Eccentric Flower:200002/False Starts

I want everyone to read this very carefully, because it was hard to write, and it's not especially coherent, and I'm not returning to this subject again any time soon.

Normally you see these entries exactly as they come from my head. This one has gone through multiple drafts. The first one was deliberately obnoxious; I was angry and I wanted to make everyone else angry too. The second one was calmer and even meaner - a quiet set of words meant to stiletto everyone in the gut, instead of clubbing them on the skull.

This draft contains nothing but a set of false starts. I don't think it says what I need to say. I don't think I know how to say what I need to say.

Try to wade through this and see if you can get anywhere close to what I mean.

1

I said that people don't want the truth. Karen told me that was condescending. Patrick asked me if I meant the truth, or my idea of the truth. They're both right, but only because I said it wrong in the first place.

What I should have said - and here I'm trying to be as accurate as I can - is that I have decided it's better to not tell my friends what I think of them. So, from now on, I'm not going to. And if I'd learned my lesson two days ago, you wouldn't be reading this now, so there's the proof of the exercise.

The object here is to avoid pain. The way to avoid pain, obviously, is to omit information.

2

I draw conclusions without sufficient data sometimes. Everyone does. But it's different in a place like, say, mouth organ. There the debate goes like this:

1. I see an article or something that annoys me.
2. I fire off an opinion, sometimes half-baked.
3. Some people think I'm being an idiot, or working without a complete set of facts, or both. They throw my opinion back in my face with corrections attached.
4. I consider this, check more facts, and form a fresh opinion.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until equilibrium is reached.

This is the same way I expect my friends to behave with me. I expect them to say, "Hey, you're being a moron, and here's what I think," and then I tell them, "Well, you're missing this piece of information here," and then we proceed from there without any sort of emotional shrapnel.

But this doesn't work the other way 'round. That's what I mean when I say I can't tell my friends what I think. What happens there is:

1. I see something that annoys me.
2. I fire off an opinion.
3. The other person gets incredibly hurt. Maybe they correct my mistakes and maybe they don't, but even if they do, irrevocable emotional damage has been done.

And there's a fourth part, which is very important:

4. Because they've reacted in a way which I didn't expect and which leaves me looking like a brute, I get both sad and angry. I tend to write off the whole friendship at that point, say "Well, I've clearly got no idea how to play this 'friend' game," and take my marbles and go home.

3

Karen said that some of my comments sounded like I felt I was the only capable person in the universe - that I was tremendously worried everyone else would screw up. That's exactly backwards, I'm afraid.

I expect to constantly screw up. I expect everyone else to do it better than I do.

When I see someone making what I think is a Big Mistake, my impulse to call them out is not because I'm thinking, "hey, I can run your life better than you" - it's because I'm worried that it might actually be a mistake and good gravy, what do you mean you're not infallible?

I would be really foolish if I expected everyone to run their lives the way I run mine, because my self-worth hovers near zero except for brief flashes of brilliance, and if you did it my way, you'd also be making my mistakes.

I want to prevent everyone from making any mistakes. I want to yell at everyone who does make mistakes. I want everyone to yell at me when I make a mistake. I want there to be no mistakes whatsoever.

I know I know, I'm blind and dumb and naive. And easily disillusioned, which is where I am this evening after reading my email, most of which is telling me how wrong I am.

I know, I said I like being told when I'm wrong. And I do ... but in this case my mail means bad things for my future which depress me. I'm still glad I got the mail. I'm unhappy about its consequences.

4

I expect a friendship to contain no hidden angers, no secret irritations that chafe. I expect that friends can tell each all the things that irritate them about the other.

My expectations, I think, are wrong. In two places.

First, I have never had a friend where there weren't hidden angers. It pisses me off. I shouldn't have things that annoy me about my friends, but I do. And the better I know someone, the more likely it is that something about them will annoy me.

(I will stipulate that I am easily annoyed.)

Second, I can't air the dirty laundry. This is the part I should have learned ages ago. If I say to someone, "Listen, this is really bothering me about you," if I vent it all, it'll make me feel like a great weight has been lifted from my back. Poof! I have spoken my piece and it doesn't chafe so much anymore.

Meanwhile the other person has decided never to speak to me again, save for the final email in which they tell me what an evil bitch I've been to say something like that.

I have - tonight - reluctantly come to the conclusion that the only way to retain a friendship is to keep my mouth shut. And that stinks. It makes me unhappy.

It's therefore a choice: Have me be unhappy for their benefit, or have them be unhappy for my benefit. Why does it have to be that way? Why does it always have to be that way?

You can see that the inside of my head is a little bit of a mess right now.

Damn it, I just want things to be smooth. I want to be able to say what I like and not have to worry that I'm pissing off someone who's important to me. I don't get to have that, but I can't shake the idea that it's not an unreasonable expectation.

Some days I just don't want to play at all. Tonight I very nearly burned a bridge. I nearly wrote a friend of mine an email which could have been classified as hazardous munitions, illegal for export. I wanted so bad to tell him/her everything nasty that I have stored up against him/her, just to see how mad I could make him/her, just to see how much of the irritation I could give back, just to escalate the pain we've caused each other in the past beyond repair.

Why on earth would I want to do something like that?

Because on nights like this, when I'm sick and exhausted and still haven't written the cheerful entry I've planned for three days because of all this crap, it suddenly looks attractive to write off everyone and say, "to hell with it, play by my rules or leave me alone."

But the problem with that is then everyone leaves me alone.