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shadowkatTaking a break from my DVD/TV veg fest, to do a bit of writing. Actually it wasn't that much of a fest, I watched two films, fell asleep during the first one, ate dinner during the second. This morning was devoted to Xmas shopping for Dad, and groceries (no food). Dad got two books: Karen Armstrong's The History of God, and the new biography of Magellan's Circumnavigation of the Globe. While there, I saw a book that I lusted after but could not afford yet - "The Annotated Grimm's Fairy Tales". Oh it's just lovely and so cool. Now, I've seen the Annotated Alice, Wizard of Oz, and Sherlock Holmes, and none of them grabbed me, but this baby? OOOOH Shiny. I want it. Badly. It not only the old tales, but it captures the sections of the old tales that were deleted over time as being unsuitable for children. Complete with mythological and psychoanalytical references. For anyone who has ever studied/analyzed fairy tales or folklore - this is a must have. But, alas, too expensive. So I bought, somewhat guiltily, The Princess Bride by William Goldman and
George RR Martin's A Game of Thorns, which has been recommended to me by three people on my flist. Now, I have not read an epic fantasy in ages, so we'll see if I like it. And it may be a while until I get to it - have to read The Dogs of Babel first for my tiny book club. It has shrunk to three women now.
Watched JL Unlimited, Wake the Dead. Interesting episode. The episode was about a former teammate of the Justice League, Shiara, HawkGirl, who had once cruelly hurt and betrayed them, coming back and helping them - but to do so, she had to kill someone who had become her friend, Solomon Grundy the Zombie. Someone who no longer had control over their mental capabilities and was filled with pain and rage, lashing out at everything around them. No one liked this person, but this woman. And it was this woman who had to kill him.
The episode was an interesting take on an old theme - putting down the old rabid dog and how we deal with someone who has hurt us, deeply. First off, it makes me very angry when people excuse horrible actions based on insanity. Almost as if what the person did was okay because well they are mentally ill. BTVS dealt with this concept a lot. Angelus' killing of Jenny Calendar wasn't Angel's fault, because he was insane, he wasn't Angel. You see? I disagree. I do not think the fact that he was insane at the time takes him off the hook. Which is why I liked the series Angel, because unlike BTVS, it did not let him off the hook. I didn't always feel this way. When I first watched the episode in 1998, I saw it differently. But that was before I was on the recieving end of abuse from a mentally disturbed individual. The individual in question came very close to giving me a nervous breakdown and there was nothing I could do about it. That individual is still hurting people. The individual is bi-polar. He went off lithium the year he went after me. I still bear the scars. He was in a way like Solomon Grundy. Destroying everything in his path. Insane. In my life, I've apparently had two run-ins with individuals who are manic-depressive and at the time I dealt with them, in full lash-out mode. I was unfortunately on the receiving end of the lashing both times. For reasons I still don't completely understand. I blame myself for putting myself there - the second time. And for not seeing what was happening until it was too late the first time. And I did not reacte very well. Since I was not emotionally strong at the time myself - I was suffering post-traumatic stress due to experiences surrounding 9/11. The second round, I was coming off of well the first experience, and in a depression that just kept circling downwards. Both were nasty affairs and I am not proud of how I handled either. And I learned after the fact, way after the fact - months after the fact - that the individual had gone off his meds, was in fact manic-depressive and it was not their fault. Now, I've met other manic-depressives who aren't like this. Who didn't hurt me or anyone I knew about. So this is not a necessary symptom of this disease.
Circling back to Solomon Grundy. Solomon has been driven insane. He is no longer responsible for his actions. The others couldn't deal with him - he hurt them. Superman, Green Latern, Vixen, The Egyptian Dude (no clue what his name is), Aguaman - they just want to kill him. But Hawkgirl cared for him, because he had saved her life once. Reference in the episode is made to Old Yeller - who was a rabid dog that became rabid saving his owner's life. And it is heart-breaking that she has to kill him. Before she does so, she tells him to close his eyes, just as Buffy told Angel. And what do I feel? Sympathy?
Kind-hearted fuzzies? No. Anger. It did not work for me emotionally.
At any rate, I have a question for anyone reading this to ponder. How would you react if you found out that someone who had hurt you, really hurt you, was in fact mentally unbalanced at the time and struggling with mental illness? That they had no control. Would this change your feelings towards them? What if you had no way of knowing they were ill at the time? What would you do? Does it make me a bad person that I can't feel sympathy for my own personal Solomon Grundy?
The Grimm's Fairy Tales talk about witches and curses. In the Disneyfied version, there's a handsome prince, the curse comes undone, all's well in the end. In the original, darker version - it's not so black and white. The curse doesn't just break. And the heroine comes out of the briar patch scarred and bloody, but still alive. We kill the witch in the fairy tale as a way of dealing with that inner demon, yet in the older versions, she doesn't die so easily or the way she is portrayed is far less in the favor of the heroine.
I think we all have personal demons. Some of us have names for them. Some of us don't. And everything we do for good or ill affects everyone else in the universe. In our journals, it's all about me. My pain. My ills. My issues.
