Viewing entries tagged with "human interaction"   //
Pages (2):12

Sensitive To Sensitivity

17

I almost walked out of Tai Chi class the other night.

Someone asked me if I was going to “pass out again”, because I got light-headed the class before and had to leave early, most likely due to a side-effect of the new med­ica­tion I’m on, though I was far from pass­ing out.

I was flat-out offended, and began expe­ri­enc­ing what my ther­a­pist explained are “auto­matic thoughts” — irra­tional thoughts that affect mood neg­a­tively. I had to step back from the sit­u­a­tion, put the words out of my head, and calm myself down. If not, I would have over­re­acted, and prob­a­bly regret­ted it. But I couldn’t fig­ure out why I was so upset. After all, I’m far from one who gets offended easily.

Was I being pub­licly emas­cu­lated? Was I being judged with­out con­sid­er­a­tion of all the facts? Was my com­mit­ment to attend prac­tice after not eat­ing for two days being belit­tled? Was it the tone? Was it because I couldn’t speak back and defend myself, for fear of pol­lut­ing the sanc­tity of the class1 with my per­sonal pol­i­tics? Probably a bit of each.

I tend to have sim­i­larly bad reac­tions to peo­ple being sur­prised that I don’t know some­thing. It feels like I’m being judged, as if they pre­sume to know who I am. Even though it’s sup­posed to be a com­pli­ment, it’s a back-handed one, like say­ing “I thought you were smarter than that”. John used to be espe­cially guilty of this2, but he suc­cess­fully cor­rected the behav­iour years ago. It took a psy­chol­o­gist to point it out to him, and adverse reac­tions from sev­eral peo­ple, includ­ing me.

I know I’ve already come a long way. I’m not so sen­si­tive about my weight (for a guy) any more. I stopped car­ing what peo­ple think when I know the truth. But this inci­dent made me real­ize that I still har­bor a sen­si­tiv­ity to cer­tain things. I still have some grow­ing up to do. Still have to real­ize that peo­ple say things with­out think­ing, or don’t mean what they say, or that I may even take innocu­ous things the wrong way. Even though I feel that I had a right to be offended, I still don’t want to be.

And the fact that I was offended just makes me more upset.

  1. I approach my work with the same kind of reser­va­tion and detach­ment to remain pro­fes­sional. After all, these are sit­u­a­tions in which we can’t choose the peo­ple we work with, so there’s noth­ing to do but accept and any unpleas­ant­ness. [↑]
  2. And quite self-aware of it. As a per­son obliv­i­ous to pop-culture, he loved to hold it over peo­ple when he knew some­thing they didn’t. [↑]
Date  March 5, 2009
Tags 
Categories  Random

Protected: Forced To Deal

4

This post is pass­word pro­tected. To view it please enter your pass­word below:


Date  January 23, 2009
Tags 
Categories  Random

A Change of Flowers

2

When I left, the flow­ers on my kitchen table looked like this:

Thumbnail: Dead flowers

When I got back, to my sur­prise, they looked like this:

Thumbnail: Fresh flowers

She made the bou­quet her­self — hand-picked the flow­ers, chose the colours, even made sure it was sym­met­ri­cal, know­ing my odd habits1 — and left them there to greet me from my jour­ney home.

I never ask for these things but she does them anyway.

Which is exactly what makes them so significant.

  1. I tend to straighten her neck­laces, her san­dal straps, the curls of her hair, the draw-strings in her hoodie/yoga pants… [↑]
Date  June 23, 2008
Tags 
Categories  Daily Life Photos

Mute And Muse

0

Assume as necessary.

Why is it so polit­i­cally incor­rect to show your feel­ings? Would it be inap­pro­pri­ate to tell you that I’m in love?

That your dim­ples are like hinges that purse your lips in the most adorable way, and I want to kiss them. That I want to have you here next to me, to feel the weight of your body press­ing against mine. That I want to smell you on my fin­gers, I want to fold my sheets around you, I want to feel your curls under my hands as I lather and rinse.

Because I’m sick of being polite and I’m tired of propriety.

So let’s deal with this attrac­tion. Let’s not ignore what’s between us.

