Tuna Terror

Here’s a sad story. Not a new one but relevant to a feeling I want to talk about. When I was maybe 5, and Alex was about 2, we were unsupervised for lunch. This was not uncommon but the level of supervision was particularly low, as Mother was away and Pete was outside working on something. I made myself tuna for lunch, as I did many days, and I helped Alex make hers too. We both prepared bread and whatever we condiment we were each allowed and with some effort I got the can open (which is real work when you’re 5). I drained it and took my share and left Alex to hers. I was a bit resentful to be left I charge of her food – worried that if I did well enough at it that it would become my sole responsibility – and aware she often didn’t like what I made for myself. Tuna wasn’t high on her list, but I knew she was hungry today after not having breakfast, and so would probably eat it. Not that there were other choices.

She did eat it. Or tried to. She cut herself pretty badly on the can. I’ve told this story before from the perspective of being abandoned, or about Pete making me sacrifice to protect himself. But here’s another angle: I was ashamed to not be able to see that she would need more help. I had tried to help. I was grumpy about it but I had gotten the pieces out for her and used the knife and opened the can – all the hard parts – and I just left her to decide how much tuna she wanted because I didn’t know if she would eat much (or any). I know that me being responsible for her is a lie old people told me. I can see how that is unreasonable, even if it’s what my life required at the time.

But I also am ashamed to not have known that she needed and deserved more help. I was basing my decisions about how to help on my assumption that she was prepared to protect herself from hazards like ragged edges. I had been, or had made myself so, when I was her age. I had to be. I didn’t get to go to the hospital when I got hurt, so I had to not get hurt (and be prepared to deal with it myself if I did). I was ashamed to know that making things safe enough for me wasn’t safe enough for other people. It’s one of the ways I feel like not a real boy. Of course she needed more help. She was 2 and her mushy food was in a sharp-edged metal container. I needed more help too. But I couldn’t even tell that was the case, and it resulted in people being hurt. Good enough, warm enough, safe enough, fed enough – those aren’t for me, and it can be easy for me to forget that other people need more than me. I can forget that other people aren’t prepared to live as subhuman. And I’m ashamed and guilty when it happens – when I forget my place and pretend that my experience can be compared to real humans.

That feeling still happens to me, when I try to care for people today. These days I usually catch myself before I put someone else into a dangerous situation, which is great for outcomes for others but still tells my brain that I’m on the outside. Still leaves me believing that real people need better things than I can have for myself. Still leaves me eating last, after everyone is done, after the dishes are cleaned up and the leftovers put away. Still leaves me not knowing how to be a good big brother ¹Clearly in my head this means “parent” but I couldn’t see that at the time – I couldn’t imagine parents providing that sort of care. And of course I couldn’t provide adequate parenting, which lots of unhelpful people told me while I was in situations with no obvious alternative (and no offer from them to change that). These days the … Continue reading without ever having seen one for myself. Still proves that I can’t be one even now.

I thought some about the way I often don’t care if people learn anything about me. There are lots of parts to that feeling, including sometimes wanting to be invisible or wanting to be sufficiently compliant and undemanding do as to avoid anyone’s ire. One aspect I’d like to change is the idea that I don’t really need anyone to learn what I like or what will be good for me because ultimately I will have to do it without them, so it doesn’t really matter. Why would I care if you know what food I like, how to help with my chronic illness, what my plans for the future are – you’ll definitely be gone by the time any of that matters. This, like everything else in my life, is a thing I will defiantly have to manage in my own eventually, so why go through the pain of giving up support later. I can see how this is a fearful distortion, and I should spend some time pulling apart the layers so I can address it. Getting a box full of things that someone remembered I liked was a useful reminder that there are other ways to feel about this.

I did a light week with my therapist. I wasn’t up for another week of breakup songs. The topic was tools for making mundane parts of my day job easier to get started. My old motivation about day job (and previously school or the like) was pragmatism and fear: I have decided this is what I want or need and I’m going to do it regardless of how I feel. I’m going to make myself if necessary, even if it’s very unpleasant, and so I don’t want to spend a lot of time thinking about it because detachment is easier to overcome than dread, and if I think about it I might start to dread it. I’ve spent the last decade getting away from that sort of thinking and I have been pretty successful – I am now rarely motivated by fear, and rarely at risk of needing to undertake anything truly dreadful, at least not for the day job.