My art. My creativity. My likes. My strengths. My friends. And I wonder if in all the me-ness and the us-ness we don't inadvertently exclude or circumnavigate around those who don't quite click with us on first glance?
I admit to having a bit of social anxiety. Fear of awkward silences. Which leads to word vomit. There are times, like today, that I fear people. Their judgements, their thoughts, their scorn. While other times, like maybe yesterday, that I don't. I envy those that I perceive don't have these fears, yet I wonder, perhaps they do?
A year ago I vaguely remember having a somewhat emotional and rather heated discussion about forgiveness. At the time I told the person that forgiving was beneficial for the soul, that you do it for yourself not the other person, or some such silly platitude. Now, over a year later, I wonder if it's so easy?
Yes we forget the pains and traumas we go through, but our body doesn't. It
wears them like scars. Sort of like the character Illyria in ATS holds the memories of Fred, like scars on her cortex - shimmering glimmers of light, touch, sense memory that she can't quite understand. I wonder if an emotional scar is not unlike a physical one? The pain is gone. But the nerves remember?
I have a deep scar on my left arm where a biospy was once done ages ago,
it still aches at times. No reason why it should but it does. So yes we move on. The pain fades. We rise above it. Yet, inside...there's still that whisper of remembered pain.
I wonder if the pain is there to remind us not to hurt others? Not to lash out at them. Just because we are incensed or in pain, to somehow pull back, retreat from the world until we are much better. But is that good?
Isn't it better to be with people who can help? Perhaps the way is honesty and responsbility? I'm sorry should count for something. Yet it doesn't anymore.
No one seems to take those words seriously. I say them quite a bit. So much that anom gave me a button to tell me to quit apologizing. It's almost my mantra now. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Because if I say it enough maybe somehow it will resonate. Somehow I can forgive myself for not being strong enough to forgive those who hurt me once upon a time in ways small and large, though oddly the small petty rejections bugged me more. To forgive myself for not being a good enough friend. To forgive myself for not being smart enough
or wise enough to communicate how I feel without bite.
As I continue to push my way through this year, each day getting easier.
I wonder, am I a better person than before? Or just a different one? And where is this road I've stumbled upon leading to? What choices should I make?
And how do those choices affect what leads next? It is a bit like a Grimm's Fairy tale - our lives, I think, we are in the forest, meeting all sorts of fairy tale creatures. Witches that turn into enchanted princesses. Charmed frogs. And little old ladies who eat little children for breakfast. Yet we are also in the glade and the village, each choice twisting and turning us out onto a new and different path. Who we meet on the path and how we relate to them may have a lot to do with who we are at that point on the path in their perspective and who they are in theirs. Are we the witch? The enchanted princess? The cursed bear? The stumbling dwarf? The souled vampire? The chipped vampire? The scarecrow? The pumpkin head? Dorothy? or all of the above?
By the way, in the muppet version of the Wizard of Oz, Miss Piggy is playing all the witches - a stroke of genious, I think, since in reality they are all just facets on the same one. I'm wondering if that's it. Depending on who we are with, we are the Witch of the North, the Witch of the West, the Witch of the East, and the Witch of the South. Wicked. Good. Not so Wicked. Not so Good.
Complicated.
Okay, I hope that made sense. Unedited ramble from my brain.
George RR Martin's A Game of Thorns, which has been recommended to me by three people on my flist. Now, I have not read an epic fantasy in ages, so we'll see if I like it. And it may be a while until I get to it - have to read The Dogs of Babel first for my tiny book club. It has shrunk to three women now.
Watched JL Unlimited, Wake the Dead. Interesting episode. The episode was about a former teammate of the Justice League, Shiara, HawkGirl, who had once cruelly hurt and betrayed them, coming back and helping them - but to do so, she had to kill someone who had become her friend, Solomon Grundy the Zombie. Someone who no longer had control over their mental capabilities and was filled with pain and rage, lashing out at everything around them. No one liked this person, but this woman. And it was this woman who had to kill him.
The episode was an interesting take on an old theme - putting down the old rabid dog and how we deal with someone who has hurt us, deeply. First off, it makes me very angry when people excuse horrible actions based on insanity. Almost as if what the person did was okay because well they are mentally ill. BTVS dealt with this concept a lot. Angelus' killing of Jenny Calendar wasn't Angel's fault, because he was insane, he wasn't Angel. You see? I disagree. I do not think the fact that he was insane at the time takes him off the hook. Which is why I liked the series Angel, because unlike BTVS, it did not let him off the hook. I didn't always feel this way. When I first watched the episode in 1998, I saw it differently. But that was before I was on the recieving end of abuse from a mentally disturbed individual. The individual in question came very close to giving me a nervous breakdown and there was nothing I could do about it. That individual is still hurting people. The individual is bi-polar. He went off lithium the year he went after me. I still bear the scars. He was in a way like Solomon Grundy. Destroying everything in his path. Insane. In my life, I've apparently had two run-ins with individuals who are manic-depressive and at the time I dealt with them, in full lash-out mode. I was unfortunately on the receiving end of the lashing both times. For reasons I still don't completely understand. I blame myself for putting myself there - the second time. And for not seeing what was happening until it was too late the first time. And I did not reacte very well. Since I was not emotionally strong at the time myself - I was suffering post-traumatic stress due to experiences surrounding 9/11. The second round, I was coming off of well the first experience, and in a depression that just kept circling downwards. Both were nasty affairs and I am not proud of how I handled either. And I learned after the fact, way after the fact - months after the fact - that the individual had gone off his meds, was in fact manic-depressive and it was not their fault. Now, I've met other manic-depressives who aren't like this. Who didn't hurt me or anyone I knew about. So this is not a necessary symptom of this disease.
