Conformity, Compliance & Control

Let’s see if my life is sane enough for me to get back to daily The Screeds. Maybe even some where I do something other than desperately try to process my day via telegram or just list all the things I need you to know for future context and hoping you can extrapolate some feels.

Got gas service restored today, so cooking and hot water and heat are all part of my life again. I’m trying not to let a day without reinforce my feeling that it’s never safe to be without fuel and spark*. There weren’t even any particularly bad outcomes, it was just inconvenient. But it sure makes me feel unprepared logistically, and for me that’s a non-trivial source of fear and shame. Today though the household is safe and warm, and I’ll try to limit myself to the 3 days of emergency consumables for the standard complement of the household, and to understand that being within walking distance of the hospital probably means hemostatic control granules are overkill. And I already managed to avoid turning the gas on myself, which feels like a reasonable degree of self-control.

Got another bit of homework today, in the form of physical goods. Things for eating and burning and writing. I think that’s submissions from all but one of you — great job. I really appreciate everyone working to support me (and at least indirectly, each other) with a little bit of sharing. It helps me feel like it might be possible to build a general-purpose support procedure; that compliance is something I can ask for without hurting people, even when I do it for my own benefit. That my control isn’t inherently harmful.

So let me assign new homework to the group — ask me to do something for you. I will attempt to comply if you do. I’ll definitely talk about it here, but only in the same first-person way I talk about everything else so it should still be pretty anonymous.

I’ve been thinking about the way other people see my non-conformity, and about the interaction between compliance and conformity. I sometimes feel like non-conformity — one of the few attributes I value in myself — is at odds with any attempt to comply. That I’m failing myself, and perhaps everyone who sees me as their Taliesin, any time I choose compliance. But the two are quite distinct — compliance is a submission to external authority, whereas conformity it submission the perception of normalcy. I am not “normal” and do not wish to be, at least not unless it directly serves a specific goal. Sometimes that makes me non-compliant. But it’s not a requirement, and I don’t have to value the non-compliance itself merely because it’s sometimes aligned with non-conformity. It’s totally reasonable for me to submit to authority when I believe authority will harm me, just like it’s reasonable for me to refuse to submit because I believe it will harm me. Authority is the bit that’s harmful and I can do whatever I like to comply or refuse, in service of my values rather than in spite of them.

I’m worried about M choosing compliance over control; or perhaps choosing a single point to exert control and complying on many other points to keep your hand on that one lever. It’s hard for me to tell if my worry is based on anything that will actually help you — for all I know that lever is singularly important and should be your only focus. Certainly I understand why it feels that way to you, and have often felt the same way myself. But I worry nonetheless. My experience eventually taught me that having more levers is can be more important than having complete control of a single one, but I need to be careful not to project. I want to conform to your actual needs and goals, and to be sure I don’t demand compliance just to satisfy my anxiety. I’m pretty sure my commitment to that sort of care is why you’re letting me stay here in the first place. But it’s hard for me to find the the balance — even if it’s the best and only plan watching you hold your breath*** makes me wish I could make things better. I’m confident that have and can execute a plan to someday rise above the flood, but I also worry that you’re afraid to breathe merely because you’re so used to drowing.

I had an insight today, while rambling about myself. A new point of speculation that might let me reach out again. I don’t really have any new information, but I made a new connection and I can take another run at a thing I haven’t been able to make work yet**. One-way messages based on speculation and emotion, carefully crafted to slide off if they don’t take, are sort of my thing∆. So I might as well give it a shot.

Shanda is off to Chicago tomorrow with B. And Rev is off to live with Ben for a few days. Hopefully both of those pairings will improve people’s lives. And then on the 3rd we’ll all be back together, at least for a week. Missing people (and dogs) is hard, but I’m so glad it’s actually a thing I can do now. I lived for so long convinced that being attached to anyone or anything was unacceptable, and prepared to ghost my whole life or any part thereof on no notice. For a long time I had to, as a matter of survival; it’s not a misconception I had, it was my actual, terrible life. But it’s not anymore, and I get to miss things. To want and need things. And to expect not to be punished for it. At least not until some authority comes along to demand my compliance.

Dictated but not read,
ZiB

*And water and food and 20 other things from traumatic wound treatment to emergency comms.

**I’m always slightly unclear on whether or not anything I do ever works, since “no response” is often the most informative outcome I can expect. But definitely this hasn’t worked.

***Holding your breath: When you explain that if all your plans work as you hope you might finally have time to love a dog several months from now, and even then only because your previous plans for that period have recently become less demanding.

∆I need a shorter name for this thing. I like how I’ve reduced 25% of my personality to “logistical preparedness”. If we could get another 35% into a couple of words that mean “I shout blindly at people about the things I imagine connecting their observable emotional state and tiny objective facts about their existence to things I want to share about“ I’d be like halfway to a dating profile. Or at least an obituary†.

†That there is a logistical preparedness joke about death.

ßThis isn’t a footnote, but I wanted to share that the default loose-match text comparator in OS X — the thing that lets you find å and à and æ when you search for “a” — also lets you find “ss” when you search for ß. Just in case you’re searching a mixed German-English document with inconsistent transliteration I guess.