|
|
Altoids Addict (![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} altoidsaddict) wrote,@ 2008-02-19 22:02:00 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
You know what? People are insensitive.
Yeah, news flash.
R asked me today about an update about the twit who kicked me. By the way, because she's a twit and has no conscience, she has not come forward even under assurance that there is no punishment involved. Had I known that she is capable of not caring fundamentally about someone else's welfare even after knowing for a fact that she has hurt them physically, I would have pressed charges and had them come down on her like a ton of bricks. HOWEVER, since she's decided that she'd rather live with the karmic debt for the rest of her life, the only thing I can really do is move the fuck on and work on a way to haunt her in her sleep. (I'm sending psychic waves to her to have sex dreams about Carrot Top.)
It seems that what near-complete strangers fail to realize is, on some level this amuses me. It's annoying, but annoyance doesn't bother me so much in a lingering sense. Yes, I was mad when it happened, but that's natural and so I am okay with that. I can also, amazingly enough, adapt well to the likelihood that Bitchpants is not going to get her comeuppance. The world is like that, get a helmet. People have done worse to me in my life and gotten off scot-free, with or without police involvement.
It would be wildly inappropriate for me to then drag it out and start directly confronting an entire class about the Big Hairy Deal What Happened To Me. Number one, it's not really that big a fucking deal. Number two, I am not a special snowflake. Aside from the professor using this as a lesson for them in what NOT to do in conflict mediation, this is about me and her - whoever she is. To take up everyone else's class time for some personal vendetta I'm honestly too lazy to care about would be idiotic. I did not press charges when it happened precisely because I knew, no permanent or serious damage having been done, I would get bored with this in a week.
Near-complete strangers, or a certain one, call this "being a victim." Shrinks would probably call it "being well-adjusted."
Even after four and a half years, I discover little things about my new brain. See, before, I was quite aggressive and confrontational. Now, I don't really have the mental energy to sustain personal vendettas. I get momentary amusement in that my enemies are enraged by my happiness, but to dwell on it? To make it every fiber of my being to hate another person? Quite soon it stops being funny to me, until someone reminds me, and then "Ooh, yeah, I remember that. That person sucks." But it's about them. They suck, not me. That is not being a victim. The stroke made that so much easier, because people who declare vendettas and stick with them and aren't combative just for entertainment value deal with a lot of unresolved anger and hatred and trauma and, most importantly, a worldview that everyone is out to get them. They're the victims, and that's as much about their lack of ability to resolve all conflicts, big and little, internal and external, as it is about any real injustices committed on their person. What happened to me sucks, and Twitboots is a sucky person for doing it, but it has not realistically prevented me from anything in my life. It hurt for a few days, and now it's on her to live with it, not me. Personally (and I know not everyone is like this) I would much rather live with a few days of bruises and strains than knowing that I hurt another person. Bruises heal; guilt is harder.
One of the other little quirks of my new brain is that I find it nearly impossible to make declarative, verbal statements of contradiction coming from my own opinion. It's something new I've just put my finger on, and so I haven't completely worked it out yet. It's similar to cocktail personalities in BPD, in which someone will adopt or mirror personalities or opinions if they can get something out of it, except in this case I'm minimizing my own opinions verbally, not saying what I feel, and I get nothing out of it except lack of confrontation. Monday, the person I was interviewing asked me what my core beliefs were. I knew them, of course, and if she'd have asked for it in written form? No problem, I've done it before. Marriage equality! Throw money at poor people! Self-assumed personal responsibility and high standards! Open borders! Garfield sucks! But for some reason I just couldn't articulate it at that moment. I stammered out something about gay rights. And she was not being combative - she's a mediator, and even though she did not agree with me she never once made me feel as though I was wrong and she was right or that my opinions were devalued. I was comfortable with her. But I could not articulate the core values I had shouting in my head, as though my tongue physically would not obey. It took Herculean effort to say what I did.
Is that not fucked up?
I know, even while this is happening, that this is irrational. It's not a way to excuse my opinions or make them less important - it's acceptance of the beliefs of others going to the extent that, when staring them in the face, I don't feel the need to impose my personal beliefs on somebody I don't know well. I also fail to see why it should make a difference to another human being why I believe in mudkips or Rick Astley or whatever unless I wish to get in a debate about those things, and 99% of the time I do not.
