Small Steps Forward

This is going to be one of those long, involved things. I’ve been busy mind-mapping, working to find my lay of the land here. So many different factors to cover, integrate, and have it all make sense. Good luck, I think to myself. I’ve been doing this blank for weeks.

So all this introspection and analyzing started with Something Happening. In this case, a guy at a coffee shop I used to hang out at accused me of being an Assburger. Actually, he claimed I had Aspberger’s, but I really like Assburger better.

I keep thinking maybe I should call it Blankburger instead of Assburger. I don’t know. I think I’ll keep it as Assburger. Blankburger is too much of a mental leap, I think. I think the blanking thing is going to be hard enough for people to get used to.

Anyway.

It was a really interesting discussion. Interesting in that I’m still scratching my head over it. Of course, he doesn’t want to talk about it, so I’m left to my own devices to figure out what he was talking about.

The danger of doing this by myself is this is all subjective, all based on my opinion and observation. It’s all true for me and maybe none of it is true for him. Because I’m unclear where he’s coming from, I keep wondering if I’m missing something. And I keep revisiting the incident, sifting and gleaning to get to the truth of things.

This I know. He’s stuck. I used to hang out at this place because it was crawling with nutbuckets. The bulk of the regulars are people with dysfunctional upbringings. I felt right at home. And I was eager to engage in some interesting conversations. Except I’d forgotten. The first thing you do when you escape a blanked-up home situation is that you never really talk about it. To really talk about it is to bring up some really uncomfortable feelings and a lot of angst and pain. And you just escaped that and don’t want to go back. So you might drop hints about it; if you’re really fed up, you might go on a rant about it; but it’s not something you delve into with both hands, sifting through the good, the bad and the ugly with a fine-toothed comb. That comes much later. If you ever decide to ever climb out of the morass you’ve cocooned yourself into.

The other way you deal with it is through seepage. Seepage is just holding it. Some of it will spill out because it has to, but you just hold in as much as you can as long as you can. I don’t know if you’ve ever really looked at Laura Bush, but she’s a prime example of a walking pile of seepage. You can look at her and tell she’s aching to talk. I don’t know what kind of childhood she had, but I doubt it was very pretty. Anyway, that’s where most of the coffee shop nutbuckets are at. Usually they’re hiding behind their carefully built façades, but occasionally when holding it all becomes too much, some of themselves seep through and you get a small, brief glimpse of who they are. They can’t control it and that’s scary for them.

I remember that stage. At some point, you decide the pain has to be addressed, you stop holding it all in. And that’s when you begin to become interesting. You get in the habit of talking, and of sharing those dark, hidden places with others. Or I should say, sharing you thought was dark and hidden but everyone else saw anyway and pretended not to.

The nutbuckets at the coffee shop aren’t there yet. I knew this last year, when I started hanging out there, but I thought I’d hang out on the periphery, waiting for someone to cross over, waiting for the potential of an interesting conversation. It hasn’t happened.

What did happen was that this guy — we’ll call him Dan — accused me of being an Assburger. He was talking about fighting in the military overseas before, how he came back home and would start crying for no reason, and how he thought he his weight gain was tied into all that. And I, smelling an interesting conversation after a year of dearth, followed up.

What followed was … stupendous. Spectacular. Absolutely great.

There were two conversations. His blow up the first day and a second one. Both very illuminating.

One of the most well-developed tools we nutbuckets have is our defense systems. I remember my system. Say you tried to get to know me. I’m going to have to paint this as analogy. Say that I’m a castle and you decide to visit. You can’t ever stay, by the way; you can only visit. I let down the first drawbridge and you’re on the first moat. You sit there awhile until I decide if you’re getting any further. If I decide you can go further, I left down the second drawbridge. The second moat is much bigger. Maybe thousands of acres of miles. With houses, villages and a couple of castles. None of them are me. None of them are the main castle. You can play here indefinitely, however, thinking that somehow you’ve gotten in. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, you could go through the next six drawbridges before you realized you were on the wrong continent. And there were no flights to my castle. But have a good time on my moats. They were built for you to play in. Don’t feel bad; I didn’t even get to visit my castle.

I’ve done a lot of work since then. I’d guess I’m down to about one moat now. It wasn’t easy.

Dan practically says as much during our first conversation; he tells me that he tells a lot of stories but no one really knows who he is. Yeah, I think, nutbuckets have a lot of ways of hiding in plain sight. We think no one sees this. The truth is, people see us plainly and get tired of traversing moats. Most (healthy) people aren’t looking for entertainment, they’re looking for people to connect with. Nutbuckets are into building lovely façades to prevent those connections from ever occurring.

During our two conversations, Dan has a hard time coming up with examples of me as Assburger. This I understand. Sometimes when we see something about a person’s behavior, it’s hard to put into words and it’s hard to remember what and when exactly. What gets me is that not only can he not give me any examples, he doesn’t want to point it out to me if it happens again, and he doesn’t want to talk about this particular incident. Mmmm… Okay.

The kicker is that he doesn’t want me reflecting. I love reflecting. Reflecting is just putting what someone tells you in your own words (or theirs, if needed) and saying it back to them. Reflecting gives someone space to develop what they want to communicate. Reflecting tells someone you’re really listening. Reflecting cuts through moats, hidden places and darkness like eternal sunshine. I love reflecting. But not only doesn’t he want me reflecting, he’s mad about it.

In my years of practicing reflecting, only complete bullblankers get mad when you reflect. Bored, neutral, disinterested responses mean you’re on a subject the person could care less about. Mad? Oooh, baby. Put the big boots on. You’ve got a deep pile and they’re still busy shoveling.

I remember, for example, one crackhead’s attempt to hit on me. He wasn’t going the direct route, he was doing a conversational set-up for what he thought a woman might go for: money, job, security. (But he’s a crackhead, I’m thinking. That money will be gone as soon as he’s done spitting this blank. Is he seriously trying to sell me this crap?) So I start reflecting what he’s telling me. After about five lines, he’s mad. We’ve just gone in circles. I point out to him that I’ve just repeated what he said, so if we’re going in a circle, that circle is his creation. That’s when the conversation became interesting. He got a little more authentic. As authentic as a crackhead on the make can get, anyway.

So Dan’s pissed that I’m reflecting. I haven’t sussed all this out yet when I’m talking to him — it’s not till later that I look at it and see his anger as a defense mechanism. I should have continued. Gotten to the bottom of things or just killed the conversation. If really listening to him is a conversation killer, then he’s not someone I should be talking to. But in the heat of his anger, I let go of the reflecting.

He wants me to ask questions; basically, an interrogation. I so remember this. The thing with interrogations is that you can’t make a direct connection. Less scary that way for defensive nutbuckets. Reflecting requires some work on the part of the communicator; they have to dig to put into words what they want to get across. Digging like that means that you might wind up anywhere. Like on that other continent where your main castle lies.