[965] Ouch

I’ve found myself to be saying over the last few months, “I attract a certain kind of damage.” Many girls that I’ve either dated or fooled around with seem to have the same traits when it comes to a heightened anxiety, depressive episodes, or there’s this switch that will turn on during conversation where the…and I wish I had like a term for it…but that “I can never win” kind of exchange takes place? No matter what you say, apologize for, deference you pay, faults you acknowledge or concessions and appeals for peace, every response you get is a provocation, assumption, or escalation.

I know now how to recognize this as a fairly significant struggle with mental health. “Normal” people don’t turn every slight or perception of offense into life or death. What I haven’t figured out is how to approach this.

Consider the other direction. The guys I most get along with I could frame the same way. Everything I say is meant to be a cutting or biting joke, and you’d be super off base if you read too far into something. I’m always looking for the next thing to do, show to see, or fun activity. I show up and try to actually help or fix things at even the suggestion that I might be able to contribute. This is/was the dudes I’ve rolled with.

I’ve listened to a few things that speak to the cultural influences and standards of women that would speak to a perpetual anxiety or sense of inadequacy. I know the ways men and women tend to act towards each other, and the often domineering or dismissive attitudes of men don’t bode well for women’s health. But, also, I think we’re living in a particularly unhealthy culture psychologically, and these tendencies go almost perfectly unnoticed if you’re not trained to pay attention to them.

Last night I had another one of those conversations that makes you want to analyze each line and point out the contradictions, assumptions, bad faith, and general confusion. It sunk in in a new, or maybe just stronger way, I needed to just be quiet. What might have gone on for hours I barely let happen for 5 to 10 minutes. The result was the same as it has been with others. I was told not to bother talking to or reaching out again, she deleted me from facebook, and I’m left just kinda sad. A similar situation happened a couple years ago maybe, and she didn’t speak to me again for a year.

Now, I don’t know how many of you are disengaging from the people in your lives you’ve known for years because someone tried to tell you about a podcast in which they learned some things about the history of the attacks on Roe v. Wade, but if that’s you, you might need someone to talk to about what’s really going on.

But I know it’s never genuinely about the topic at hand. It’s about how we get manhandled by our feelings and use them to color everything we hear and see a narrative shade that services a poor idea of how to protect ourselves. You get judgmental. You get scared. You train your amygdala to normalize compulsive reaction, not unlike an addict, and the path out of that takes an immense persistent effort that you physically might not have the energy or esteem for. It’s a deadly psychological trap. I’ve experienced this kind of response from nearly everyone I’ve ever spent more than a few hours with.

A ubiquitous and poorly understood survival pattern is playing out in destructive ways, and I don’t think we have an understanding or larger prevailing narrative as to how it works. We, in turn, get overwhelmed or confused by the dismaying details of how it plays out individually. Unless you’re a really weird person like me, you don’t engage it so long and methodically that the pattern becomes undeniable. It’s like emotional climate science. How do I know “relationship issues” and “communication barriers” and “self-sabotage” and concerns over bad definitions of “violence” or “toxic masculinity” or power dynamics of “ists” and “isms” have something fundamentally in common? I keep trying to attend to the details when things go awry.

This means, most often, I learn how I can’t help. I learn there was never a conversation happening to begin with. I learn the utility of using me as distraction or not-therapist has everything to do with getting wrapped up in a self-serving narrative waaaay more than it has to do with circling around a shared conception of a problem or reality broadly. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I actually want things to not suck. I actually feel the pain and struggle and sacrifice of what it means to fight. I’m not saying I’m losing my life or limbs, but I’m aware of the burden of my obligations. I have to, every time, politely tell you, hours or the next day, that I hope you get better when in the moment I feel myself getting heated over something I intellectually know does not deserve vitriol in return. That is hard and takes practice.

There’s a reason the pill, the mindfulness practice, or the therapist doesn’t “save you.” You can’t be “fixed.” You have to be oriented. You have to be processing in service to something larger than any given myopy. The processes that are turning out so many people who deeply suffer are legion. They require the shared attention of people both aware and earnestly willing to adopt the pain of feeling like it's a battle that can’t be won.

I think it’s important to allow yourself this kind of “professional distance” from the people you are close to. It’s not like any of us is a perfect adjudicator or perception generator, and there’s no telling what mental health crisis lie in waiting. For the time being, while I feel about as clear of a thinker as I’m ever going to get, I’m going to grant the reality and significant size of the problem as I see it. I’m going to remind myself that “your” thing is almost never actually about “me,” and to the extent you don’t even acknowledge you have a thing, there is no real you and me.

I can’t roll with your thing if you can’t. I can’t forgive you if you can’t forgive yourself. I can’t work with you if you can’t work on yourself. I can’t speak with you if you can’t be honest with yourself. I can’t justify spending my time if you’ve never any for yourself. I can’t trust the laugh or the romance if you can’t find your funny or security in who you are or what you enjoy.

We all struggle, and I’m thankful the nature of mine has the machinery for identifying and attacking the structures, concepts, and patterns I didn’t ask for and wouldn’t wish on you. How and whether we ever do anything together that we can share and take pride in is going to depend on whether you convert the overwhelming weight of existence into a defiant dare for it to add another pound. In my experience though, you can’t handle a questioning or detracting facebook comment, let alone maintain respect for an ongoing discussion about the topic.

It’s easier to pat ourselves on the back for listening to the one’s doing the work then practice it ourselves. If you listen to smart and studied people discuss Ukraine, you might feel plugged in and aware. If you reel at the idea that you might have to experience a modicum of discomfort or inconvenience at physically or financially supporting a refugee, Ukrainian or less-white, you haven’t done the work to find your shared humanity. You might listen to world-class scientists or historians tell you about the planet and our place on it, but if you literally vote for fascism or reflexively defend the convenience and familiarity of fossil fuels, you’re not engaging the problem. You’re playing grown-up. You’re virtue signally. I’m sure there’s billions of memes about Roe v Wade and maybe dozens to thousands of people who’ve any real appreciation for the long march the fascists have been on to get here.

You’ll never run out of excuses. There will always be a reason, maybe even a good one, to not do the work. But you don’t get to have it both ways. You don’t get to be the person you might desire at your deepest levels and keep up the façade that you’re at all concerned about the work it takes to get there. At least not around me. Here’s another brick in the wall of words I hope helps us pay attention to the right things. Here’s yet another invitation for you to throw another pound of silence or accusations on top.