This seems contradictory, but it all goes together in my head, really. I don't think my opinions are invalid personally simply because they are unexpressed verbally. I don't think other people's opinions are invalid if I do express mine. I just don't like how debating seems to get into these subjective arguments about morality, and doing so verbally might be seen as an attack by me to someone else, and unless I know someone well I am also not vested enough in that relationship to sustain the energy to have fun debating them either.
I have a double-ruby National Forensics League pin from my before-brain. I debated in high school. I judged debates after high school. In college I went toe-to-toe with people from 192 other countries and told them, to their faces, that my position was contrary and if they had a problem they should take it up with me. They did so, often, and I would debate with people face-to-face for weeks at a time. I've done a 180 from that person and I can't even believe I once did all that stuff. I tried it again afterwards in a simulation setting, and a family emergency called me away. To tell you the truth, I was relieved - I could not stand being there and potentially making people feel inferior in any way just because my position was different. I knew I could argue my position, and win, but I'd reevaluated the goal to the point that winning opinions didn't really matter.
Now, if we wanna talk history, we can throw down. I'm distanced. It's not me, and it's not you. It's the facts and the interpretation and the theories, and whether or not Camp Trinidad really was anti-American or Silas Soule is a hero or traitor - I am invested in the accuracy. Whatever facts I believe to be correct, or whatever interpretation you've held about a particular event, one or both of us could be wrong - but that doesn't matter, because what should really matter is the Truth or as close as you can get it. Core values are different. Personal shit is different. These two things are unlikely to change without offense. Whether someone is allowed to marry, that affects someone. Whether someone is shown to be an ass in front of her classmates, that affects somebody.
This kinda sounds like I'd rather be a victim; but in truth, I would really rather be the victim than the victimizer, and that's not such a radical statement. But I believe there is another choice - to move on, personally, and leave the victimizers to their own fecund personalities and leave the debates and contradictions to the people who seem to thrive on seeing their conflicts wrought on another's face. I know what it's like from that side of the fence, to stare an opponent in the face as I present, unflinching, an argument that he or she is irrevocably a poor debater and unworthy to share my podium and see the points and the trophies flutter from their eyes. I used to enjoy it. It was my lifeblood. I don't necessarily blame people who thrive on conflict and making others wrong; if you enter debate or engage on conflict, you willingly take on yourself the possibility that you will be shown as Not Good Enough. You allow that you may become the fodder for someone else's smug superiority; or that you may simply fight to a draw and have spent the last few hours arguing to a stalemate. Or you may win and get your little pin and trophy, or even only the knowledge that you can argue well. Anyone who doesn't want to lose the game or make someone else lose should simply not allow themselves to be dragged into it. As for me, my double ruby National Forensics League pin hasn't moved from its box in years.
As I was being harangued by someone who thinks they are an expert on what exactly I would prefer to do with my time because of her own unrelated life experiences, I observed her body language. Here she was, using her size, her accusations, and her voice to intimidate me into disrupting a class for however long and behaving like a special snowflake and making it All About Me. But not only did I not want to do this, I didn't even want to talk to her about it. She has nothing to do with this conflict or how I choose to deal with it. She cannot say I am being a victim if she refuses to even allow me to talk in my own defense - in fact, she's one of those people who thinks you win by not allowing the other person time to consider a measured response. Honestly, with those people, the only way to win is to not play at all. And as she's haranguing me about not being a victim and fighting against - what, someone tripping over me in a hallway and being a callous ass about it? - she's using what she perceives to be my personality to bully me, herself. And it only gets worse the more I refuse to play. In my head I have the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song and wishing I could, physically, eat my own head and not have to listen to this crap. Because I know I'm not being a victim by refusing to push this - I don't feel it's likely to have results. If indirect mediation will not get Twitboots to get a conscience, directly confronting her classmates on a day she may or may not be there sure as hell will not have a positive outcome for either of us. Moving the fuck on and treating it, somewhat detachedly, as though it was an annoying episode and I didn't die and bada-bing, has a positive outcome for me. "Think of justice!", the other woman ordered me. What, there's likely to be an epidemic of epic twats in boots tripping over people in hallways and not taking responsibility for it if I don't march in there and disrupt a class? This is not called being a victim, it's called being a damn realist.