Date  March 5, 2008
Tags 
Categories  Random

Wow.

10

A reader sent me this let­ter (posted with her per­mis­sion, of course):

Almost a year after I had man­aged to leave the island behind, the room, the floor, the sheets, the rape — I acci­dently ended up on your blog entry called “The begin­ning to the end” and it changed my world. It awoke feel­ings inside of me that I had for a years time tried to sup­press and scare off so that I never again would open up to any­one, never trust any­one and there­for never end up in the same sit­u­a­tion again. At that time, all men were a poten­tial threath to me.

Reading and watch­ing that very blo­gen­try have had such a great impact on my life and will to become ‘myself’ again, to reclaim my body and to dare to move towards feel­ing and being ‘beau­ti­ful’ again. Your video granted me the sen­sa­tion of how sin­cere, pure and giv­ing love and affec­tion truly are when it’s shared and not forced. It made me remem­ber blocked out feel­ings and sit­u­a­tions and it made me start to long for some­thing that I had com­pletely shut out for over a year.

I have been want­ing to write you this email for quite some time, but I havent been sure of myself or if the “new” me (which is the old in fact) would sur­vive and I didnt want to make this into a sun­shine story if it really wasnt — but after many down­hills, tri­als and tribu­la­tions, the­r­a­phy and social inter­ac­tion, I am there, I am back and I am stand­ing strong again. Nothing will ever be the same, but at least I made the right choice, for me. I have always been lifelov­ing in over­load and even if I am only halfway there yet, it is still enough to keep me going.

I still watch that video every now and then, to remind myself that any­thing is pos­si­ble and that you can recieve “help” from the most unex­pected sources. It used to make me cry, now it makes me smile instead, isnt that beau­ti­ful? I know per­fectly well that you never meant to post that entry for me, but it helped me in one of the most dif­fi­cult times in my life and for that I will be for­ever grate­ful. Thank you.

Yours sin­cerly,
Emma

I’m at a loss for words.

Date  February 8, 2008
Tags 
Categories  Popular Random

An Unspoken Bond

3

I met her a few times. She was nice. Quiet. I was one of the more junior stu­dents and she would occa­sion­ally give me words of encouragement.

But what endeared her to me was the way she inter­acted with him. A com­fort­able famil­iar­ity, an unspo­ken bond they never overtly dis­played in pub­lic but kept hid­den between them, a secret they shared as if to reveal it was to spoil it.

Sometimes, they’d talk about their kids. They were get­ting older. Getting mar­ried. Moving out.

When they found the can­cer in her body, he sus­pended classes imme­di­ately. He told us we could find new teach­ers with his bless­ing. I looked up their address and sent a bas­ket filled with pâté and dip­ping oils. That was over a year ago.

They buried her last Wednesday.

And as much as I’d like to do some­thing, any­thing to make him feel bet­ter — offer my con­do­lences, tell him he has an ear — there isn’t any­thing I can do. Nothing will make up for his loss.

Our bond will remain unspo­ken too.

Date  January 27, 2008
Tags 
Categories  Random

The Problem With Manual Stimulation

5

At the hair salon tonight, a new girl washed my hair. She went through the usual rou­tine, but before she fin­ished, she placed her fin­gers along the front of my hair­line, and with con­stant pres­sure, slowly worked her way back.

The water was warm, my hair was wet, and I felt the ten­sion going down my scalp. It was com­pletely sub­lime.

The edges of my lips started curl­ing, but I couldn’t tell if I was help­lessly smil­ing, or it was the stretch­ing of my skin upwards.

In the shower tonight, when wash­ing out the stray hairs, I tried doing it on myself. It didn’t feel the same, of course.

It was like that scene in Secretary, where Lee Holloway (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) tries to spank her­self with a hair­brush when explor­ing her sub­mis­sive ten­den­cies. I love the expres­sion of intent, and ulti­mately let­down, on her face.

The prob­lem with man­ual stim­u­la­tion is that it never feels as good as when some­one else does it for you.

Date  December 14, 2007
Tags 
Categories  Daily Life

A Truth is Worth a Million Words

13

You inter­pret my heart, my nature, as you wish to believe it.

— Onegin

People see what they want to see.

