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| <<<>>> |
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When I was a Boy |
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| Created by Decius at
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An underlying theme in much of what I write revolves around some climatic realization that a central character has relating to his or her naivity and how what this person believed and invested in was a falshood in some manner or another.
Such events cascade my life like dots on a graph and I believe such is the case with all of us. And although these events are nearly identical for us, I seem to look back on them more than most people.
More than that, as I experience such an event, I observe it and relish it in some hungry manner. It's painful, it makes me helpless, but I watch myself almost as if I were watching someone else go through it. Sometimes I seek escape, but that is usually when I don't know I'm going through something.
But when i feel truly helpless towards another human being, for example, for my attempts at reaching their hearts and I witness them pulling away specifically to make it harder for me to do so, to gain some power over me, and I feel "raped", this feeling, unpleasant as it is, is transformed over years of conditioning now to be more of an educational experience for me than something to run away from.
I know it will end... I know that if I sit through this long enough it will end and I will simply give this person less. Their actions will not matter. But I don't even want to hurry that catharsis. I am thirsty for the experience, for all I can excavate from this pain.
I know this is a unique perspective - as I interact more with people I begin to realize how really petrified they are of such experiences, even though after many a conversation it seems I've shared my thirst with them.
The only pain I have in my life that I cannot access properly, and probably run away from is the petrified sort that came about and was repressed before I relished the educational nature of pain. But, regardless of my motivation, not all pain is positive. When it becomes inescapable abuse, the pain you suffer cannot teach you anything, and so you move inwards. Like me, you also have the petrified kind.
I have found repeatedly that the most common lesson that I still learn at my age is that people are much less honest than they present themselves. Honesty is the base characteristic I'm talking about, but overall it manifests itself in a hundred different ways. There is the world of diplomacy which exists in most of our interactions with everyone, and there is the world of truth that exists beneath that. No very often means yes, and there is a massive backlog of naivity I have towards even this one simple example.
You see, a world based on some level of direspect alters the way people communicate. If someone expects to be judged for being straightforward and also expects that regardless of being straightforward the person they are talking to will do what they want anyways, that person has no reason to be straightforward. For example, if one were to go buy a car and honestly tell the car salesman what their budget is, the car salesman will not reciprocate telling them the best price they can buy the car at - they will negotiate starting at a higher number, no matter what. Hence, the purchaser is not respected for their honesty, and the car dealer is going to negotiate no matter what the purchaser says.
If, however, the purchaser is of the diplomatic world, he or she will lie about the budget price expecting that the car dealer will negotiate no matter what. This exchange seems normal, but both parties are being completely dishonest with each other when the possibility of both parties being totally honest and coming to a mutually beneficial exchange is certainly possible.
I learnt this about car dealers. I, in fact, remember going to a car dealership with my best friend and her boyfriend, dealing with three different car salesmen including the boss. At the end of the negotiation they said they could not go below a certain price, and this was after about an hour of discussion and questions and answers. We decided to leave. As we were leaving, the same car salesman came up to us and offered us the car for almost a thousand less. We refused of course.
We, all three of us, on the way home sat in bewilderment. I think me and her boyfriend were more awestruck than her, but I recall how both he and I were completely baffled by what had just ocurred. All three of these men were adamantly lying to us about a variety of things relating to the car, from someone else coming to buy it to its crash history availability, and really, we believed somehow that they had been telling us the truth.
I've moved past car dealers now and am just learning about this with people. During courtship both men and women constantly lie to one another, saying what they don't mean and doing what they don't mean in an effort to suggest something different to the other person to gain some power and to make the other person available to you without feeling like you're not in control.
In experimenting with these ideas I've learnt, and am still learning, how everyone plays these games and the lengths to which people will go to in order to maintain a successive level of control over their own vulnerability. The dishonesty that spawns through that one desire is almost pathological.
Even right now, for example, I felt that tinge of fear as I thought about a girl I had contacted who hadn't contacted me back. It makes me think her life is better than mine, more busy, more fulfilling, and that I am not desireable to her. Of course, now that I know the nature of the game to some extent I understand that it is in her nature to do so, and that the only thing i can do is ignore such actions and behave as if I am not even receiving these subtle diplomatic suggestions. And while I do so, my skin thickens as I absorb all the pain of that fear of being in a weak position, strengthening my resolve to be ruthless and self-interested when and if the relationship should later progress.
Unfortunately, the effect of this girl's actions will not restrict themselves to her, and when I meet another girl, inevitably I will be harder than i should, more of a man and less of a boy. |
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| Created by Decius at
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