Circling back to Solomon Grundy. Solomon has been driven insane. He is no longer responsible for his actions. The others couldn't deal with him - he hurt them. Superman, Green Latern, Vixen, The Egyptian Dude (no clue what his name is), Aguaman - they just want to kill him. But Hawkgirl cared for him, because he had saved her life once. Reference in the episode is made to Old Yeller - who was a rabid dog that became rabid saving his owner's life. And it is heart-breaking that she has to kill him. Before she does so, she tells him to close his eyes, just as Buffy told Angel. And what do I feel? Sympathy?
Kind-hearted fuzzies? No. Anger. It did not work for me emotionally.
At any rate, I have a question for anyone reading this to ponder. How would you react if you found out that someone who had hurt you, really hurt you, was in fact mentally unbalanced at the time and struggling with mental illness? That they had no control. Would this change your feelings towards them? What if you had no way of knowing they were ill at the time? What would you do? Does it make me a bad person that I can't feel sympathy for my own personal Solomon Grundy?
The Grimm's Fairy Tales talk about witches and curses. In the Disneyfied version, there's a handsome prince, the curse comes undone, all's well in the end. In the original, darker version - it's not so black and white. The curse doesn't just break. And the heroine comes out of the briar patch scarred and bloody, but still alive. We kill the witch in the fairy tale as a way of dealing with that inner demon, yet in the older versions, she doesn't die so easily or the way she is portrayed is far less in the favor of the heroine.
I think we all have personal demons. Some of us have names for them. Some of us don't. And everything we do for good or ill affects everyone else in the universe. In our journals, it's all about me. My pain. My ills. My issues.
My art. My creativity. My likes. My strengths. My friends. And I wonder if in all the me-ness and the us-ness we don't inadvertently exclude or circumnavigate around those who don't quite click with us on first glance?
I admit to having a bit of social anxiety. Fear of awkward silences. Which leads to word vomit. There are times, like today, that I fear people. Their judgements, their thoughts, their scorn. While other times, like maybe yesterday, that I don't. I envy those that I perceive don't have these fears, yet I wonder, perhaps they do?
A year ago I vaguely remember having a somewhat emotional and rather heated discussion about forgiveness. At the time I told the person that forgiving was beneficial for the soul, that you do it for yourself not the other person, or some such silly platitude. Now, over a year later, I wonder if it's so easy?
Yes we forget the pains and traumas we go through, but our body doesn't. It
wears them like scars. Sort of like the character Illyria in ATS holds the memories of Fred, like scars on her cortex - shimmering glimmers of light, touch, sense memory that she can't quite understand. I wonder if an emotional scar is not unlike a physical one? The pain is gone. But the nerves remember?
I have a deep scar on my left arm where a biospy was once done ages ago,
it still aches at times. No reason why it should but it does. So yes we move on. The pain fades. We rise above it. Yet, inside...there's still that whisper of remembered pain.
I wonder if the pain is there to remind us not to hurt others? Not to lash out at them. Just because we are incensed or in pain, to somehow pull back, retreat from the world until we are much better. But is that good?
Isn't it better to be with people who can help? Perhaps the way is honesty and responsbility? I'm sorry should count for something. Yet it doesn't anymore.
No one seems to take those words seriously. I say them quite a bit. So much that anom gave me a button to tell me to quit apologizing. It's almost my mantra now. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Because if I say it enough maybe somehow it will resonate. Somehow I can forgive myself for not being strong enough to forgive those who hurt me once upon a time in ways small and large, though oddly the small petty rejections bugged me more. To forgive myself for not being a good enough friend. To forgive myself for not being smart enough
or wise enough to communicate how I feel without bite.
As I continue to push my way through this year, each day getting easier.
I wonder, am I a better person than before? Or just a different one? And where is this road I've stumbled upon leading to? What choices should I make?
And how do those choices affect what leads next? It is a bit like a Grimm's Fairy tale - our lives, I think, we are in the forest, meeting all sorts of fairy tale creatures. Witches that turn into enchanted princesses. Charmed frogs. And little old ladies who eat little children for breakfast. Yet we are also in the glade and the village, each choice twisting and turning us out onto a new and different path. Who we meet on the path and how we relate to them may have a lot to do with who we are at that point on the path in their perspective and who they are in theirs. Are we the witch? The enchanted princess? The cursed bear? The stumbling dwarf? The souled vampire? The chipped vampire? The scarecrow? The pumpkin head? Dorothy? or all of the above?
