Three reasons I am exhausted are:
1. The material situation, dealing with this house.
2. The psychological situation, dealing with the owner of the house and the caretaker.
3. The psychological situation, dealing with my “friend” who was going to pick me up from the airport.
Since these situations began to wear upon me, my writing project has gone poorly; there was also the noise of New Year’s Eve and then the general grinding of it all. Having my writing project go poorly is very stressful in itself, and also because my writing projects so often go poorly due to my being in situations where, treated poorly, I feel beaten down. The beaten down feeling is not good for writing. I then feel ashamed at not writing well, which only beats me down further.
The answer, clearly, is to refuse mistreatment and to always treat oneself well. Access to these things, and to spaces in which one can do these things, is sometimes elusive — a fact I am also ashamed of and which I do not understand, either, since it was not elusive in the past. I can see, however, that the only answer to the beaten down feeling I have about this writing project is to keep on going. I may be behind, and it may be embarrassing, but I will finish it at last.
*
These stressors all work together, of course, and there is a striking similarity between two of them, namely those having to do with how certain men will do as they please and not care about anyone else.
*
Meanwhile I am still amazed at the “friend” whose activities I have been attempting to process. I think I have rehearsed what I might say as much as I have — one reader said I was being so polite, it was as though I were afraid, and another kept saying I was unnecessarily apologetic — in part because I am so angry, that were I a Tupi warrior I could take a club to his head and sink him in the bayou.
*
There are many elements to the story and to my reaction. Much of it has to do with my realizing that I have put up with insinuations from this person for a very long time, insinuations that have made me uncomfortable, but that I have tolerated them and minimized them out of some really misplaced sense of politeness. This is rather shocking since when I think about it, I realize I would never try on anyone the things he has tried on me. I am in fact often irritated with him. I feel as though it is I who am the “crabby” one and that is one major reason why I make sure to be more tolerant. This is a bad cycle.
*
A better plan is to not even become irritated but simply raise eyebrows at all outrage, reject it and go merrily upon one’s way. The problem is that people like this “friend” are cleverer than that — they do not perpetrate the outrage until they already have your trust. They also present the outrage as a legitimate idea or even some form of kindness, so that you question yourself as well (or perhaps make allowances for their views or their culture).
In addition, the outrage is now not outrage from some random person — it is outrage from within a friendship, and can therefore be cast as a misunderstanding or some other sort of interpersonal issue. All of this is why “how dare you?” is not always the obvious reaction even when it is the most appropriate one.
*
Another part of my reaction has to do with this person having suddenly revealed so much about what he really is like, or my having at last seen it. This person constantly offers and does favors which seem too great. He seems genuine, yet there is something not quite right about it. And then on occasion he insinuates himself, and I am kind about it. I get out of it without confronting him directly, because we did go out for a while years ago and I remember it, and because he also does many things which are quite kind.
So I had gotten lulled into the idea that this person, although a little awkward, was a friendly entity and was watching out for me. And then, when push comes to shove, when it turns out I will not go to that motel, I am dropped in the cold in New Orleans at midnight with no coat, to find my way home.
*
A conclusion I have reached in the past is that when one has to think so much about someone, what they do and how to handle one’s reaction, it is because they are being abusive or at least manipulative to you in some way. If they aren’t, then one may disagree with their views or actions, or dislike them, but one does not question oneself, wonder, or try to figure out how to manage them.
For example, there are many people of whom I would say: “X has many good qualities, and I admire and appreciate them as a person, but there are some things about them that jar me or that I do not related to, so despite the qualities I do enjoy in them, we are not close friends.” Easily I reject such people as friends, despite their positive qualities. Yet with some people I find myself saying: “Y is abusive and manipulative, but they have some positive qualities, so I must be their friend.”
In the present case, I have twice come to the conclusion that he was mildly abusive emotionally and that he was trying to coerce sex — twice, once in 2002 and again in 2007. And look how I am still trying to manage him. And notice that one of the items on those abusive relationship checklists is “you keep going back.”
