[1065] Good Boy

I don't consider myself a "good" person. More to the point, I don't think the sentence or sentiment makes any sense. I liken it to saying, "You're a good dog." A dog is a dog. It has dog tendencies, and depending on the breed and kind of engagement, you can lessen or exacerbate those tendencies. The "goodness" of the dog depends on variables internal and external. Our concept of a good dog varies with each observer. My good dog responds to commands, doesn't errantly bark, and refrains from tearing my shit or other dogs to pieces. Your good dog may routinely lick you inside your mouth.

I don't consider myself particularly disciplined either. I'm a product of a fair amount of conditioning, and it's hard to think of myself as not constantly looking for ways to push boundaries. I'm like Byron's dog Ike. It knows not to lick me, yet you can see the compulsive lick wheels turning non-stop. He can respond to demands, but is just as likely to take off into traffic. He's incredibly afraid of the dumbest things, but will occasionally decide it's time to throw down and fight at the dog park.

If there is one metric I attempt to remain consistent in, it's in matching my words to my actions. I try to build in leeway for things I'm not entirely sure I can pull off. I might say something like, "If I practice 3-8 hours a day again, I bet I could come close to sounding like that," when I watch an incredible guitar performance. I'll qualify the amount of work I'd like to do with, "If I'm in the mood," or "weather providing" or "if something doesn't come up." In talking or writing like this, I don't ever really need to make promises. I don't need to sell myself or make some "extra" pseudo-commitment profession. Whether I'm looking to be praiseworthy or condemning and judgmental, you can frame it in a sincere and balanced way.

I think about this a lot when it comes to my approach to people who begin to annoy the fuck out of me or who seem to betray me in ways I couldn't find myself justifying. In my reflection on dropping Byron, I spoke to moving out, and the darkness I was kept in. That's been damn near every single year from every single person I've lived with. No one, it appears, cares how much it costs or how much work it takes to get a house you're renting back in order and packed up. No one knew or prepared to work out where they're going to live year to year? No one thought twice about paying the ever-increasing rent indefinitely.

I would never just abandon a living situation that wasn't otherwise threatening me. I would never expect someone to throw out my shit or clean up after me. I would never contemplate moving and just keep that from them. These are the kinds of things that create financial holes, to say nothing of the psychological ones, that can take years to get out of. If it's not deliberately malicious, what can we say about people who are routinely selfish and willing to inflict such drama via, if nothing else and very forgivingly, "absent-mindedness." They dash into the street, and you're on the hook for the medical bills.

I had a client text me, 2 days in a row, about not getting a 14-day script. He's a relatively long-term client. He knows how the system works, or doesn't. He knows I have nothing to do with writing, retrieving, or even looking at and accessing the systems to do with prescriptions. Yet, he felt compelled to interject his bullshit into my day, distraught that having to do jury duty appears to have registered in our software that he didn't have perfect attendance. This isn't a 2 minute conversation let alone a dozen texts over 2 days one. I, because he's a "good" or "nice-enough" client, unwisely, responded at all, very briefly blaming the software, holiday, and finally requesting we speak about it when I'm actually at work. Of course, he kept talking, so I stopped.

There's a "good person" narrative at this juncture that starts to nag you. Don't you wish to alleviate, to whatever degree you can, the confusion of your "good" clients? If it's not going to annoy the fuck out of me (qualifying statement) I don't mind sending a very quick 5 word-ish text. Another member messaged coincidentally about the same time for the box code to get screens. Should she, and anyone who's been doing this program for years and heard the box code dozens of times know it? Sure. She's also a good client, and the box code doesn't obligate me to drama, here you go, I can move on quick.

I can recognize the difference between how either attempts for my attention register. I consciously refrain from saying "makes me feel," because I know it's my underlying habits or desires that fuel just how annoyed or otherwise I'm going to be when you come at me with your bullshit. I didn't have to respond to my first client at all. In one sense, I violated my own boundary. In another, I made a bet that talking back would help more than hurt. In yet another, I was expressly espousing my values to treat my "good" clients with a little more leeway and privilege.