By the way, in the muppet version of the Wizard of Oz, Miss Piggy is playing all the witches - a stroke of genious, I think, since in reality they are all just facets on the same one. I'm wondering if that's it. Depending on who we are with, we are the Witch of the North, the Witch of the West, the Witch of the East, and the Witch of the South. Wicked. Good. Not so Wicked. Not so Good.
Complicated.
Okay, I hope that made sense. Unedited ramble from my brain.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-18 08:37 pm (UTC)This is really a tough question. I don't know that it would make me any less angry and hurt, but it might help me through it. Not take it so personally, in a sense. When someone hurts me, that person's state of mind at the time might make it easier for me to intellectualize about the reasons for his/her action, but emotionally, I think it would still be really hard to accept.
At the time I told the person that forgiving was beneficial for the soul, that you do it for yourself not the other person,
I do believe that the act of forgiveness is a way of freeing us from the baggage that we all carry; the way we cling to our hurts and slights from others ties us to those others. Unless we can drop the baggage, our shoulders will always sag under the weight. A woman I greatly admire, a woman of great inner clarity and strength, was a Gestalt therapist in the 1970's. I remember a session with her in which she essentially said that if you choose to hang on to the wrongs done to you, you can never move beyond them. For me, that implies that if I want to move forward, I need to forgive the people who have hurt me, if I can. If I honestly can't forgive then I have to deal with that in any way I can that lets me stop carrying it around. I think Bethal summed it up very succinctly: "Shit, or get off the pot."
Don't know if that makes any sense, since my brain is all melty right now from post Christmas shopping stress!!
no subject
Date: 2004-12-18 08:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-18 09:23 pm (UTC)I think there's a number of separate issues in this all of which interact and impact on the others. The first thing is that whatever the causes/motivations of the behaviors that were hurtful, the hurt still occurred. The impact of those behaviors were still felt by others whether they were intentional or not. And that's something that the person who said and did those things has to deal with. That knowing 'why' in retrospect doesn't negate the impact. And that things cannot be undone.
A second issue, and one that makes a difference for me is not just the fact that at the time the person was mentally ill and struggling with it, but whether or not the person knew it at the time. There are a number of mental illnesses that don't lend themselves easily to self-discovery. And if the problem was unknown at the time, that makes a difference to me because then it's not a wilfull choice to ignore it, but a matter of behaving in a way that person has all hir life. And something that goes along with this is whether or not the person sought treatment when s/he realized there was a problem. I tend to be more forgiving of someone who wants to change that which, well, needs changing.
Thirdly, I tend to believe that people feel the way they do, and there's no real benefit to saying if those feelings are 'good' ones or 'bad' ones. I don't know that sympathy or forgiveness is required from others, just because they now know that there were underlying causes for negative behavior. But at the same time, I think giving the benefit of the doubt that the person with the illness is actively seeking treatment, and to not undermine that process by saying that s/he is a hopless case isn't out of line to expect of others. Sometimes it's not necessarily how we feel about something, but how we choose to act on those feelings. (Not that you're doing that. This is just me rambling out a reply to the questions you asked).
So to answer your questions for myself knowing this, if I hadn't suspected before, probably would change my perspective on what happened. Whether it would change my feelings, I don't know. I know that I still have conflicted feelings about my older brother (now deceased) who was paranoid schizophrenic with psychotic episodes and who, at numerous points in my life, had scared the bejeebers out of me. Didn't make me not want to help him, but also didn't make me want to spend time in his company. And he was family.
In the case you presented, I think you're articulating the 'other' side of what the person who is ill has to face. Not only getting treatment for the illness, but having to look at what can be salvaged or fixed from the mess the illness has made in hir life and relationships. And that while everything can be apologized for, some things just may not be fixable.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-18 09:57 pm (UTC)Yeah, I've been thinking about that too. My only answer is that there are all kinds of forgiveness. Acknowledging that a person was not responsible for their actions does not necessarily mean that one can re-establish any sort of connection with them. The way Angel was treated by the Scoobies when he returned seemed true - though i can remember being a bit frustrated by it on the first viewing - no one trusted him, not even Buffy. Giles will let him in, but he keeps a crossbow trained at all times. It seems right, even though it's probably not fair.
I've had two close friends with very serious mental illnesses - not the taking some medication, visiting a therapist type of illness, but full on commitals to hospitals. The best way I can describe it is being next to a black hole. What they were dealing with was so huge and so overwhelming that it took all their concentration not to fall in, and in the meantime anything you would give them would be pulled inside. Time, emotion, friendship, love, every part of yourself that you gave them would go into the hole and it wouldn't make any difference to it. The only way to help them is to stand back and make sure you didn't get sucked in with them.