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
And so, it really is an abusive relationship then. Which is why I found the motel sally so disabling. And why the response, oh no, that’s not for me, did not just cover the sally.
So now:
It’s the aspects of being tired and drained that you need to watch for, because then you want to lean on someone, as is natural. Those are the moments when our thinking becomes unclear and we can fall back into bad habits, due to patterns developed at earlier stages in our development and so on. I find that when I am tired, I start to become perfectionistic. When I am nitpicking at myself over small points, I know it is overtime to pull back and try to relax. In my natural, unfatigued state, I am not perfectionistic, but tend to take in life in big chunks.
So to guard yourself better, you need to make long term and short term plans for when you are tired, knowing what your general patterns are, and how to resist them.
Well yes, and that is why I am nitpicking now.
Tired and drained are academic values, I’ve noticed. I used to get in trouble with my dissertation supervisor for not being that way. Others got into that kind of trouble as well, with other people. It was ridiculous but we were being trained … and resisted, but I at least eventually got cornered into it. I am against it.
You’re quite right, again, on this and indeed I used to have such plans, some of which involved not getting so tired in the first place. Others were rest plans. You’re so right.
In particular, S: he’s uncannily able to figure out when I am tired / vulnerable. And I do fall into some of the “help” traps then. And the way to actually interact with him — a characteristic of all the good interactions I have ever had with him — is that they take place when I am not tired.
Hm — also when I’m on his turf, e.g. boats, and comfortable with that, or when we’re on neutral ground. He refuses to go on my turf, of course, unless it’s my house, where he goes in an encroaching way, HMMMMMMM.
Very interesting indeed.
Don’t try to think yourself into his mind — you will end up forging an unintended symbiotic relationship with him that way. This is exactly the trap you don’t want to fall into. Rather, just put up your little barriers against fatigue.
—
Here is my reply to you on my blog:
Your lizard brain is seeking to repair your sense of lost wholeness by making you into the mother/nurse of all the damaged people that you come upon.
When I think about the recent autobiographical note I have just posted, there is an interesting element to it in the way that I developed the opposite character structure to my father, in direct reaction to him. So whereas he was the victim of emotional storms, I became supremely self-controlled, almost non-emotional. It may be unrelated but, having the opposite qualities to these damaged people may make us feel that we have to relate to them?
In any case, lizard brain seeks wholeness. It needs to learn to seek it from its own resources, from its depths, rather than trying to obtain that sense of wholeness from a symbiotic relationship with others.
Yes, I saw the blog reply there, too, responded; these are true points and points I am aware of theoretically although I realize now I’m not always aware of practicing them.
[I think this may have to do with my foreign culture flexibility skills: I am good at making allowances for difference, sitting back and observing without judging, but this can mesh into being too accommodating, as well. S is exotic to me and I believe I put up with too much for that reason.]
THIS is very astute and I had not thought of it:
“…you will end up forging an unintended symbiotic relationship with him that way. This is exactly the trap you don’t want to fall into. Rather, just put up your little barriers against fatigue.”
Understanding as a trap. Seeing the kind of danger one could be in is its own kind of trap. Yes. Barriers against fatigue as the more useful, even more meditative strategy. Yes indeed.
Here is my reply to the issue of terming things “Western”:
Yes, but I am not talking about the way that the higher mind categorises things like this, which is legitimate in its own right. I am talking about a whole realm beneath the surface — the way lizard brains carve out their territories. As I said, they have a colonial bad conscience. The best way to disidentify with one’s colonial history is to beat up someone that you think is more colonial than you. At least, lizard brain thinks like this, wanting to expel its negative contents into another, to get rid of them, symbiotically.
Gavin de Becker talks in The Gift of Fear about how violent people will do unsolicited “favors” in order to get the other person in their “debt” and thus under their power. These favors are not really favors, of course, and this person is not really looking out for you, or he wouldn’t try to ditch you at MSY at midnight. Perhaps a large part of your solution is simply to refuse any and all offers of “help” this person makes in the future. Bet that’ll piss him off, too, watch and see!