It's not black and white. Depending on how hard I lean into any of those sensibilities, I could nag myself with guilt for not holding strong. I could be conjuring a tale of my desire for taking risks and hedging with unstable and inappropriate means. I could simply pat myself on the back for consciously elevating an individual, even if he managed to disappoint me.

My goodness. It's all so convoluted and layered. It's all of the senses at once, and my unconscious and pre-verbal parts of my brain cycle through each layer until I can land them line-by-line here.

My sense of whether or not I'm "good" has been shaped by how I was raised. My dad being the unconditional love type, and my mom ensuring it was metric and fear-based. I was good if my grades were good. I was good if I responded to the threat of violence with compliance. To this day, I still feel what I'd describe as a "standing guilty conscience" as though I've done something wrong or punishment is inevitable. 

It's not "real" guilt. It's the irrational kind you can't take responsibility for. It's what forms when you've been made into a victim. Your abusive or neglectful caregiver can be as significant a contributor to that as your cultural environment. There's adults still thinking they're going to Hell for jerking off. The Protestant "work ethic" is a recipe for chronic unfulfilling self-imposed slavery. 

The real problem with this not-real guilt is less about the endless ways in which it may play out as selfish and entitled. It's significantly more about realizing how all-encompassing it can become. It's us needing to own how punishing our environments are, so we can form a responsible and accountable approach to what they've done to us. Very few of us appear to even entertain the conversation. It's more of a cultural parody at this point about the levels of anxiety and depression and everyone's need for therapy and simply more exposure and acceptance a-la shows like Sex Education.

We're foundationally irrationally guilty, we don't know of what, and if we don't already feel like we're being punished, we intuit that more punishment is coming. Our insincere parroting of words gives us zero capacity or insight on how to approach this. We reduce what accessing the real and meaningful guilt might provoke in behavior change to the pithy ether of melodrama and religiosity.

I don't wish to be "a person." I want to be me. I want to believe I'm making decisions to orient around things I care about, equitable relationships, and my potential. If my debt was compulsive hoarding to fill a black hole, like it is with my uncle, I'd expect to hear criticism about that from people concerned about me. If my aberrant or impulsive decision-making was courting interpersonal, financial, and legal trouble, a "good" friend or person talks about it. That's the implicit lesson of like almost all TV. There's bonds that can't be broken as they drive towards genuine resolution of the plot. It's another tool in service to rendering us blind when the lines and goals haven't been explicitly written for us.

I can't remember the last time I deliberately and consciously tried to hurt someone. This lack of recall stands against how frequently I've been accused of doing so. Just as it was in my mother's household, before I had the language of developmentally appropriate stages and the neurochemistry of the pre-frontal cortex, I was always in the wrong. Moreover, I couldn't even imagine that someone else had the agency or their role to play. I think about this in particular when it came to throwing parties in college. Hundreds of people's drunken behavior was routinely laid at my feet, and I was right there to pick it up. I didn't think twice. It was "my" party, after all. I wasn't 1 of 5 on the lease, 6 living there. I wasn't 1 of 100 places to drink or act out that IU has to offer. Through sheer force of will and charm you'd think I literally cast a spell on my attendees.

And in a way, by having any intention and direction at all, I did. And if and when that goes awry, the responsibility follows. I'm fine with that, considerably less so with the next step to act like you can party all by yourself. I don't have my hand up your ass mouthing your justifications or holding your jaw shut.

The road from distancing yourself from that irrationally guilty space that blames everything around you to responsible adulthood is a framing and self-talk problem. You may not see the 100 people around you at the party, but I promise you they see a scapegoat. You may not see the work, family, or political environment you're ever-molded by, but they have your number and know what you're good for when they can't be bothered.

I hardly recognize everything I've bought and built to try to find more contentedness and occasional "happiness." I'm not just out here alone playing music all day, deeply contemplating compelling media, and full of cheer for the examples I'm trying to set. I know most people can't even really see me. I know I'm going to be expected to clean up so much dog shit and the other animals are going look on ambivalently to bemused. It just hits really hard sometimes when the bubble you're cultivating gets aggressively barked at or slobbered on. I'm fucking tired of having to treat people like dogs, from my "best friend" to my "good clients," and I literally have to if I'm going to survive. 

I'm the only one who gets to kill me.