(no subject)
I am really, really bad at being vulnerable to others (I'm surprisingly good at receiving the vulnerability of others, and fostering a sense that I am someone with whom to be vulnerable).
Some of this is pain I've carried for decades, and only really excavated through the lens of applied philosophy and intellect, which limits potential audiences dramatically; who wants to submit a CV prior to meaningful conversation? And the frustrations of being only explicable to exceedingly narrow specialists is well documented in my online history.
I am *good* at being available to others (a combination of talent and years of work to refine it). I do not expect others to be available or accessible to me in the ways that I want or need.
In fact, I expect myself to be ineffable, my pain recognizable as pain, but free from context that would ground it in the lives and experiences of others. The idealist in me assumes this failing is my fault; if I were only better at framing, interpreting, translating, I could convey my meaning in a way that could be received. The cynic in me assumes this is a defensive reaction on the part of others; if they recognized my pain as something that touched their own lives, the burden to change would be uncomfortable, and acknowledgement of co-optation and complicity untenable to the ego (I suspect both the idealist and the cynic are on to something).
I carry my distance internally. The story I tell myself is that others don't see all the deflections, the redirections, the turning of attention back on them with questions underwritten by redirected hypervigilance and active kindness (because I do genuinely care about others, even if I think I 'm unworthy or unreachable in return). Hubris is of course at play, too, because I assume that if the power of thought could solve my problems, I would have solved them ages ago.
I tend to be nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing,....tsunami in terms of openness, as intellect fails and only raw emotion remains. Of my few close friends, only some have ever seen me cry (I cry ugly when I cry, and that's an extra painful burden to me). But raw emotion is rarely about synthesis, and catharsis alone is a starvation diet of emotional carbohydrates.
I don't want to be impenetrable, but I've thought myself into a corner long ago, and the work that got me there still seems valid (I check it often, rigourously bordering on brutality). It is possible that I am a problem that cannot be solved, but if that's true, what does it mean about the possibility and transmissibility of effective vulnerability?
Some of this is pain I've carried for decades, and only really excavated through the lens of applied philosophy and intellect, which limits potential audiences dramatically; who wants to submit a CV prior to meaningful conversation? And the frustrations of being only explicable to exceedingly narrow specialists is well documented in my online history.
I am *good* at being available to others (a combination of talent and years of work to refine it). I do not expect others to be available or accessible to me in the ways that I want or need.
In fact, I expect myself to be ineffable, my pain recognizable as pain, but free from context that would ground it in the lives and experiences of others. The idealist in me assumes this failing is my fault; if I were only better at framing, interpreting, translating, I could convey my meaning in a way that could be received. The cynic in me assumes this is a defensive reaction on the part of others; if they recognized my pain as something that touched their own lives, the burden to change would be uncomfortable, and acknowledgement of co-optation and complicity untenable to the ego (I suspect both the idealist and the cynic are on to something).
I carry my distance internally. The story I tell myself is that others don't see all the deflections, the redirections, the turning of attention back on them with questions underwritten by redirected hypervigilance and active kindness (because I do genuinely care about others, even if I think I 'm unworthy or unreachable in return). Hubris is of course at play, too, because I assume that if the power of thought could solve my problems, I would have solved them ages ago.
I tend to be nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing,....tsunami in terms of openness, as intellect fails and only raw emotion remains. Of my few close friends, only some have ever seen me cry (I cry ugly when I cry, and that's an extra painful burden to me). But raw emotion is rarely about synthesis, and catharsis alone is a starvation diet of emotional carbohydrates.
I don't want to be impenetrable, but I've thought myself into a corner long ago, and the work that got me there still seems valid (I check it often, rigourously bordering on brutality). It is possible that I am a problem that cannot be solved, but if that's true, what does it mean about the possibility and transmissibility of effective vulnerability?