When my friend was diagnosed as manic-depressive when we were in university it actually made things worse. Past and present hurts and their attendant emotions were dismissed. The goal became finding the right medication rather than re-learning behaviours that were so tied into cause and effect and personality that it was impossible to imagine them explained away by a diagnosis. And I kept pouring everything into him and getting hurt in return. Until finally one day I felt the walls come up around my heart. I just couldn't care anymore. Pretty soon after I cut off all contact with him. I regret a great deal of how I handled things but I do know that I had been too young to realize that I had to protect myself, to understand that a person who can't be responsible for his own emotions shouldn't be trusted to deal with the feelings of others.
So now I have another friend who has been battling depression for many years. I listen and I call, but I also guard myself. I know that when I see him, it's going to be all about supporting him, and when I feel I can't do that anymore I quietly withdraw for a time. I can listen to all his secrets but I don't open up to him. It's easy to forgive the cancelled plans, the missed birthdays - because it really isn't his fault, but at the same time I don't trust him enough to let myself care about those things. He's on the edge of that black hole, how can I expect him to look anywhere else but into it?
Forgiveness, I guess can happen whether it's deserved or needed. It can be a wonderful and necessary gift. Trust, though, is far trickier.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-19 05:09 am (UTC)Frankly, I see no problems with cutting the moorings when someone has abused our trust. In fact, when people refuse to do so and are stricken by the violent tides of habit and desperate dependence, my patience is tried and I throw up my hands and wonder what the whole point of self-abasement is. And the natural corollary of Pony's point that a person who can't be responsible for his own emotions shouldn't be trusted to deal with the feelings of others is that if we continue to trust this person with our emotions, we are in fact being irresponsible with ourselves.
I may be guilty of interpolation here, but what I also got from your query was that you were being made to feel guilty (whether by the person in question or another agent close to the event(s)) for withdrawing your confidence and cauterizing the raw edges of your trust. And if that's the case, there can be no clearer indication or proof that the person remains undeserving of both sympathy and trust.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-19 05:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-19 09:29 am (UTC)I think that is at the root of it. TRUST. It's one thing to forgive someone, which we can safely do from a distance. But trust involves approaching them again, getting dangerously close.
BTVS actually dealt pretty well with this concept - in the sense that Buffy realized she couldn't be with Angel, because she could never trust him again. She couldn't risk what would happen if she did.
I think I can and possibly do forgive my personal Solomon Grundy's, but I know I'd never trust either again.
Trust is a delicate thing,easily broken I think. And online - it's a weird one, since we don't tell each other our real names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers - instead hide behind pseudonymes and icons. Yet, we reveal so much in these pages. So there is trust involved in our interactions, but it is not complete. I'm wondering if it is easier somehow to reveal these feelings to people who aren't in our daily lives, not part of our daily world, who don't see our faces, or hear our voices? In so many livejournals I read the words: "if it weren't for my livejournal friends...." and "I only trust my livejournal friends" - making me wonder, if that's the case,
do you really trust anyone? (Sorry sort of off topic...but something I've been pondering.)
no subject
Date: 2004-12-19 09:43 am (UTC)Thank you. In a sense that is what happened, but
not directly or deliberately so - it was more an inadvertent thing. Very inadvertent. Random. Sometimes I think we allow ourselves, or at least I do, to feel guilty about something - when people aren't necessarily pointing a finger at us.
That said, your point is a good one and an apt one. It also solves the dilemma in my brain.
I agree with what both you and pony stated on forgiveness and trust. They are separate things, yet also entwined.
Frankly, I see no problems with cutting the moorings when someone has abused our trust. In fact, when people refuse to do so and are stricken by the violent tides of habit and desperate dependence, my patience is tried and I throw up my hands and wonder what the whole point of self-abasement is. And the natural corollary of Pony's point that a person who can't be responsible for his own emotions shouldn't be trusted to deal with the feelings of others is that if we continue to trust this person with our emotions, we are in fact being irresponsible with ourselves.
Thank you for these words.
I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. Several chances. But if each time I let myself into their circle, I get trounced, I don't go back into the circle. I protect myself. Because I see it a bit like touching a candle flame - if you know it's going to burn you? Don't touch it. There are people I know who like to touch candle flames, tame them, pass their fingers through the top. Me? I'm the sort who struggles with getting the tip lit, because I'm afraid of being burned.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-19 10:16 am (UTC)In the case you presented, I think you're articulating the 'other' side of what the person who is ill has to face. Not only getting treatment for the illness, but having to look at what can be salvaged or fixed from the mess the illness has made in hir life and relationships. And that while everything can be apologized for, some things just may not be fixable.
Yes, I think that's it. How does the person who is ill deal with those that they've hurt inadvertently? Can they even fix the mess?
It may seem impossible to some. But I don't think it is impossible.
Just requires a lot of hard work.
I think ponygirl and the shebeen actually nail the problem that I was struggling with quite well, here. It's not so much forgiving that is at issue, but trusting the person again. So fixing the problem is one thing, but regaining trust, quite another entirely. That's the hard part.
