#27 Intentional community & chosen family

[kaberett]

I have managed, one way and another, to gather a very large number of totally awesome people, and I honestly don't really know how or why. It feels in very large part as though it is something I have lucked into.

• The Internet is magic.
  
• To some extent it is self-perpetuating magic: I have made a conscious decision that I require particular attitudes and politics in friends (the personal is political), and this means that people I deem safe are likely to have friends I will also consider safe that they are willing to introduce me to.
  
• Several of my interests are inevitably community-based: group music and fannish interaction. I then get to filter who I interact with outside that particular interest/activity by means of the above.
  
• I try to be very clear about how I communicate, what I want, and what I can offer. In particular:
  
  • initiating conversations is hard for me, as is replying to e-mails; not doing the things isn't because I secretly hate you, it's because I'm crap at them; I actively appreciate being prodded on the topic.
    
  • my post about medical advocacy!
    
  • explicitly checking in about what people want ("I am entirely willing to listen or offer advice or both, let me know what you'd like?")
    
  • having a pre-arranged signal for how to get me to drop what I'm doing at the earliest safe point, and making it very clear that if I am telling you how to achieve this it is because I am willing to do the thing.
  
  
• Paying it forward. People have been immensely and endlessly kind to me; not through a sense of obligation but through their own free choice have they given me these gifts, and helped me to a position where I'm able to pay it forward. I give freely when I can; I refuse when I cannot; and in doing so I model the kind of interaction I want other people to be able to have with me.
  
• Negotiation! Endless negotiation. "Is this a thing you are okay with me doing? Is this a thing you are okay with me doing for you?"
  
• There's some complicated asymmetry, in that mostly I don't think I "deserve" compassion or support in a way that I'm perfectly willing to provide for other people, or I don't feel safe asking for or accepting it. This leads to pretty asymmetric relationships, at least to start with, in that I tend to be really pretty good at making people feel safe and providing support in most circumstances, but terrible at the inverse unless I've got a very clear power structure to fit it into and I get to reduce the person I'm requesting support from to a role and function, rather than it being actual interpersonal vulnerability. (This is some of why counselling: I'm paying them to deal with my emotions.)
  
• ... yeah, I think mostly it is doing the dance of "this is what I would like my world to look like so I'm going to behave in ways that support that; I will deliberately seek out networks of people with similar views; I will negotiate about exchange of services and support, and about common goals."

I'm not sure this is particularly a helpful answer, and certainly I would love to hear what you all think about it! Because mostly I'm just... making things up as I go along, and perhaps if I manage to formalise it a bit more I'll be less wary of it, feel less as though I'm waiting for the world to disappear out from under me. On the other hand, it's entirely plausible that I'd feel more as though I was treating people like things, which is also not great.

But - yeah, as with so much else about me, it comes down to freedom-from-coercion and freedom-of-choice, and negotiating spaces in which these are things we can have.

Comments

[pipisafoat]

I see a lot of me in you. Originally I was going to say that I see who I want to be in you, but reflection showed that I already am a lot of it, which is nice to notice. I think that is another thing, though, that we gather to us people who want to be like us in these ways, because the only real way to have the two way explicit communication without enormous effort is for both people to actively want it. Or something.