Collective Pain

People imagine that being male ¹To be clear, this is statistical false at least in terms of crime reports by assigned binary gender. Overall rates of victimization by violent crime are as high or higher for for men as for women (particularly compared to white women) and have been for decades, even when violent crime was more prevalent than it is today. The specific crimes vary … Continue reading lets you not be threatened by violence. Or that being big does. But that’s not true. It can deter specific kinds of violence but, but it attracts others, and often it doesn’t allow you to avoid violence at all – the “deterrence” comes only after you engage in the conflict. At best it provides an opportunity for you to demonstrate that you’re prepared for violence, typically with additional violence. It’s maybe a thing that helps you “win” at specific forms of violence, but “winning” doesn’t protect you from the physical and emotional trauma. It doesn’t relieve you of the choice you made either to attack another human, intending to wield violence, or to subject yourself to their attack without retaliation, knowing you will be hurt.

Being male or big also gives you less access to social support after the fact, particularly if your response to violence wasn’t itself violent – if you didn’t fight back properly the attack was your fault and you deserve the pain it caused. At the same time, if your attacker is more sympathetic you’re wrong for participating, even if you only defend yourself. There’s also adverse support if you’re fluent in violence, if your response was “too much” for the survival threat that was made against you. If you show people that you’re prepared for violence and actually form a deterent with that fact, it comes at great social cost in most settings. People aren’t relieved to find out your The Hulk, they’re terrified. And you’re big and male so they feel justified in pushing you away, because you’re dangerous and you can protect yourself. Should be protecting others. Go away and be a hero with your violence, but keep it away from me.

I don’t say any of this to minimize the impact of violence against women. Among other things women are more likely to be attacked at home, which can be much more dangerous and difficult to escape. And it is useful, if you are forced into long-lived violent struggles, to be stronger than your attacker, which often puts women at a disadvantage. I have been small and attacked at home and both of those are terrible. But I later became big and apparently male and neither of those things protect me in the way I was told they would. Women and young people and other oppressed groups aren’t at risk of violence because they can be manhandled, they’re at risk because we tolerate them being mistreated in general and strip them of their rights and power and social protections. By the time physical strength is a factor the violence is already happening. Viewing protection from violence as access to violence is a violence-oriented framing that hurts us all.

My point is not that you should never be afraid of violence. If you’re in a situation where it’s likely you should absolutely be afraid and take action to protect yourself. My point is just that the stories society tells you about when and why you’ll be attacked and how you can protect yourself are wrong. They don’t match statistics about how attacks occur and they don’t teach you very good ways to stay safe. They reinforce the fear you have about the things in society that make you unsafe, like systematic oppression and the tolerance of violence in social situations. Don’t let the stories violent, powerful people yell to justify their oppression dictate your fear, your safety preparations, or most importantly your response to others who are subject to violence. We all want less and we shouldn’t let ourselves be divided in this struggle.

Dog spent a lot of today being vocally distressed. Despite being out for a walk before the game he barked and whined for most of the time people were here. He clearly had an upset tummy, and just couldn’t handle that in addition to having people around and having is main people focused on something that isn’t him. He didn’t even really want attention; he would back just out of reach if you provided scritches or other attention. Too nervous to be comforted. He was mostly fine after everyone left though; still grumbly but at least not yelling or whining. I hope he feel better tomorrow. And well enough tonight to make it until morning.

Mostly no word from Ben yet. He sent one line on Wednesday noting that he was too out of it on opioids to be anywhere but the couch. But nothing since. We’re like a week in now so probably his bones are doing enough better that he’s not going to come down. Which is fine. It would have been better to not be asked to participate. But I try to imagine that maybe just me offering to help empowers him to take better care of himself.

I haven’t felt great myself over the weekend. Nothing too demanding was required of me, but even without a lot of events scheduled it was still plenty busy for my energy level. I didn’t get much done and also didn’t spend much time on distraction; usually one of those two things happen. But even with all my errands done on Friday and an early evening that day I still didn’t get to even opening my laptop until Sunday night. And not even close to things like helping my friends or pulling up a chat server; I hardly got though the error messages. It’s easy for my brain to imagine I just wasted the time away doing something frivolous or engaged in some sort of productive avoidance, but I didn’t get get to frivolity or distraction. I did watch a movie and play a game of D&D but otherwise I was mostly sleeping.

