Response to 5/18/02 rant, R1 -- venting
2002-May-19, Sunday 08:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ssurgulKyle,
In the first place, I specifically did NOT try to get any understanding earlier today. If you'll recall, I was biting my tongue a great deal to curtail any sort of discussion regarding your latest stance about this situation. You had a midterm to take and I knew full well that any sort of discussion would only lead to far, far more time being taken than you had. I even explained this to you, so there wouldn't be a misunderstanding. I had to let my feelings stew for most of the conversation and eventually I had to release a bit of them so I wouldn't just explode tomorrow. You need room to vent, and so do I. All along you've said you wanted me to share more of my feelings and myself with you. Yet, every time I do, I become the bad guy for having done so because how dare I have any sort of anger towards you for sharing your feelings.
And again, you're trying to pigeon-hole me into a role of uncaring shit-head from the rather distinctly reduced communications you've been feeding me. You show up, you say, "I don't think we can go forward just now" and then proceed to give many a reason for it which completely contradict anything I was trying to teach you previously. You don't give me any sort of expectations to deal with. I've expressed one of the concerns I have about moving forward with trying to figure out whether you're venting, you're talking, you're analyzing or you're looking for input/help. Yet again, I got no sense of direction on where you were wanting the conversation to go -- and yet again I get the sense that you wanted something very different than what occurred. You can't just show up and lay something like that on me, with no context being given (to use your own terms) and expect me to simply smile and nod. Particularly when I have zero time or opportunity during the conversation to really delve into anything about it.
I got angry, yes. It hurts to see you returning to these habits, and it hurts to see you doing all the things you were trying overcome previously, but then abandoned anyway. Yes, many of these things were at my behest. However, staying out all hours and going to parties, just to get drunk/stoned/fucked, or some combination thereof, and then trundling home the next morning is not going to get you a job and as you've said yourself in previous entries, it's not helping with schoolwork either. It's not going to set any sort of pattern you will need to establish for yourself if you hope to get over your fears and your concerns. But, then I'm suddenly the bad guy here, because I see you pissing all the work you were making away because you can't face everything at once and I get frustrated and annoyed. But, again, this becomes a question of dedication. You had over a year to get over this, and you didn't. Now that you're on your own, more or less, you're slipping even further back into your past. Oh, but then, I was also the bad guy for saying that I was originally planning on restoring you to your past, so you could cope without me. Yet, here you are, moving there all by yourself. And I'm still the bad guy. Hm.
If I am a gardener, let me go ahead and explain the 'growing strategy' for a vine. It starts off small, basic. It's allowed to grow some, on its own, with only partial encouragement from the gardener. But, after it has already taken root, which happens in very short order, then it is trimmed, pruned, and encouraged to grow more and more frequently toward the desired goal. However, even a vine learns to grow fairly easily. It grows in all directions at once, and the 'bad' directions are cut away, leaving the growth in the other directions. It doesn't, typically, start to grow the desired way, and then suddenly stop or even kill off that growth, only to start growing more and more quickly in the directions that are being pruned.
And, just to give you my feelings on this as well: I'm not the only who has been shutting down, demanding things be explained in their particular brand of logic to be understood at all. I find it very annoying that you're bitching about me needing to have things explained to me in terms that I will understand, and yet whenever anything is explained in terms you don't understand, you too get very angry and frustrated. Sound familiar?
In the first place, I specifically did NOT try to get any understanding earlier today. If you'll recall, I was biting my tongue a great deal to curtail any sort of discussion regarding your latest stance about this situation. You had a midterm to take and I knew full well that any sort of discussion would only lead to far, far more time being taken than you had. I even explained this to you, so there wouldn't be a misunderstanding. I had to let my feelings stew for most of the conversation and eventually I had to release a bit of them so I wouldn't just explode tomorrow. You need room to vent, and so do I. All along you've said you wanted me to share more of my feelings and myself with you. Yet, every time I do, I become the bad guy for having done so because how dare I have any sort of anger towards you for sharing your feelings.
And again, you're trying to pigeon-hole me into a role of uncaring shit-head from the rather distinctly reduced communications you've been feeding me. You show up, you say, "I don't think we can go forward just now" and then proceed to give many a reason for it which completely contradict anything I was trying to teach you previously. You don't give me any sort of expectations to deal with. I've expressed one of the concerns I have about moving forward with trying to figure out whether you're venting, you're talking, you're analyzing or you're looking for input/help. Yet again, I got no sense of direction on where you were wanting the conversation to go -- and yet again I get the sense that you wanted something very different than what occurred. You can't just show up and lay something like that on me, with no context being given (to use your own terms) and expect me to simply smile and nod. Particularly when I have zero time or opportunity during the conversation to really delve into anything about it.
I got angry, yes. It hurts to see you returning to these habits, and it hurts to see you doing all the things you were trying overcome previously, but then abandoned anyway. Yes, many of these things were at my behest. However, staying out all hours and going to parties, just to get drunk/stoned/fucked, or some combination thereof, and then trundling home the next morning is not going to get you a job and as you've said yourself in previous entries, it's not helping with schoolwork either. It's not going to set any sort of pattern you will need to establish for yourself if you hope to get over your fears and your concerns. But, then I'm suddenly the bad guy here, because I see you pissing all the work you were making away because you can't face everything at once and I get frustrated and annoyed. But, again, this becomes a question of dedication. You had over a year to get over this, and you didn't. Now that you're on your own, more or less, you're slipping even further back into your past. Oh, but then, I was also the bad guy for saying that I was originally planning on restoring you to your past, so you could cope without me. Yet, here you are, moving there all by yourself. And I'm still the bad guy. Hm.
If I am a gardener, let me go ahead and explain the 'growing strategy' for a vine. It starts off small, basic. It's allowed to grow some, on its own, with only partial encouragement from the gardener. But, after it has already taken root, which happens in very short order, then it is trimmed, pruned, and encouraged to grow more and more frequently toward the desired goal. However, even a vine learns to grow fairly easily. It grows in all directions at once, and the 'bad' directions are cut away, leaving the growth in the other directions. It doesn't, typically, start to grow the desired way, and then suddenly stop or even kill off that growth, only to start growing more and more quickly in the directions that are being pruned.
And, just to give you my feelings on this as well: I'm not the only who has been shutting down, demanding things be explained in their particular brand of logic to be understood at all. I find it very annoying that you're bitching about me needing to have things explained to me in terms that I will understand, and yet whenever anything is explained in terms you don't understand, you too get very angry and frustrated. Sound familiar?