Trust isn't something that can be fixed with a quick sorry or even a lengthy explaination. Trust has to be earned. Even if you haven't done anything - trust is not always an easy thing to necessarily get from another person. Granted in some mediums, such as the internet, trust is a shadowy concept - since we all go by psuedonymes here. We don't reveal real names etc. Some of us do. But only in a locked post. That said there is a certain amount of trust going on even on posting boards and livejournal. And some of us trust more than others - reveal more about ourselves in our posts, livejournals, responses than maybe we should.
My sister in law moderates a craft discussion board - it's part of her job. A means of marketing her's and my brother's business. While I was visiting them, she told me about a poster who had become trollish on the board. As if the person had two personalities. Had become insane all of a sudden. Causing all sorts of disruption. My sis-in-law who had been away from it for quite some time, due to maternity leave, came back to clean up the mess. From this person's posts she could not tell if the person was crazy, being trollish, or what. She had to come up with a solution. Ban the woman. Delete the posts - which required work she did not have time to do. Or hire others to do so? I think they ended up banning her. At least for now.
The moderator of a posting board trusts those that visit it will follow the rules - if they don't, s/he may have to boot them off.
If the person wants to return to that board - the person needs to regain the "trust" of the moderator. Which is frightening to the person's already shattered ego - because being online can be difficult. That may not be the best example, since the relationship is not one that is close and more transistory. It is very different from loving the person who is ill. Or being their close friend. That concerns a whole other level of trust completely.
Re-earning or earning someone's trust is difficult to do I think. Some people trust easier than others. Some don't. It does depend on the situation, I guess, and the relationship between the two people.
Trust may be one of the most important and valuable gifts we can bestow on another person, I think. And it's not one to be given lightly. And no matter how much you might love or like someone, it isn't always wise to trust them. There's also levels of trust.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-19 10:18 am (UTC)I don't comment on many journals myself - partly for the same reason.
OT
Date: 2004-12-19 11:01 am (UTC)My husband addressed this very inadvertently recently. He has never read my lj despite repeated attempts on my part. What he said when I was discussing lj, how close I feel to some of you, partly since I keep up with lj much more than with rl friends and it is easier in lj since the interaction is daily, convenient. I said something about missing the real life interaction in lj, and he said that lj then, is friendship without the work, the daily real life interaction that makes friendship real. The real live trust we give to one another. This struck me on several levels, the main one being what you describe. The nature of this “trust”.
I guess it is partly that any of us could turn this off, walk away and never be heard from again. In friendship, we trust that won’t happen. Our emotional investment. In lj we have no control over that. There is this missing factor here. But then again, in real life people walk away all of the time.
I am not sure of the point I am making, but trust is more flexible and as you say, incomplete on lj and online because of the ability to disappear, to fake it or to vanish without a word. Or maybe with a word. We trust words on the screen and when this veil of words hurt us, the trust is gone. It is fragile enough to begin with, being so sheer on the screen. When we give of ourselves, we open ourselves to pain. But then again, that is true in rl and lj. Either place, trust always has to be earned.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-19 11:04 am (UTC)"Thank you. In a sense that is what happened, but not directly or deliberately so - it was more an inadvertent thing. Very inadvertent. Random. Sometimes I think we allow ourselves, or at least I do, to feel guilty about something - when people aren't necessarily pointing a finger at us."
I understand that feeling of guilt at not having the same forgiveness or sympathy that one sees others having because I've been there. And I think that your situation, your individual relationship with the person who hurt you is not, and certainly shouldn't have to be, the same as the one other people have. Even those relationships are all based on the individuality of the people involved. But (you knew there was a 'but' here) there's one aspect of the statement "there can be no clearer indication or proof that the person remains undeserving of both sympathy and trust" that I'd like to perhaps make clearer from my point of view. I think rather than discussing whether or not the person 'deserves' sympathy, let alone trust, because someone, or some situation that was "not directly or deliberately so - it was more an inadvertent thing", "Very inadvertent", "Random" I'd simply suggest that there's no real need for feeling guilty because situations are different, nor is there a requirement that you must, at least outwardly, show some magnanimous gesture. You feel the way you do. What this does tie back to, though, is whether or not one can undermine the process of getting better by intimations that the person is undeserving of that chance. That getting better changes nothing because nothing can be changed. It's very easy for someone who is dealing with what could be a fragile situation, and often is when someone is initially seeking help for a mental illness, for that person to lose hope that there's a point to even trying. And that hope can be dashed by a remark just as undeliberate and inadvertent and random. So...has this person earned your sympathy and trust? I'd say it's clear from what you've written that s/he has not. Does this make that person undeserving of sympathy of trust? I'd say that's a different question entirely.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-19 11:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-19 01:23 pm (UTC)Speaking theoretically, recovery is an extremely difficult process partially because when the cause of the problem is removed, a person who has relied heavily on coping mechanism finds it difficult to operate without them, and people still have to deal with the ordinary problems and conflicts that occur to us all. What we once were informs what we become--in the sense that sometimes behaviors were not created by illness or extreme situations, they were exacerbated by them, and a person in recovery needs to learn to distinguish between the two. Someone once asked a famous actor if great fame and wealth destroys people. The man replied that it merely amplifies what was already there. It's difficult to deal with ordinary personal failings, illness or trauma, and coping mechanisms, all at the same time.
