[counselling log, I suppose] To be found wanting

[kaberett]

First, a poem I keep coming back and back to through the years:

Between
As we fall into step I ask a penny for your thoughts.
'Oh, nothing,' you say, 'well, nothing so easily bought.'

Sliding into the rhythm of your silence, I almost forget
how lonely I'd been until that autumn morning we met.

At bedtime up along my childhood's stairway, tongues
of fire cast shadows. Too earnest, too highstrung.

My desire is endless: others ended when I'd only started.
Then, there was you: so whole-hog, so wholehearted.

Think of the thousands of nights and the shadows fought.
And the mornings of light. I try to read your thought.

In the strange openness of your face, I'm powerless.
Always this love. Always this infinity between us.

-- Michael O'Siadhail

Second, the thing I'm playing wall with most this week (and for the past few months, to be honest) appears to be the concept of desire. I'm tangled up in finding it hard to treat wanting as anything other than binary: something one does or doesn't, in effect, completely divorced from emotion (so "I want to, but it's impractical" is something I interpret - and to some degree experience as - "I don't want to"). Which - isn't healthy, but is also a very typical set of experiences/behaviours/beliefs/systems for people I shall euphemistically class as of my background.

And this, of course, ties into monstrosity: My desire is endless. If I claim myself as monster, as armoured and awkward and alien, then I claim power: I claim agency and strength and I proclaim myself fierce and fearsome. But everything has a cost, and in this case it turns out to be that if I am powerful then I am concerned about sweeping people away in the flood of my wanting, I am concerned that my wanting things at all becomes inherently coercive, and I am not willing to do that to people I like or respect. Which leads to the pun in title: being found (or observed) wanting counts as a weakness and an insufficiency, a failure to adequately protect people from myself. (Because that is the other cost of monstrosity: in consciously and deliberately constructing myself as Other in the ways that I do I explicitly accept also the ways that I am capable of causing harm, as discussed previously in terms of my confidence finessing social interactions provided I don't care about the other parties beyond getting what I want out of them.) This also links up with the idea that I can only want something or not want it, that I can't prioritise, that I can't have gradations of desire but only too much of it (because monstrosity also ties in to being Too Much, in that in part I weaponise my sense of being Too Much by turning it into teeth and talons.)

And some of it is also, of course, that given the you-want-it-or-you-don't I deal quite badly with wanting things that I don't get to have, because it's all tied up in rejection-based trauma: I'm very bad at believing that I am wanted But It's Not Practical (on both the small and large scales), very bad at experiencing others' gradation-of-want as anything other than being once again not good enough and not wanted. So at the moment I just... am making myself not want things that aren't practical, determining that if I want something that isn't wanted "enough" by the other parties involved this is Wrong and I need to Stop Wanting It, or never to want it at all; in practice what this is currently looking like is me assuming that I don't get to want anything at all, which makes suggesting or initiating plans very difficult - I'm pretty much completely reliant on other people expressing a desire to do something, but then I get tangled up in feeling as though even saying that much is coercive.

It's clearly being brought to the surface by the current round with depression (about which I am feeling less immediately despairing this week, between no longer being in a high-progesterone stage of my cycle and working myself to pleasant physical exhaustion and having just spent three-four days in close proximity with one of my best friends), but this is an ongoing issue I ought to work on, sigh.

Comments

[kaberett]

[And yo, if you're worried about this being about you, it isn't; I've been working on it since last week due to poking at my own brain. ♥ You're good.]

[calissa]

Just wanted to let you know I'm here and reading, and am glad to hear you're feeling a bit better. 💙

[kaberett]

♥ Sadly it's definitely temporary - lol cyclical endocrine system - but I will take the respite while I have it (and will try to remind myself it doesn't mean I'm shirking or faking, and superficially doing better is almost entirely because I'm not trying to actually do anything.

[thatyourefuse]

I'm very bad at believing that I am wanted But It's Not Practical (on both the small and large scales), very bad at experiencing others' gradation-of-want as anything other than being once again not good enough and not wanted. So at the moment I just... am making myself not want things that aren't practical, determining that if I want something that isn't wanted "enough" by the other parties involved this is Wrong and I need to Stop Wanting It, or never to want it at all; in practice what this is currently looking like is me assuming that I don't get to want anything at all, which makes suggesting or initiating plans very difficult - I'm pretty much completely reliant on other people expressing a desire to do something, but then I get tangled up in feeling as though even saying that much is coercive.

Ow.

Yeah.

[kaberett]

Hmm, I think some of what's going on is I'm eliding "I want to but it's not practical" to "for all practical purposes I don't want to", which is... an unhelpful extension of "intent isn't magic" especially as I pretty much don't believe in applying that catchphrase to good-faith interactions between well-meaning humans (at least not in its frequently-implied incarnation of "intent is irrelevant").