Which is perhaps expected after a hard week, but it would be nice to feel energetic again after a couple of days of it. Instead I’m still tired. My core systems were not great today, acid stomach, inconsistent appetite, moderate headache, sweating. The sort of things I typically just ignore. That I did ignore today, other than taking an antacid at some point. That I may have ignored Saturday as well but honestly can’t remember. Which is the reason I’m trying to talk about my health: if I don’t I can’t even tell when it’s bad.

I did spend a fair deal of time trying to help Shanda, this weekend. You’ve been pretty anxious. Sometimes because of specific choices we made, like deciding to push into a project you knew would likely trigger you. But sometimes for more general reasons, or against standing stresses. And you’re still having some trouble seeing it. Like everyone else you probably need 9 months of time off just to let the residual pressure bleed down. But hopefully we can find ways to make that happen in real life.

And we spent some time with you trying to help me. It often felt very provisional, when your anxiety pushed into my need and made you afraid to engage, but I appreciate you trying. And I think we did achieve some progress on the logic side of things, which I hope will help in future interactions. You’re closer to being able to help me with hand holding, I think. And you did a bunch of practical stuff to make up for me being lumpy this weekend.

D&D went fine this week. Better game play than the last few sessions, other than the way he insisted that the child NPC function. I got to shoot blindly at an unseen driver in a nondescript van we didn’t bother to identify but just assumed was bad. There are no consequences for murder in this game, even of unrelated NPCs, even literally in front of a police station. If anything we’re rewarded for it, and punished by the corporate powers of the world for noting being quicker to the killing. I can’t wait until we can get back to politically-motivated terrorism, so I can feel better about our work. Maybe next session, though Shanda negotiated an extension of this narrative for some reason, even though the GM was ready to write it off.

I got an hour or so of book in. I continue to be impressed with N. K. Jemisin and her Fifth Season series. The social dynamics are really well done, both internal an external, and the book has many things to say. Things that reach far enough out to speak even to me, which is impressive for a book that’s often about survival. Frequently survival stories don’t connect with me, but this one see the way that survival is hard on your soul. How it’s not about having the resiliency to stay true to yourself in hard times, it about having the adaptability to reshape yourself to do what the times demand, and the willingness to pay that price. Not just once but many times, eating more of your soul each time you’re foolish enough to attempt to protect it.

I have a lot of trouble with group identity, not just with membership but even imagining that I’m allowed to feel like we share a certain kind of pain. I’m often ashamed to find myself feeling like I can relate to any narrative of oppression, or even individual hardship. I’m so carefully sure that things are harder for everyone else and that my self-comparison is a selfish act that belittles those who have actually suffered. Which is all lies Mother taught me to keep me from complaining. Lies I built into a lifetime of never feeling like I could keep up with everyone else even as I did so much more than most. There are so many parts of my past that are abuse but that my brain is sure are examples of me unjustly feeling bad after I failed to perform as well as a real human would. And now I feel that way about all hardships. That mine are never bad enough to even bear mentioning, for fear I’m being too narcissistic merely by comparing my pain to others, even when they invite it.

I’m starting to see how this pervasive view of my early life is flawed. That’s sort of my standard reaction now when I recontextualize my childhood – to see how much work I was doing to try to keep other people from noticing how hard my life was. For a while now I’ve been able to see some of the work I did to support my direct survival. And I’ve long been aware of some of the more overt management of Mother that I did when I got older. But I spent my whole life not just trying to stay alive by managing myself and my household and the kids and Mother, but also Pete and my teachers and everyone else who interacted with me ²Occasionally someone else could see. Often other young people, who weren’t trained to believe my lies and who just saw my need. Sometimes one of them would help me find the right bus, share part of their lunch, or invite me to hide behind them while a threat subsidied. A few of you were to those people to me. Many of you can be those people … Continue reading. I could see how my struggles upset them, and I worked so hard to either make those failures invisible or to frame them in a way that made them acceptably my fault. Mother trained me so well to see their reactions to me – to her, really – and to understand those reactions as proof of my failure to properly care for other people.

