Am I Losing My Mind, Or Does Everyone Just Suck?
Either I’m a paranoid, overprotective freak-show with a WILD imagination, or everyone else is in severe, dangerous denial.
I’m talking about responding to COVID and I’m talking about responding to being human.
I’ve been reading and listening to books and podcasts about emotional intelligence (the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically) lately, and these scientists with data have confirmed what I already suspected: humans are just skin bags full of feelings. It’s our job to figure out how to deal, with intelligence and grace instead of resenting them/pretending like they don’t exist. Our egos, our inability to be wrong and to learn, that’s not armor, those are obstacles. Being vulnerable isn’t weakness, it’s courage.
I have had this electric tension within me my whole life. Either I’m truly crazy with a capital OHHHHH SHIT, or everyone else is hiding from being fully human and acknowledging how hard and complicated it all is. What is the disconnect? How am I so bad at this? Or….
“Feeling people” are often accused of being illogical, sensational, time-wasting, or weak. That’s ME. I’m that…but now I kind of think….so the fuck what?
What I’m reading is confirming what I knew- we’re all emotional, it just varies how we develop and convey or suppress our emotions. Is it braver to cry and verbalize what you’re feeling (#snowflake) or to punch a wall ? Who is better served? Which improves your knowing and being known in your relationships?
What if it’s actually NOT a problem to be tender and emotionally sensitive and honest, and able/willing to experience the full range of human feelings- including the suffering ones…what if empathy is a super power instead of a weakness, if the ability to be vulnerable instead of steely is the harder and scarier but also braver, wiser, and more human choice? What if dealing with pain by sitting with it and breathing through it and talking and writing and speaking about it is actually courage that makes you a good person and leader, but shooting, punching, shouting, powering through it is, you know, NOT?
What if our whole fucking society is built on lies. What if, truly, the only way we’re going to survive is through learning emotional intelligence, and trusting THE FEMININE?!
I binged a show recently, that also solidified these thoughts: “Unbelievable” on Netflix. I am SHOOK. It’s the most empowering, by/for woman show I’ve ever seen…and it’s about detectives chasing a man serial rapist attacking women. It starts with a young woman attacked and not believed by the men detectives in the police system- in fact, aggressively gaslit and criminalized for coming forward by these men. Elsewhere, women detectives fight for other women victims- and they do it in intelligent, light, careful, dutiful, victim-forward ways. The whole show is written like that. It’s the opposite of exploitation- it’s celebration and righteous rising. It makes me realize how backwards all things are in how we represent women and men’s predation on women. This is calling on the hurt-er to account for his actions and not the hurt to account for both his…and hers. It sheds SO much light on the biases toward women and how differently, more peacefully, AND MORE EFFECTIVELY we operate than men. It’s profoundly feminist- down to how the male characters are portrayed…everyone is more self-aware and sensitive to each other and they communicate effectively and GET MORE SHIT DONE than in real life. Patriarchy life.
I think I’ve been a gaslit snowflake my whole fucking life. I don’t want to play within the rules that don’t make sense anymore. I don’t want to pretend the way we’re doing it is THE WAY that serves the most, best. It’s not.
It’s killing us.
I’ve decided I’m not crazy-bad, but everyone might just suck-bad.
Wear a fucking mask. Process your fucking feelings. I don’t owe you shit if you refuse to do either.
I’m done.
