly at all times. I didn’t handle my girlfriend slitting her wrist in front of me particularly well. I don’t keep my cool when I’m taken for granted and cut off for over a year or yelled at over things so inconsequential, I can’t even remember them. I’m the dick when I want movie theaters to be silent, you to respect my time, rules to apply evenly, or in my desire for an explanation for something that does not make sense save the arbitrary whims of a given power. In broad terms, I want “common sense” and people to “be cool.” I can’t find it, and they aren’t.
But forever, if I try to express this in any form but like this, to my 3 followers, I will be met with this gross protest and insistence I’m not being understanding or forgiving or I’m just taking things too seriously. All of a sudden, I’m talking about “you” specifically, and bringing to the surface every insecurity you have about your complicity or, very wrong, assumptions of my opinion of you. I’m either talking past people, or I’m feeding their ego. I have real conversations with like 3-ish people, and not regularly. And I feed that ego so I don’t make a bad or sad day worse. I feed it so I can play a game around a type of connection that doesn’t really exist for me. Not because I don’t want it to, I just don’t know how to be listened to.
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