Note: I originally wrote this many months ago, maybe nine months or more, while I was still wrestling with an insoluble conflict that I have since recognized was insoluble. That particular day my mind and soul were smarting from the ongoing fucking they’d endured for many, many months.
I came to see that recognizing that the people I was in the conflict with were not capable of resolving conflict was the only exit from that conflict.
I kept intending to come back and rewrite this piece, edit it a bit, but I never did. I put it on auto publish for a remote date. That day turned out to be today. Anyway, here it is.
When I’m wrestling with something that upsets me, for example a long dispute over whether it is reasonable for me to feel upset — no matter how intolerable a situation may have become or how long it is extended — I have to be judicious in what I say to the few good friends I still have. Sekhnet can understand a good deal of what I’m upset about, but she reaches a breaking point, as we all do, trying to think about a conflict so seemingly straightforward to resolve but mindfucking in its prolonged difficulty to put right.
There are contradictions in human behavior that can drive us mad, people cannot process such difficult things, or even sit with feelings about them for very long without getting frustrated. Frustration is a short step from anger, and that flares easily enough when confronted with a problem without a solution, or a problem whose only possible solution lies in remaining supernaturally patient, kind and understanding, no matter what the other parties to the conflict do to make that difficult.
If your patience is rewarded with ongoing accusations of ill-will, it is very hard to remember that everyone is truly doing the best they can within their limitations. It is not fair, after a certain point, to expect others to be of much help with things so personally painful and so long impossible to fix. At such times, seeing I am placing an impossible burden on someone I love, I have to remind myself to shoulder the fucking thing myself, which I am still not good at doing.
“I’m going up to sit down with my shrink,” I said to Sekh just now. And here I am, sitting in front of this page.
In writing, thinking, rewriting, we can often see things more clearly than when senselessly arguing with people about views they need to dispute every detail of. Shouldn’t sitting down to write be the end of it, write in my diary and learn what I can from the exercise? Why post these sessions for anybody to see? Aren’t these private thoughts about interpersonal pain that are nobody else’s business but mine and whoever it is I claim acted poorly toward me? They are private thoughts about painful feelings, but, if unexpressed, these feelings will literally choke me to death.
The reason I post them is to be aware of every word I write, to weigh my experience against counter-arguments, to write as though the whole world is watching, so to speak, causing me to choose my words with care. I write to clarify, and simplify, things that are impossible to make clear in the snarl of understandable defensive rebuttals.
The only antidote to forced silence during a conflict is dialogue, and if speech is forbidden, or topics placed out of bounds, and a written attempt to begin reconciliation is ignored, the only way for me, personally, to avoid choking to death on that conundrum is to post my wrestling match with those concerns here, in generic form. If my need to make myself clear, to understand something that has become maddening, is more important to me than making sure people who are keeping their distance from me would not be hurt to read these words, it’s a trade off I have to make, to preserve what’s left of my sanity. A calculated risk I have to take sometimes because this exercise is essential to my ability to remain at all calm in the face of prolonged demands to understand others while the simple reciprocal good will I need is dismissed and I am blamed for all the bad feelings anyone has.
Few people read these posts anyway. Names are not mentioned. The likelihood of anyone I am in conflict with clicking on anything here is very small. What they read may make them feel defensive sometimes (as I’m told the title of a previous post on friendship, I hope this doesn’t sound judgmental does — in fact, without the title it drew a snide comment), but we are already in a burning emotional cul de sac, a massive shit fire with no way out except through talk, which has been delayed for many months, for a variety of sometimes perfectly good sounding reasons.
Another reason to put these issues here is to set out thoughts that can hopefully be useful to others who may find themselves in a similar predicament. It’s a relief to read something that makes you realize you are not alone in something mind-fuckingly hard you are going through. Nothing that happens to any of us is unique to our lives, there are variations of things that cause us our specific pain all around. It can be helpful to read somebody else’s best ideas about dealing with something you may have gone through, are going through. We are all damaged, in different ways, all human, we all fall prey to various weaknesses that keep us from always acting the way we hope to act.
There is no shame in failing to remain your best self at all times, and no harm, as long as you can acknowledge it when it‘s necessary, make amends and try to do better. Denial and counter-attack don’t help much, to state it as nonjudgementally as I can.
Many people have been raised by parents who were immature, unable to rise above childish reactions to their frustrations. Only a lucky few have been raised by gentle, always kind and thoughtful parents who generally know what to do when their child is upset, or needs something from them they feel challenged to provide. Such parents knew how to do this because they were lucky enough to be raised by such parents, or other family members or supportive adults or they had great therapeutic insights after a ton of hard work.
Most children have to accommodate themselves to whatever their parents’ weaknesses are, accept being unfairly blamed, hit, snarled at, cursed, faulted for things that were only in small part their fault, expected to accept a story about them that makes little or no sense and take the adult’s shady version as the final word.
Life itself is a sometimes shady story that seems to make little or no sense at times. We puny earthlings are sometimes forced to do things we can’t really defend, our emotions get the best of our better impulses, our temper flares and afterwards we feel forced to somehow justify things we know we shouldn’t have done. It is hard to admit you hurt somebody you love, hard to live with the guilt of being reminded you allowed a bad impulse to lash out, so we create scenarios in which we are actually the victim of the person who hurtfully insists we hurt them. Many people simply hunker down behind their walls, wait for the hurt party to finally realize they are never, ever going to be fucking heard, clam up, and hope that once enough time passes in silence, everything will somehow be OK with that wounded loved one. Sounds like a reasonably insightful plan of action, no?
The only solution, sometimes, is striving to remain the calm adult in a room full of hurt children, suffering over emotional pain they have never been able to get any kind of useful handle on. Try that one sometime, hardest fucking thing I’ve ever tried to do.
Thanks for being there for me, Doc. I can see our time is up. The check’s in the mail, and this time I’m not lying.
gratuitousblahg 