But I could articulate none of this, because I could not get a word in edgewise anyway and because shouting above someone who is acting in a verbally aggressive and unsympathetic manner is Playing The Game. I can't play the game about myself and my own choices. They won't change because of external forces or people getting in my face - it has to come within me, from within my own observations, not getting yelled at. If I have to dwell on this conflict, I honestly get a physical block and response. Take it far enough, and that shit hurts - like someone's pulling out my tongue from the back. Add to that feeling like others want to force me into a conflict situation I feel is not productive; and then pile on some woman acting aggressively physically and verbally to order me to act as she would have - and that shit hurts worse. It's a crossed wire, somewhere. Empathy for another person gets jumbled with the natural human response to avoid conflict, which is mixed up with the desire to see positive outcomes and not beat my head into a brick wall when the perfect solution does not present itself, and then the strong desire to not meet aggression with verbal aggression - I may use the words "anxiety" or "worry," but really it's closer to painful overstimulation. This isn't the first time overstimulation resulted in a physical problem - for the first six months of grad school, the sound of my advisor's voice made me sob uncontrollably until I got to know her better. Some of it was anxiety, but a lot of it was simply the cadence of her speech, no matter how gentle or comforting she tried to be. And the physical response and lack of control caused me more anxiety. I choose, in this case, to not be too anxious over this particular response; analyzing it will help me adapt, just as it did with my advisor, but forcing it to stop will cause more overstimulation and it will get worse. And to be honest, while I don't win a whole lot of arguments, I also don't get into them with total strangers for no reason and that makes me happier by leagues.
When I didn't want to confront Twitboots and was avoiding the issue because I was being a wimp, I had no problems expressing that verbally. I knew exactly what was going on, and it was a natural response. I screwed up the courage and handled it by going to the professor. This specific set of circumstances, however, is different; there is no likely perfect outcome possible, other people are buttinskys about what I should do because they have a chip on their shoulder, and external forces try to make me do things I know to be unrealistic in a manner I have trouble with in the first place. It runs into a crossed wire and the result is a physical block. It's as though my brain has ordered my tongue to fly, and it tries but doesn't know how. I am content with not forcing it to until it's damn good and ready.
Yeah, news flash.
R asked me today about an update about the twit who kicked me. By the way, because she's a twit and has no conscience, she has not come forward even under assurance that there is no punishment involved. Had I known that she is capable of not caring fundamentally about someone else's welfare even after knowing for a fact that she has hurt them physically, I would have pressed charges and had them come down on her like a ton of bricks. HOWEVER, since she's decided that she'd rather live with the karmic debt for the rest of her life, the only thing I can really do is move the fuck on and work on a way to haunt her in her sleep. (I'm sending psychic waves to her to have sex dreams about Carrot Top.)
It seems that what near-complete strangers fail to realize is, on some level this amuses me. It's annoying, but annoyance doesn't bother me so much in a lingering sense. Yes, I was mad when it happened, but that's natural and so I am okay with that. I can also, amazingly enough, adapt well to the likelihood that Bitchpants is not going to get her comeuppance. The world is like that, get a helmet. People have done worse to me in my life and gotten off scot-free, with or without police involvement.
It would be wildly inappropriate for me to then drag it out and start directly confronting an entire class about the Big Hairy Deal What Happened To Me. Number one, it's not really that big a fucking deal. Number two, I am not a special snowflake. Aside from the professor using this as a lesson for them in what NOT to do in conflict mediation, this is about me and her - whoever she is. To take up everyone else's class time for some personal vendetta I'm honestly too lazy to care about would be idiotic. I did not press charges when it happened precisely because I knew, no permanent or serious damage having been done, I would get bored with this in a week.
Near-complete strangers, or a certain one, call this "being a victim." Shrinks would probably call it "being well-adjusted."