But I haven’t worked out new tools to yet, to have better motivations for things I do not expect to make me feel good or satisfied or relieved. I am still a bit afraid that showing the capability for something will make it my responsibility, just like I was making lunch for Alex. Capitalism often demands this, which makes the day job extra hard because it’s abusive. We do it to each other sometimes when we have the right set of interlocking fears – when codependency or similar poor interactions lead to matching bits of avoidance. I also feel like there are cases when I can’t really have help, because jobs often arrange for this to be true. These days I’m pretty good at identifying and ignoring parts that can just be skipped, but there are things that would be missed if skipped. For those I have to just do them until others are satisfied, even though I lack the capability to genuinely resolve the issue.

I think the part I want to do differently is pay attention to the ways I feel that make work harder or easier, and arrange my life to do work when the eaiser bits are up. There are lots of factors here related to my mental and physical state, and I do pay attention to the ones that mean I can’t or shouldn’t work. But I ignore a lot of the ones that contribute to how I feel about getting work done, about sitting still for 2 hours doing something boring, about contributing to the oppression that is Capitalism. I can probably find periods in which work isn’t as difficult to care about, and with practice maybe create more opportunities for them when I need them.

So therapy was fine. It was worthwhile to line up all the feelings I have, think about where they come from, and look at things that make it easier or harder. It’s great to have some time blocked out and a deadline that demands an internal topic. It is something I could have worked on here, more or less by myself, but the extrinsic motivation is useful, and there are sometimes bits of reassurance that it would be difficult to generate internally.

My therapist makes promises about being able help to find different kinds aid, but I don’t really believe you, for a number of reasons. This one is perhaps full of confirmation bias, but it has been a highly reliable indicator in my life – people who feel like they need to protect themselves when I explain what sort of help I need are unlikely to be able to help. In fact any offer from them to “help” after this intial fear is dangerous because they are liable to attempt or offer things that are at best a delay or distraction and at worst actively harmful. I read this fear in my therapist’s behavior, when I ask for help with parts of my life.

This isn’t an irrational fear. My life has always been full of complicated parts and it’s sensible for people to be afraid of them. I am. It’s perfectly reasonable to protect yourself from things that are dangerous and that you cannot control. To protect yourself from things that would keep you from being safe. It’s rational to not be perpared to engage with things that the world tells us cannot be changed. I don’t hold this reaction against people, but in my experience it is a reliable indicator of their inability to even understand what help would be, let alone provide it.

And it’s a fear that people who have been able to help me haven’t shown. People who don’t react this way may not have anything to offer right now, which is significantly more reassuring than an unconvincing offer for help. And sometimes they can help, with things that most people are unprepared to offer. I rarely need help with things that a pamphlet knows an answer about. This situation exists because the standard answers are insufficient – I already checked. So I need help doing something unusual, sometimes dangerous, perhaps technically illegal, in service of my goal. People prepared to offer that – people who know what that is – aren’t afraid when I ask for it. Or more specifically they aren’t any more afraid than before I asked, because it isn’t a change from their status quo.

I’ve tried to work my way into this, in an attempt to weed out my assumptions from the truth. But it hasn’t gone great. I tried first asking for help with another person, in a professional context, and via email so I wouldn’t be unduly influenced by initial, uncontrollable facial expressions or momentary lack of eloquence. The response though came as a threat, not a support. With further discussion the response became a promise, but not a discussion of how that promise might be kept. I provided assurance that the timescale was long and tried to engage with storytelling – a main component of LI and so familiar in our relationship – but couldn’t get any help with a story about how this promise might become reality.

That’s about par for the course with my therapist. I’ve asked for help with a number of specific professional topics and responses have been unreliable at best, if not entirely absent. I couldn’t get help when I asked for ways to do more education about psychology and therapy. I couldn’t get help when I asked for better understanding of terminology used in our sessions. I couldn’t get help when I responded to pamphlets about topics that we discussed.

I couldn’t get guidance on how to help find therapists with and for other people, on more than one occasion, which makes it difficult to believe there will be help for me. You imagine there’s some transition you can help with, but I don’t trust your concept of help, or even your understanding of the challenge. I am not hopeless; I think there are other options. But I know from experience that it’s expensive for me to find one, and I have little confidence that it will ultimately be much better.

I did get help finding a physician, and one that didn’t move to protect themselves when I asked for help. I’ve only talked to them twice but its still encouraging. Unfortunately I didn’t ask for that – wasn’t managing the process – so I don’t know how to repeat it. And I sort of doubt you do either.

Plus I’m trying to convince M this is a workable process – I genuinely believe that it can be, when we can find the time to do it – so I should probably find a way to feel more hopeful about it myself.

ZiB

—
Sent from a phone.

• 

• 

• 

•