And so I learned to live a life where I do not compare my pain to that of others. Where my first question is always “how can I hurt people less”. Where I am made genuinely joyful by finding some way to help people with things too hard for them to even talk about. But I do all of it imagining that I’m not one of the people. That my pain is caused by my inhumanity, that I will hurt people merely by interacting with them, that I am forbidden the joy other people appreciating my help or even existence. It lets me do many amazing things, and also builds a wall of manipulation between me and other people.

I’ve described this manipulation as a thing I do to other people. Lies I tell to help them be less hurt by me. But it’s sort of the other way around. It’s manipulation I do to myself to support the idea that I’m harmful, and to keep other people from trying to desuade me. I imagine I’m protecting people by not letting my life upset them, but the right reaction often is to be upset. And the real lie I’m telling is that neither of us should be upset. I’m protecting myself from the idea that Mother is trying to kill me. That Pete doesn’t care that I’m dying. That all the pain I feel was given to me by people who are too selfish to even notice it’s happening, let alone care about it.

I’m not sure how to externalize my abuse. To see the pain as my reaction to it instead of a thing I create. Maybe that’s not even the plan; there is so much pain I fear I will still have to protect people from it, or few people will ever be able to stand me. But maybe I can move the wall back a step, so that the pain isn’t me. So that when I do share it and people correctly react with distress, it can be a reaction we share to it, not a reaction they have against me.

My pain is so personal and pervasive and shameful that I have trouble imagining it’s not a lie I tell to get sympathy. And so much a part of me that I often experience my own personality and desires and needs as a failing to be a real human. Particularly if any of those push me even an inch outside of the roles I adopt to make people comfortable.

All of which gives me a very cynical view on identity groups – it’s the sort of thing I have only ever adopted if the role made me more acceptable and less disturbing to others. None of the roles are for me, they’re just things I do so people aren’t hurt by me while I try to stay alive. I can’t let myself connect to them because that might hurt people who really are in pain, who really do belong to this group, who are real humans.

And that pushes so far down that even when I’m invited to empathize with a group, when I’m shown examples of how our struggles are the same, when I can place myself into the continuum they describe its still not enough to free me from my shameful isolation. I not only can’t be part of the group but I can’t even allow myself to think I know what it’s like. Can’t allow myself to imagine that I’ve ever experienced pain that lets me know the smallest fraction of what real humans experience every day. And I cannot let anyone see how selfish I am to even be tempted, can’t let my inhuman desire for safety or connection motivate me to the crime of vain glorious self pity.

Please don’t ever imagine you’re protecting me by keeping something from me. Maybe some people can be protected like that, but for me it’s pure pain. Being isolated is the worst thing that ever happened to me and protecting people from that is one of the ways I contributed to my own abuse. So don’t protect me. Loop me in. Even if you don’t want anything to change or anyone to respond. You won’t ever make my life worse in doing so.

Work tomorrow, and I have to make some progress on the SRs I totally ignored last week. Should be plausible but they’re getting old enough that the daily pressure (external or internal) could be high. I’ve got a couple of hours between my last meeting and the gym tomorrow, which should help. This week I also need to get my hairs cut, to the post office, new glasses, to robots, and some research and work done for you. I had hoped to get some work done for myself this weekend and I’d still love to make that happen in the next couple of days, in part because there’s a deadline for sharing bits of it. But we’ll see how it goes; my plans thus far are busy enough that more would mean being overworked or choosing to throw things out.

And I’ve hardly had any time for the amount of worry I usually put into each of you, so I should find some time for that as well. Ideally mostly the productive kind of worry where it lets me try or learn new ways to help you. But I’d settle for the fearful kind where it’s sort of distressing to have not enough information and a failing sense of connection and no control whatsoever, because I’ve taught myself to feel a connection even from that when there’s nothing better available.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.