As I touched on a while back, some of it comes from inse­cu­rity. Other times, from a fal­lacy of pro­jec­tion as some peo­ple igno­rantly, and mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cally, believe that every­one must think and act as they do. There are a few other cases that don’t fit into either of these cat­e­gories though.

An exam­ple: I once offered a guest in my house some yogurt. The first thing he asked was, “Is it going bad?”. He didn’t believe I would have given it to him oth­er­wise. It was a per­fect reflec­tion of his dead­beat friends who expected you to eat before com­ing to a party, and he had never known any other type of peo­ple. A more extreme exam­ple is if you offered to feed some­one at your house and they got insulted because they thought you were imply­ing that they couldn’t afford to feed them­selves. Some peo­ple see things that aren’t there. It’s an amaz­ing sub­con­scious sign of their characters.

The way some girls inter­pret things is also an inter­est­ing phe­nom­e­non. Some of them think a guy who’s talk­ing to them must be hit­ting on them so they drop the b-bomb in ran­dom points of con­ver­sa­tion, just to warn you they have a boyfriend. Some girls think you’re gay because you don’t make any advances towards them. Some girls think you’re torn up, depressed because they declined your advances, and end up mak­ing a big­ger deal about it than you do. I want noth­ing more than to tell these girls to get over them­selves, but I bite my tongue because they end up embar­rass­ing them­selves more than I could ever do myself.

There are also times when a per­son is so pig-headed and stub­born that they see every­thing through a fil­ter, inter­pret­ing your actions in some crazy way, and believe you’re at fault because they sub­con­sciously refuse to see their own mistakes.

The old me would have been insulted when some­one assumes I’m a cer­tain way. Nothing would anger me more than some­one pre­sum­ing to know how I feel or what I’m like, and I used to care des­per­ately what they thought, even if I knew I was just mis­un­der­stood. It’s an inter­est­ing feel­ing to be passed that now1.

The truth leaves no room for bias, only interpretation.

I’ve learned never to take respon­si­bil­ity for other peo­ples’ inter­pre­ta­tions. Only take respon­si­bil­ity for your intent. You learn a lot about a per­son from the way they inter­pret things and from the way they see the world.

With the truth in your heart, it doesn’t mat­ter what any­one thinks.

With the truth on your side, noth­ing can go wrong.

  1. It’s actu­ally been quiet a few months since I wrote this entry. I didn’t post it at first because I wanted to be absolutely sure that it wasn’t a fickle feel­ing, and that my strength was firm. Reading back on it now, it seems more rel­e­vant than ever. [↑]
Date  October 25, 2007
Tags 
Categories  Thoughts

The Best Part Of My Day

3

She leans the chair back, my neck to rest in the cra­dle of the wash basin. The water comes out luke­warm. She knows it’s hot outside.

Shampoo. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. In small cir­cles, her fin­gers work my scalp, mas­sag­ing with­out too much pres­sure, scratch­ing when there is no itch.

“This is the best part of my day”, I say.

“Mine too”.

Date  July 18, 2007
Tags 
Categories  Random

The Bias of Insecurity

16

I like to think that humans are, in gen­eral, cere­bral beings, unaf­fected by bias or emotion.

But every time I’m met with a bigot, who has noth­ing to cling to but the strength of their opin­ions, I lose this hope.

The more they speak, the more they prove them­selves as inca­pable of accept­ing any­thing but their own beliefs. Added to this is a lack of self-awareness, caus­ing them believe that they’re not closed-minded, they’re just right.

Often it betrays an inse­cu­rity. You can tell that under­neath their words, they har­bour a sub­con­scious feel­ing that they’re wrong. To make up for this, they express them­selves strongly enough to con­vince them­selves that they’re right.

As log­i­cally as you explain things, step-by-step, premise to con­clu­sion, they won’t under­stand. They’ll never be able to accept the truth, and remain com­pletely ignorant.

It’s impos­si­ble to have a dis­cus­sion with some­one like this.

The dis­cus­sion is super­fi­cial, and the issue lies within the per­son themselves.

Date  January 15, 2007
Tags 
Categories  Thoughts
Viewing entries tagged with "human interaction"   //
Pages (2):12