Theory aside, I think most people are content to respond as the situation demands, and let the past remain in the past.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-19 02:00 pm (UTC)I think this is true.
The taking responsibility bit is a lot harder than it appears. Because that means dealing with the consequences. My current boss states that "law school teaches people how to skirt responsibility or argue around it." Interesting statement. People sue us and we hire a defense attorney who will argue our way out. Partly because there are people out there who will literally sue over anything and everything.
When I left evil company, people suggested I sue, take action - but I realized it would do little or no good in the long run. And much harm in the short.
A friend of mine has a mother who is bi-polar, but refuses to seek help. Or do anything about it. The friend finally, to perserve her own sanity, had to cut all ties with her mother. And is struggling with that decision. She feels overwhelmingly guilty for not being able to help her. She feels responsible.It's taken years of therapy to convince her she is not.
I think sometimes the toughest thing in life is determining what we are and are not responsible for. What we can change and what we can't.
And how to handle that.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-19 02:21 pm (UTC)But to address:
So...has this person earned your sympathy and trust? I'd say it's clear from what you've written that s/he has not. Does this make that person undeserving of sympathy of trust? I'd say that's a different question entirely.
Actually not so clear, since I'm talking about numerous people, not just one. The person online? Yes, they have earned my sympathy, always had it. Trust? No. But I never really gave much of it to begin with, since we were on a discussion board hiding behind psuedonymes and IP addresses which as you know can't tell you that much about the real person. The person offline? Had gotten my trust and sympathy and lost both. I'm not sure I can be sympathetic for the one offline. Of course the two scenarios are different. The online one appears to have sought help and appears not to have intended to hurt others by their actions, the offline one did not seek help and did intend to hurt others.
Two separate scenarios. Both are confusing me a bit. But I think aresutha's post below answers that internal confusion. My question - is not as you might think - about whether they deserve our sympathy or trust, so much as should we feel guilty for not providing it?
I don't know if they deserve it or not. I can't answer that question.
What I wonder is if my struggle to provide it is a weakness that I need to work on? Or a strength designed to protect me from further pain?
As for :
It's very easy for someone who is dealing with what could be a fragile situation, and often is when someone is initially seeking help for a mental illness, for that person to lose hope that there's a point to even trying. And that hope can be dashed by a remark just as undeliberate and inadvertent and random.
I think aresutha does an excellent job of addressing this. The problem with life is no matter where you turn your hopes are dashed
on a whim. I can name at least ten instances this weekend alone that
made me question my place in the universe and hopes for certain things, and I am not ill (as far as I know.).
We hurt each other randomly all the time. Whether we mean to or not.
I know I do. As others have hurt me. And the online world is no safer or easier than the outside one. If anything it can at times be more biting. It is why I've almost deleted my livejournal and left the online world numerous times in the last year. In relationships with others there are no guarantees I think - no safety nets or rail guards. People will inadvertently hurt someone. It's not intentional most of the time. And to go about our lives constantly checking ourselves to see if we've stepped on someone's toes or bruised someone, would make life almost impossible to live. It would also make all our relationships false I think, if we are too careful.
So the question becomes where to draw the line? Should certain topics not be discussed at all? Should I lock this entry and livejournal cut to protect anyone out there who might take the words the wrong way?
(I actually do that a lot and did here to some extent already.)
Where is the line?
no subject
Date: 2004-12-19 02:30 pm (UTC)The outside world is not what must be changed-the inside world is, and therefore one changes one's self. The point is recovery and acceptance of self, not acceptance by the outside world, which is at least partially always outside of our control.
I think you are right. We cannot control what others say or do, what we can control is how we react to what is said or done. Or so we hope.
Someone who is mentally ill - has less control over the reactions.
Their struggle is learning how to control what is inside themselves not what is outside, and realizing what is outside cannot be controlled.
But how do we, those who are outside, help them?
Theory aside, I think most people are content to respond as the situation demands, and let the past remain in the past.
I think this may be the answer to the question above. Letting what happens in the past stay in the past. Not rehashing it. Over and over.
People are tough, I think. Hard to deal with. All of us are.
We end, whether we like or not, taking the bitter with the sweet, most of the time.
Re: OT
Date: 2004-12-19 02:50 pm (UTC)Agreed.
On livejournal, you also have the communities - if you piss off or inadvertently offend one person - suddenly you get twenty people launching an attack at you. This happened a while ago on someone's journal - I think it was anniesj, who had someone report her to the feds as well as attack her.
We trust that we can say and discuss what bugs us in our own journals without others attacking us - yet, since our journals are on the internet and inter-active, we are bound to offend someone. And if it's a friend from online world? Shudder.