Even after four and a half years, I discover little things about my new brain. See, before, I was quite aggressive and confrontational. Now, I don't really have the mental energy to sustain personal vendettas. I get momentary amusement in that my enemies are enraged by my happiness, but to dwell on it? To make it every fiber of my being to hate another person? Quite soon it stops being funny to me, until someone reminds me, and then "Ooh, yeah, I remember that. That person sucks." But it's about them. They suck, not me. That is not being a victim. The stroke made that so much easier, because people who declare vendettas and stick with them and aren't combative just for entertainment value deal with a lot of unresolved anger and hatred and trauma and, most importantly, a worldview that everyone is out to get them. They're the victims, and that's as much about their lack of ability to resolve all conflicts, big and little, internal and external, as it is about any real injustices committed on their person. What happened to me sucks, and Twitboots is a sucky person for doing it, but it has not realistically prevented me from anything in my life. It hurt for a few days, and now it's on her to live with it, not me. Personally (and I know not everyone is like this) I would much rather live with a few days of bruises and strains than knowing that I hurt another person. Bruises heal; guilt is harder.
One of the other little quirks of my new brain is that I find it nearly impossible to make declarative, verbal statements of contradiction coming from my own opinion. It's something new I've just put my finger on, and so I haven't completely worked it out yet. It's similar to cocktail personalities in BPD, in which someone will adopt or mirror personalities or opinions if they can get something out of it, except in this case I'm minimizing my own opinions verbally, not saying what I feel, and I get nothing out of it except lack of confrontation. Monday, the person I was interviewing asked me what my core beliefs were. I knew them, of course, and if she'd have asked for it in written form? No problem, I've done it before. Marriage equality! Throw money at poor people! Self-assumed personal responsibility and high standards! Open borders! Garfield sucks! But for some reason I just couldn't articulate it at that moment. I stammered out something about gay rights. And she was not being combative - she's a mediator, and even though she did not agree with me she never once made me feel as though I was wrong and she was right or that my opinions were devalued. I was comfortable with her. But I could not articulate the core values I had shouting in my head, as though my tongue physically would not obey. It took Herculean effort to say what I did.
Is that not fucked up?
I know, even while this is happening, that this is irrational. It's not a way to excuse my opinions or make them less important - it's acceptance of the beliefs of others going to the extent that, when staring them in the face, I don't feel the need to impose my personal beliefs on somebody I don't know well. I also fail to see why it should make a difference to another human being why I believe in mudkips or Rick Astley or whatever unless I wish to get in a debate about those things, and 99% of the time I do not.
This seems contradictory, but it all goes together in my head, really. I don't think my opinions are invalid personally simply because they are unexpressed verbally. I don't think other people's opinions are invalid if I do express mine. I just don't like how debating seems to get into these subjective arguments about morality, and doing so verbally might be seen as an attack by me to someone else, and unless I know someone well I am also not vested enough in that relationship to sustain the energy to have fun debating them either.
I have a double-ruby National Forensics League pin from my before-brain. I debated in high school. I judged debates after high school. In college I went toe-to-toe with people from 192 other countries and told them, to their faces, that my position was contrary and if they had a problem they should take it up with me. They did so, often, and I would debate with people face-to-face for weeks at a time. I've done a 180 from that person and I can't even believe I once did all that stuff. I tried it again afterwards in a simulation setting, and a family emergency called me away. To tell you the truth, I was relieved - I could not stand being there and potentially making people feel inferior in any way just because my position was different. I knew I could argue my position, and win, but I'd reevaluated the goal to the point that winning opinions didn't really matter.
Now, if we wanna talk history, we can throw down. I'm distanced. It's not me, and it's not you. It's the facts and the interpretation and the theories, and whether or not Camp Trinidad really was anti-American or Silas Soule is a hero or traitor - I am invested in the accuracy. Whatever facts I believe to be correct, or whatever interpretation you've held about a particular event, one or both of us could be wrong - but that doesn't matter, because what should really matter is the Truth or as close as you can get it. Core values are different. Personal shit is different. These two things are unlikely to change without offense. Whether someone is allowed to marry, that affects someone. Whether someone is shown to be an ass in front of her classmates, that affects somebody.
