This feeling doesn't belong to me, but I suppose I deserve it well enough.

I haven't been vocal enough. That's all. About a year ago I was the kind of person who was so preoccupied with everyone else's wellbeing that I didn't even notice my own. I would spend most of my free time checking up with people or trying to, and there was never a time I felt alone. So much so that when I finally would be alone in a place for more than an hour, things would feel really weird and I wouldn't remember what happened.
Clearly, something had to go. And something did, but I'm not sure if it had a name, or ever truly was a thing at all.
I brought up grit in my last post. I don't think this is quite the same, though it is close and leads me to think that from other perspectives than my own, it sounds like I say the same shit over and over.
I think it would be cathartic for me to go through my rollodex person by person, and wring out a litany of personal injuries and complaints in each person's presence. Cathartic, but unhelpful, I'm sure. All I can legitimately account for and alter constructively is my own behavior, and frankly I'm stuck as to how to do that right now. Every time I think I have a way to approach someone with a specific gripe, I'm delayed, blocked, or not informed enough to make a decision.
Here's the thing: no one wants to be criticized. At least, none of my friends do, it seems. I'll provide the three counterexamples:
Maranda. Everytime I have something to criticize about her, I do it as soon as it comes up. I am blessed to have begun our interaction with that kind of understanding, and expect any friends I make in the future will follow with that kind of trend, because now I am wise enough to only allow myself to interact more than superficially with people whom I know will take to heart my tias with grace and dignity, or at least have the perspecacity to hear me out. Bringing up how freely I communicate with her is tantemount to cheating at this point, so perhaps it would be best for me to move on. I will say that she abides my correcting her spelling all the time, but doesn't seem to work to alter it. I'm sure that stroke orders are ousting that knowledge, though.
Thompson. The key differences here are the nature of the complaints and the nature of my enacting them. Again it is the same kind of thing time after time, and I'm not sure how keen he is to hear me bug him about his habits. The only way you can break habits is by repetition, though, that is to say, forming other, better habits; before I render to much more damage to the comma, I'd better finish this up. Even when he really doesn't like what I have to say, he has enough grace to pay attention to it, usually a day or so later when we're both more cool and rational.
Gitta. I admit I take a subtle profane pleasure in every minor vitriolic barb I throw Gitta's way, largely for her own characteristic of didactic criticism, like a pun made of actions instead of words. Though I suppose some of those actions are themselves speaking. Hrm. Anyway, her big secret is that she's thoughtful, rational, and compassionate beneath a thick and calculated veneer of her own vitriol. So I think at this point we consider it sweet of each other to unreservedly criticize. I could be wrong.
Josh. When he's around and alone I can call things to his attention. Those qualifiers have been slackening of late, which leads to the really bad thing that is me holding comments in reserve until the next appropriate time for me to speak. His big secret is that he actually likes the planet and all the people who inhabit it, and moveover is a big, cuddly teddy bear. Most of what I criticize him for is some specific instance of him not being true to that.
Courtney. I have a lot of things that I criticize her about. Almost all of them is minor, and she always listens. I have given her and her husband Rob the most heartful and most severe promise of criticism that I ever gave anyone, and to my delight they have taken it exactly as I intended. Again, from the very beginning we had an understanding that almost vicious mutual honesty would be most beneficial.

As for everything else, I do my best to body-check people into conveying opinions as opinions and learning about the things they spout off about. Nothing fuels opinionatedness and polarization more than ignorance does. Even writing this has helped me understand a lot about what I value in friends. All of the above is intended as praise. I refrain from public condemnation unless specifically asked. And yes, I take subtexted demands the same way as literal ones, so if you're really asking for it, I'll give it to you. There is no greater expression of politeness.
Which brings me to my next topic: how advice is a form of vandalism.
Vandalism is a spiritual crime, and therefore part of my bailiwick and modus as a witch doctor. A vandal steals a part of your spirit the way a burglar steals the stereo from your car. The difference is that a vandal, however randomly acting, has a divergent aesthetic from yours, and seeks to replace your aesthetic with his own. You like things to look a certain way, and so does he, and he disagrees and is willing to back up that disagreement by altering the aesthetic of your belongings. Vandalism is a question that demands an answer, and the volume of the demand is proportional to how connected one is to one's own aesthetic. That is to say, victims make the act of vandalism important or not, not the vandals themselves.
Advice is a form of vandalism. What the advice-giver is vandalizing is the aesthetic of the advice-taker's understanding. My words of criticism may just as well be spraypainted on the hood of your car for as often as I am chafed for the giving. But that is my nature as a vandal, and my expectation for reactions most of the time. It is everything I can do to make my words fall on your ears more like chalk on your sidewalk than like your tears that fall like rain.

I couldn't resist the joke. May as well chuckle now as someone is going to get pissed off.

Back to Old News