[thatyourefuse]

Hmmmmm. Possibly. The difficulty for me is that I have no middle gears between not acknowledging anyone's intent at ALL, and granting it total control of the situation despite their actual actions. And I've been socialized to skew towards the latter.

(But on the other hand, if someone can't control whether or not they're punching, one is not morally obligated to provide a face just so they won't feel bad about it.)

[thatyourefuse]

(Also the question of what the actual intent actually IS, because I have dealt with too many for-your-own-good narcissists and toxic decompensating borderlines to be at all certain in my mind that anyone's intent is what they say it is, or even what they THINK it is.)

[batrachian]

*doesn't have words*

*sits quietly and companionably on a nearby sofa*

[kaberett]

<3

[sorrillia]

I'm glad you're feeling a bit better and wanted to let you know that there's a letter on the way. I just hope that my wanting-but-not-being-able-to-afford-to visit England this spring doesn't come off as not wanting to. I really do want to come be there, and hope I can soon get a job and enough vacation time to actually do so.

[kaberett]

Weirdly that one isn't getting to me, actually. I will try to work out why; luck with all the things, obviously. <3

[sorrillia]

Interesting; if you figure out why I'd be curious to hear it. (My theory is that the fact it's tied to my life in general getting turned upside down makes it seem less like it's me not caring?)

[cosmolinguist]

"I want to, but it's impractical" is something I interpret - and to some degree experience as - "I don't want to"

This is a helpful articulation of something I think applies to me, so I thank you for that. And I am, as usual, thinking of you often and fondly.

Copied from above:

[kaberett]

Hmm, I think some of what's going on is I'm eliding "I want to but it's not practical" to "for all practical purposes I don't want to", which is... an unhelpful extension of "intent isn't magic" especially as I pretty much don't believe in applying that catchphrase to good-faith interactions between well-meaning humans (at least not in its frequently-implied incarnation of "intent is irrelevant").

[vass]

...Well, this is quite familiar.

(Even worse than want? Need. Because the worst thing I can do is tell someone I need something when it turns out I don't really need it. And the test for whether I need it or not is: if they withhold it and I survive, then I didn't need it and was wrong to ask.)

And yeah, want as a destructive, coercive thing. Galactus, who consumes entire planets by draining their energy.

[batrachian]

*is in quiet awe of your ability to words the things*

*also sends jedi hugs, if desired*

[kaberett]

(Yeah, I tend to find it very difficult to talk about "need" without making explicit the consequences of not getting the thing I'm claiming I need, i.e. contextualising "need" in every instance, and even then it's... difficult.)

[davidgillon]

This is as fascinating as ever, which feels the wrong thing to say given societal mores, but it fascinates because every so often I stare into a fragment of your self-analysis and find myself staring back. Fascinating this week for revealing an aspect of monstrosity and the Other I hadn't previously considered, but which may reflect into my increasing self-perception as neurodiverse (which given a psych spontaneously suggested it isn't unreasonable, nor strictly new as I've assumed a degree of it via dyspraxia for years) but which is leading me/driving me into finding more and more resonances in the way I think and respond to the world. Finding myself suddenly expected to find an adult ready to drop everything to care for me for 24 hours post-op has really thrown the wanting/wanted/not-wanted into starkly personal perspective this week.

But this isn't supposed to be about me, and what I'm seeing this week is less of a bleakness in your posts, the JA one, the one from the Whitworth especially, but this one too. And I'm really glad to see you posting poetry again, I think it was the absence of that from last week's posts that concerned me most, and especially poetry that so clearly reflects with and resonates with and amplifies your thoughts.

[kaberett]

Hmm, I don't think I'd articulated that poetry... goes away when I'm proper wretched. Worth thinking about; thank you!

(I'm going to get worse again - cyclical endocrine systems are not my friend - but I will take this respite and try to catch my breath.)

[davidgillon]

I'm going to get worse again - cyclical endocrine systems are not my friend

No, agreed, but the downswing is necessarily paired with an upswing.

[redsixwing]

>(because monstrosity also ties in to being Too Much, in that in part I weaponise my sense of being Too Much by turning it into teeth and talons.)

And the Monster that wants, wants Too Much and wants with mindless ravening.

I say this not to agree with the sense of it (because, no: wanting something is a far cry from ravening and this entry is about as far from mindless as one gets) but because that's familiar.

(And the Monster that does not want is done for.)

I'm glad for the less immediate despair; that's almost always a good thing. Thinking fondly of you.

[kaberett]

Thank you; is appreciated. x