YES. I agree completely and it is already part of my plan. He already gets pissed off at refusals of help … now he’ll be more pissed off! 😉
I saw that on your blog but am not sure I get it.
I realize you have this your mode of being vs the mainstream Australian one thing going on at the level of personal history but I think Western as you use it means a combination of a few elements: Cartesianism, modernizing ethos, more.
I find it interesting since I consider myself to be in the West & not necessarily able to see outside it / recognize Westernness in myself as culturally specific. Yet when you describe it I realize that there are lots of ways in which I’m not part of it (or of what you describe); it’s why I don’t understand so many people and why they find me to be foreign seeming; I know lots of people who fit your “Western” description, though … so it’s interesting to find out that by this description at least, one is not necessarily, or not entirely, in Westernness. If that’s true, it would explain a lot.
I didn’t sit down and decide there was such a thing as Western. It is likely that those with a Cartesian mentality have a much greater unconscious of which they are unaware. So, those in traditional cultures would actively voice their suspicions of a foreigner, whereas those from Cartesian cultures would more likely project: “you are the cause of all the guilt of which we do not want to become aware.”
But anyway, one does not “get” what one has not been exposed to. A patriarchal male who has never been victimised by patriarchal culture entertains extreme doubts that anything like patriarchy exists. The rest of us know otherwise.
Similarly, I do not have any doubt that there is such a thing as Western cultural identity and that it has a guilt complex.
This identity is necessarily different from how academics would define Western, as their definitions come from the neocortex. But that which self-defines its territory along the lines of pride and guilt is lizard brain.
Think about how this lizard brain’s outline of territories has limited where you can publish your articles, if you do not believe that it exists.
I still find the definition terribly broad but one could go on forever. If it’s Cartesian cultures then that explains a lot, and the guilt complex of people like — well, S for heaven’s sake, and my other X, and a lot of white guys including the owner of this house, and many others I could list — is huge (it’s why you can’t call them on anything, they freak out completely). As I say, what you’re talking about perfectly fits most white guys, a lot of Anglo types, a whole lot of academics, many Europeans, etc.
As I say, it’s interesting to me to the extent it makes me realize it really is true, the Americas are such a hybrid space.
It’s also interesting because people bandy about terms like “Western values” and so on and I never know quite what they mean by that. But I do sort of see, thinking in this way.
It’s just not the kind of definition you think it is.
What I’m getting at is that Cartesianism is a large part of it, but that the boundaries that define my term are not exoteric and obvious. Rather, one comes across people who, by their reactions, define themselves along the lines of identifying with a Western guilt complex, which they wish to be rid of by projecting it onto an intolerable other.
Now the guilt complex thing seems to relate to those who view themselves a privileged and yet have a recent colonial history. I suspect therefore that my term applies more strongly to Australians than those in the US, and once again that it applies more to those in the US than those in Britain. The guilt complex seems strongest with white, educated Australians, because they have had more colonialism. In the US, the experience is set further back in history, and I suspect, but do not know for sure, that most Brits have a philosphical attitude to colonialism, rather than one that is specifically guilt ridden.
So, as you can see, I am mapping the term in an inwards way. Despite the variations between these three cultures (all anglo), I still refer to them under an umbrella term because the ideology of guilt (and the pressure they sense to make reparation) is among them.
I’m sure other cultures — for example in South America — do not experience this same sort of guilt, or if they do, it is not directed at people like me.
But inwardly, a lot of people that I have described as “Western” in their inward consciousness will tend to combine minds and form a kind of barrier against people like me making too much progress in our careers and elsewhere. We are too suspicious in all regards to be allowed to proceed without interference.
The “Westerner”, a slimy creature in all, runs interference as a way of morally atoning for himself.
That he would do something actually useful – but that is too much to ask!
Ideology of guilt, I see, and probably more Americans have it than I think, in fact I’m sure they do. South Americans of a certain stripe, they project it onto the U.S. which is convenient because not entirely false. That’s a very French thing to do, also.
Perhaps part of my trouble in life has to do with that, not thinking that way although people would like me to.