People on livejournal friend and defriend at will. I've limited my journal to 64, not because I don't like the people who've friended me in the past few months, but because I don't have time to read more posts on my journal - it's already unweildly. And I'd cut a few entries, but I don't want to offend anyone. So, I've picked a happy medium. I no longer lock my journal. I figure that everyone may as well have the choice to click on what I have to say. It also makes me a little more wary of what I say and a little more careful. The number of posts I've deleted for fear of reactions, are well, an example of that. And yes, I've considered leaving this odd insular world on more than one occassion. I'm not sure livejournal or the internet is a good place for someone who is mentally ill - since it plays with one's sanity. You establish a parasocial relationship with the people on it - one where you can hide behind a false face and that may or may not just cause more problems. But I'm no psychologist, so I could be wrong on that. And I do know that when I was feeling down and unhappy - it did help pull me out of it. On the other hand there are tales of people who have literally gotten divorces because one of the spouses has spent all of their time on livejournal and the internet, ignoring their family. We trust people on livejournal, sense we know them, but we forget how easy it is for someone to lie to us here, to not tell us everything. In a recent meme I asked if people trusted what others wrote here - most said yes.
Which is interesting, considering that outside of the few people you've met face to face, how do you know what or who these people are?
I honestly think any human interaction contains a certain layer of trust. And the internet with all it's viruses and odd issues of security - no less so.
Not sure that made sense. My responses seem somewhat off on this thread.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-19 02:57 pm (UTC)the good side. Reminds me of the book by Gregory MacGuire "Wicked" - which shows us the Wicked Witch of the West from another point of view. Another facet. It's hard to make a determination - when you only see one side or facet.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-20 02:12 am (UTC)I was once on the fringes of a real case of attention-seeking LJ fraud (someone, I don't think anyone you knew, made up a tale that they were bisexual and being violently queerbashed by fellow pupils at high school) and the anger and betrayal when the person confessed was not pretty.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-22 11:23 pm (UTC)I know someone (else, besides you) who'd love that book.
"First off, it makes me very angry when people excuse horrible actions based on insanity. Almost as if what the person did was okay because well they are mentally ill."
I don't think it's the same thing to say someone wasn't responsible as to say it was okay. Excusing/forgiving them is a diff't. q.
"Now, I've met other manic-depressives who aren't like this....So this is not a necessary symptom of this disease."
But the same disease isn't the same in everyone who has it. Mental illnesses can coexist in one person, or have subtypes, w/diff't. combinations of symptoms. The fact that something isn't a "necessary" symptom doesn't mean the person has a choice about whether it's a symptom in their individual case.
I do have to wonder about a company that hired such a person & put him in a position of authority over others.
"Does it make me a bad person that I can't feel sympathy for my own personal Solomon Grundy?"
No, just human. I think the division into "good" & "bad" people is simplistic. Is your ex-boss a "bad person"? Would he be if he'd done the things he did w/out having a mental illness?
"I envy those that I perceive don't have these fears, yet I wonder, perhaps they do?"
Heh. I recently heard a radio interview w/an acting teacher. Students often ask how they can play someone confident when they're so nervous. The answer? "You don't think that person isn't as nervous as you underneath that outer confidence?"
"I told the person that forgiving was beneficial for the soul, that you do it for yourself not the other person....I wonder if it's so easy?
Yes we forget...."
Again, I gotta challenge the equivalences you draw. Who says being beneficial means it's easy? Or that forgiving means you forget? I think it is something you do for yourself, may even (depending on your personality & situation) need to do. When Giles said in I Only Have Eyes for You that you forgive someone not because they deserve it but because they need it, I thought, no, you do it because you need it. "Letting something go" doesn't mean it doesn't exist--just that you're not expending a lot of emotional energy holding onto it. (This by no means implies I manage to do this myself as often as I'd like--it's a lot easier to talk about than to do.)
"I have a deep scar...it still aches at times. No reason why it should but it does."
But there is a reason. Scar tissue contracts & causes pain--there's no "should" about it.
"I wonder if the pain is there to remind us not to hurt others? Not to lash out at them."
Anyone who uses it that way must be a good person. @>) (I think it's not so much a q. of what its purpose is as of how we choose to use it.)
"Just because we are incensed or in pain, to somehow pull back...until we are much better. But is that good?
Isn't it better to be with people who can help?"
I'm not sure the answer is to withdraw. That's my reaction too often. After a number of deaths in my family over the last several years, I withdrew (more due to not having the energy to reach out to people than due to worrying I might hurt them). I've been coming out of that lately (kind of unevenly), & my ATPo friends have been a significant part of that. So I can identify w/your comments on online & offline relationships.
"I say them quite a bit. So much that anom gave me a button to tell me to quit apologizing. It's almost my mantra now."
Ahem. This is why I felt I had to reply to this post. There are plenty of others I'd like to reply to, but I don't know if I'll have time. For those who don't know, the button says, "I'm sorry, but I'm not apologizing anymore." It's less the apologizing itself than that you feel you need to apologize for stuff that for the life of me I can't see why you need to.
"As I continue to push my way through this year, each day getting easier."
I'm glad it's getting easier. I hope it continues to get easier in the new year. And in case I don't manage to answer your later posts before you leave, have a great trip, a great time w/your family, & happy holidays!