This kinda sounds like I'd rather be a victim; but in truth, I would really rather be the victim than the victimizer, and that's not such a radical statement. But I believe there is another choice - to move on, personally, and leave the victimizers to their own fecund personalities and leave the debates and contradictions to the people who seem to thrive on seeing their conflicts wrought on another's face. I know what it's like from that side of the fence, to stare an opponent in the face as I present, unflinching, an argument that he or she is irrevocably a poor debater and unworthy to share my podium and see the points and the trophies flutter from their eyes. I used to enjoy it. It was my lifeblood. I don't necessarily blame people who thrive on conflict and making others wrong; if you enter debate or engage on conflict, you willingly take on yourself the possibility that you will be shown as Not Good Enough. You allow that you may become the fodder for someone else's smug superiority; or that you may simply fight to a draw and have spent the last few hours arguing to a stalemate. Or you may win and get your little pin and trophy, or even only the knowledge that you can argue well. Anyone who doesn't want to lose the game or make someone else lose should simply not allow themselves to be dragged into it. As for me, my double ruby National Forensics League pin hasn't moved from its box in years.
As I was being harangued by someone who thinks they are an expert on what exactly I would prefer to do with my time because of her own unrelated life experiences, I observed her body language. Here she was, using her size, her accusations, and her voice to intimidate me into disrupting a class for however long and behaving like a special snowflake and making it All About Me. But not only did I not want to do this, I didn't even want to talk to her about it. She has nothing to do with this conflict or how I choose to deal with it. She cannot say I am being a victim if she refuses to even allow me to talk in my own defense - in fact, she's one of those people who thinks you win by not allowing the other person time to consider a measured response. Honestly, with those people, the only way to win is to not play at all. And as she's haranguing me about not being a victim and fighting against - what, someone tripping over me in a hallway and being a callous ass about it? - she's using what she perceives to be my personality to bully me, herself. And it only gets worse the more I refuse to play. In my head I have the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song and wishing I could, physically, eat my own head and not have to listen to this crap. Because I know I'm not being a victim by refusing to push this - I don't feel it's likely to have results. If indirect mediation will not get Twitboots to get a conscience, directly confronting her classmates on a day she may or may not be there sure as hell will not have a positive outcome for either of us. Moving the fuck on and treating it, somewhat detachedly, as though it was an annoying episode and I didn't die and bada-bing, has a positive outcome for me. "Think of justice!", the other woman ordered me. What, there's likely to be an epidemic of epic twats in boots tripping over people in hallways and not taking responsibility for it if I don't march in there and disrupt a class? This is not called being a victim, it's called being a damn realist.
But I could articulate none of this, because I could not get a word in edgewise anyway and because shouting above someone who is acting in a verbally aggressive and unsympathetic manner is Playing The Game. I can't play the game about myself and my own choices. They won't change because of external forces or people getting in my face - it has to come within me, from within my own observations, not getting yelled at. If I have to dwell on this conflict, I honestly get a physical block and response. Take it far enough, and that shit hurts - like someone's pulling out my tongue from the back. Add to that feeling like others want to force me into a conflict situation I feel is not productive; and then pile on some woman acting aggressively physically and verbally to order me to act as she would have - and that shit hurts worse. It's a crossed wire, somewhere. Empathy for another person gets jumbled with the natural human response to avoid conflict, which is mixed up with the desire to see positive outcomes and not beat my head into a brick wall when the perfect solution does not present itself, and then the strong desire to not meet aggression with verbal aggression - I may use the words "anxiety" or "worry," but really it's closer to painful overstimulation. This isn't the first time overstimulation resulted in a physical problem - for the first six months of grad school, the sound of my advisor's voice made me sob uncontrollably until I got to know her better. Some of it was anxiety, but a lot of it was simply the cadence of her speech, no matter how gentle or comforting she tried to be. And the physical response and lack of control caused me more anxiety. I choose, in this case, to not be too anxious over this particular response; analyzing it will help me adapt, just as it did with my advisor, but forcing it to stop will cause more overstimulation and it will get worse. And to be honest, while I don't win a whole lot of arguments, I also don't get into them with total strangers for no reason and that makes me happier by leagues.
When I didn't want to confront Twitboots and was avoiding the issue because I was being a wimp, I had no problems expressing that verbally. I knew exactly what was going on, and it was a natural response. I screwed up the courage and handled it by going to the professor. This specific set of circumstances, however, is different; there is no likely perfect outcome possible, other people are buttinskys about what I should do because they have a chip on their shoulder, and external forces try to make me do things I know to be unrealistic in a manner I have trouble with in the first place. It runs into a crossed wire and the result is a physical block. It's as though my brain has ordered my tongue to fly, and it tries but doesn't know how. I am content with not forcing it to until it's damn good and ready.
