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flamingswordI have weather veins.
They are especially sensitive
to dust storms and hurricanes.
When I am nervous my teeth chatter
like a wheelbarrow collecting rain.
I am rusty when I talk.
It’s the storm in me.
- - Andrea Gibson - -
* I used to be so afraid to talk, so afraid that I would say the wrong thing, and try to fix it by saying another wrong thing, say all of the wrong things inside me, dams against the words I meant never to say all bursting across the silences that I cultivated between me and everyone who absolutely was not allowed to know how broken and horrible I was. Words breaking in and giving meaning to the silences I walled in around my ability to care about my inability to see myself. Eventually the humidity would get too high, and there was a slow condensation that dripped bits of my truth out to me safely, but I knew that disaster was never far from the first word. I feared the power of words, because its hard for me to lie, and because the act of speaking calls up the truth in me. Erica Jong says, "How can I know what I think until I see what I say?" I feel truthsome tonight; I'd better start talking and let my words out before they backlog.
* I wonder a lot about whether I can ever train my skillset to approach normal enough that I can feel like I belong to this world. I am afraid that this world is composed of truth and lies intermixed in such a way that I can not unravel or understand or trust or belong. Maybe I can only accept, and hope that accepting is enough to make me happy with being an alien here. Sometimes it is. I function pretty seamlessly in most environments, and I've managed to make most of my inabilities (disabilities) look deliberate.
* I might have been a liar if I'd been any good at it. The temptation to hide things was pretty strong, and I got used to living behind a lot of false indifference in junior high and false enthusiasm in high school. I can mimic feelings and that warps people's context enough to smokescreen truths as long as you consistently err to one or two directions. But making a verbal lie appear to be true was only something I got away with if I knew the person really well or they weren't paying attention. There were only ever three or four people who knew me really well at a time. And I could never tell if they knew I was lying. It was a point of anxiety every time. I eventually gave up because it was more trouble than it was worth.
* What would I be like if I had enough facility with the theory of mind that I could more easily be dishonest? Would I have gone to a manipulative place with it? That would have made me a bitter person. I would never have been able to learn to care about people from that perspective. I like to care about you, and I'm pretty good at it now that I've got fifteen years practice. Maybe I would be better able to comfort you. Part of the ability to give comfort is to tell people what they need to hear, but my decreased fluency in theory of mind means not knowing what that is. There are a standard set of comforting lies, but which ones go with this situation? By the time I can figure it out the moment has passed. I look like I have integrity and grit because I don't understand how to comfort you. I try to comfort you by accepting your pain as a necessary part of this time in your life, and not fix it, and offer my presence or to leave you to feel it alone. I am, I think, finally learning compassion, the suffering-with, through my repeat failure to replicate any other form of comfort.
* It makes me sad that I can never let myself be exceptional at any of the things I'm really good at because that would make me less human. Within the time and energy and resource constraints, I can either be a passable human with slow-growing skills that will take a lifetime to hone to anything remarkable, or I can backslide on the continuous training and fall out of the habit of having friends and maintaining relationships to focus on the INTERESTING thing I'm doing from which people are a DISTRACTION. I will tolerate you then because I need reality checks and people to disagree with to generate new ideas. But I will be a friend that has forgotten how to be careful of your feelings, forgotten rules and social boundaries and returning phone calls. That's not a me I want to go back to, not even if it is selfish to deny the world my unquestionable ability to go after something until it is FIXED. I learned how to give up on things, and I never want to forget that relaxing acceptance of deliberately choosing to fail.
* I think I used to have social anxiety disorder before I figured out that you're all big fakers who don't know how this stuff works much better than I do. Bravo.
They are especially sensitive
to dust storms and hurricanes.
When I am nervous my teeth chatter
like a wheelbarrow collecting rain.
I am rusty when I talk.
It’s the storm in me.
- - Andrea Gibson - -
* I used to be so afraid to talk, so afraid that I would say the wrong thing, and try to fix it by saying another wrong thing, say all of the wrong things inside me, dams against the words I meant never to say all bursting across the silences that I cultivated between me and everyone who absolutely was not allowed to know how broken and horrible I was. Words breaking in and giving meaning to the silences I walled in around my ability to care about my inability to see myself. Eventually the humidity would get too high, and there was a slow condensation that dripped bits of my truth out to me safely, but I knew that disaster was never far from the first word. I feared the power of words, because its hard for me to lie, and because the act of speaking calls up the truth in me. Erica Jong says, "How can I know what I think until I see what I say?" I feel truthsome tonight; I'd better start talking and let my words out before they backlog.
* I wonder a lot about whether I can ever train my skillset to approach normal enough that I can feel like I belong to this world. I am afraid that this world is composed of truth and lies intermixed in such a way that I can not unravel or understand or trust or belong. Maybe I can only accept, and hope that accepting is enough to make me happy with being an alien here. Sometimes it is. I function pretty seamlessly in most environments, and I've managed to make most of my inabilities (disabilities) look deliberate.
* I might have been a liar if I'd been any good at it. The temptation to hide things was pretty strong, and I got used to living behind a lot of false indifference in junior high and false enthusiasm in high school. I can mimic feelings and that warps people's context enough to smokescreen truths as long as you consistently err to one or two directions. But making a verbal lie appear to be true was only something I got away with if I knew the person really well or they weren't paying attention. There were only ever three or four people who knew me really well at a time. And I could never tell if they knew I was lying. It was a point of anxiety every time. I eventually gave up because it was more trouble than it was worth.
* What would I be like if I had enough facility with the theory of mind that I could more easily be dishonest? Would I have gone to a manipulative place with it? That would have made me a bitter person. I would never have been able to learn to care about people from that perspective. I like to care about you, and I'm pretty good at it now that I've got fifteen years practice. Maybe I would be better able to comfort you. Part of the ability to give comfort is to tell people what they need to hear, but my decreased fluency in theory of mind means not knowing what that is. There are a standard set of comforting lies, but which ones go with this situation? By the time I can figure it out the moment has passed. I look like I have integrity and grit because I don't understand how to comfort you. I try to comfort you by accepting your pain as a necessary part of this time in your life, and not fix it, and offer my presence or to leave you to feel it alone. I am, I think, finally learning compassion, the suffering-with, through my repeat failure to replicate any other form of comfort.
* It makes me sad that I can never let myself be exceptional at any of the things I'm really good at because that would make me less human. Within the time and energy and resource constraints, I can either be a passable human with slow-growing skills that will take a lifetime to hone to anything remarkable, or I can backslide on the continuous training and fall out of the habit of having friends and maintaining relationships to focus on the INTERESTING thing I'm doing from which people are a DISTRACTION. I will tolerate you then because I need reality checks and people to disagree with to generate new ideas. But I will be a friend that has forgotten how to be careful of your feelings, forgotten rules and social boundaries and returning phone calls. That's not a me I want to go back to, not even if it is selfish to deny the world my unquestionable ability to go after something until it is FIXED. I learned how to give up on things, and I never want to forget that relaxing acceptance of deliberately choosing to fail.
* I think I used to have social anxiety disorder before I figured out that you're all big fakers who don't know how this stuff works much better than I do. Bravo.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 08:05 pm (UTC)