All, Some, None (or "this but not that") - words to live by, especially now

 

After a particularly hair-raising and horrendous phone call from a relative I secretly can't stand (and whom I have never once phoned myself, though she calls me at least several times a year and begins to bombard me with highly-personal questions), I wrote this Facebook post and ran it with the photo above. I won't break up the text with images this time, as I like to do, because I really don't have the energy right now. It comes at a time when I already feel vulnerable due to another family member's sensitive crisis, and information that has been entrusted to me which I now realize I cannot and will not violate.

Maybe I should title this "things you shouldn't share on social media". It's a timely subject, particularly in light of the fact that we're now realizing that "delete" doesn't really mean "delete", that people can screenshot and save anything you post and use it for whatever purpose they choose, even years and years later - and in whatever distorted form they want to.

I have no complaint with sharing stuff that's sensitive, and I've done quite a bit of it myself over the years. This has led some people to believe that because I brought up certain subjects, I am quite willing to share EVERYTHING that has EVER happened to me in that area, including things that I went through literally decades ago.

Am I still the shy, smiling young girl you see in this picture? Well, no - and bringing up some of the worst things that ever happened to her is - what shall I say? - not productive. This is particularly true if the person unearthing these archival incidents is not sharing ANY of their own personal struggles, but is hiding behind a sort of social worker position. When that happens, I feel "studied", and it's not sharing on any meaningful level. It is not identification, and it is the farthest thing from empathy that I can imagine.

I learned some valuable things about boundaries many years ago, little gemstones I carry around in my pocket, which have never been more useful than they are right now.

"This but not that." Does that sound simple? It is, but not easy to actually do. In other words, I may be comfortable sharing THIS feeling, incident, situation, etc., but not THAT one. The topic is not wide open for discussion simply because I have brought it up. Most especially, it's not helpful if the incidents the person is bringing up are things I would obviously rather forget.

This is a related issue, but very important. If someone asks you to do something (and especially, if you ask YOURSELF to do something), you can do ALL, SOME, or NONE of it. These are all good choices, and each one of them serves you in the moment. But it is entirely your own choice, and if you get pushback from people (especially wanting ALL when your choice is SOME or NONE), that is their concern and not yours. This has nothing at all to do with them. And "no" is a complete sentence.

We talk about boundaries, but in the Wild West of social media, it seems like boundaries are beginning to dissolve. I have shared some things on my blog that I honestly thought were OK to repost here (it's easy and can be done with the click of a button) - but my blog is personal, my following small, and generally speaking the content won't be held up for scrutiny in the same way.

Another issue that comes up a lot is the value of going public. It used to be seen as really admirable, but it's a whole new ballgame now. Back when I wrote columns for community newspapers, one or two people might appreciate what I wrote or how much of myself I shared. Now it's simply "out there", or up there, where people can either misinterpret it, or just assume I am willing to reveal more (and more and more!) about myself.

This but not that. All, some, none. It's time for me to pull those valuable gemstones out of my pocket once again.

On social media you can be anyone you want to be. You don't even have to use your real name. The person asking you all those uncomfortable questions or digging up incidents from forty years ago can easily take on the safely-defended role of a "mental health professional" (even though they're usually not), safely removed from the actual messy reality of your own experience. But something worse might happen next, and often does. That person then uses your moment of vulnerability to benefit themselves.

Several years ago I dumped Facebook because it had become a drag that wasn't adding anything to my life. Now I honestly wonder how much it might be taking away. I know a lot of people who have stopped posting, perhaps wisely. If I do partake of this, I won't assume things I wrote five or ten years ago will have the same impact. Things have changed radically, and we must watch out for people who are, in a subtle way. predators.

Maybe cat videos and the odd family photo might be safer for me here, as I realizes now I don't want to be public property, even in the most minor way. I'll also make an effort to pay more attention to my own discomfort, and not allow even the most subtle form of exploitation to take place.

For that is what it is.

Internet ambush: the poison pill

(This started off life as a journal entry, but as it evolved I realized this is something I really need to post. It deals with a subtle form of psychological abuse on the internet, in which someone offers you something and makes it almost impossible for you to say no, even if deep down you are uncomfortable with that person and don't want to play. In some cases, there is bad blood in the past which is being denied, glossed over, or twisted around to be your fault, while excusing the perpetrator as having only the best motives at heart. I had an example today on YouTube, just a small one, but my alarm bells went off like crazy.So this is more personal and emotional than most of my blog posts.)  

I had a strange offer this morning from a woman who, like me, has a YouTube doll channel (specifically, troll dolls). She has been very nice in praising a couple of my videos, but then offered to send me a troll, and I refused it. I won't give out personal info, but it was more than that - I could feel a hook in it.  I know I`ve been suspicious before about things that turned out to be OK, but I don`t know this woman, and sometimes fulsome praise (I mean fulsome in the sense of much-too-muchness) IS suspicious. Yes, she has come up to me on the playground, skipping along in a gingham dress and pigtails, etc., and said, "Let's be friends!", and here I am being all suspicious. 

But my God, the CRAP that goes on on the internet, and sending me something like that out of the blue makes me beholden in some weird way, even guilty and feeling I maybe "owe" her something, which of course I do not. Over-gifting or completely unexpected gifting is aggressive at worst, even an ambush, though it also makes the recipient feel THEY are crazy or "off" for being suspicious of a generous gift which has been freely given. What is wrong with you to think there are strings attached?

I don`t know this woman from Adam, or Eve, or anyone else, and she has hardly any videos on her channel at all. That alone is reason to be wary. She referred me to her website, which is generally a sales pitch. Sending me a troll after seeing only two of my videos is an odd thing to do, and even if it didn't lead to "you owe me", psychologically it DOES do that. It`s also real Nigerian prince stuff at its worst. Falling for it leaves you feeling angry, ripped off and ashamed.

I don't want to give her my personal info, least of all my mailing address. Then she will know where I live. A complete stranger. I have heard of the most diabolical things coming from letting your boundaries down, though to be so wary of her makes me seem weird and over-suspicious. She also said, rather snippily, "that is, IF you're interested" in a completely different tone, implying that if you're NOT, you're not being very friendly to a fellow enthusiast.

It's better to err on the side of caution, I think. So I think I handled it right in graciously declining and telling her I don't give out that sort of information. My troll channel is meant to be pure joy, and if someone likes it, thats great. But it is set up a certain way. No commerce, no freebies, no offers or trades, no buy and sell or even being made beholden by sending ME something I never asked for and really do not want. It`s actually pressure on me to MAKE me be interested in her work (for surely I must thank and praise her profusely when I get it!), or making me feel guilty if I am NOT interested in her work, which at the moment I am not. 

So there may well be more snippiness ahead. "That is, IF you`re interested" had a nasty core to it, coated in sparkly sugar.  Postal stuff is dicey at best, especially with the border closed, and I don't know where she lives, but I assume it's the States.  I don't want her finding and criticizing the stuff I post about the States. It could start a war. She may be one of these DETESTABLE Paula Deen-like Southern women, a type I need to stay miles away from. A large number of crafty women on the internet are, maybe because they are traditionalists and egocentric busy bees.

This is the etiquette I think is sensible: don't offer something free, it'll make the other person feel they "owe" you something even if they insist you don’t. Don't agree to receive something when it is offered out of the blue by someone you do not know. When you get that twinge of quease in your belly, something subtle but unhealthy is going on.

That quease means you are sensing a manipulative ploy from someone who doesn't know you from Adam (OR Eve). When I see the nasty leech behaviour of Lynne, my former high school friend, who stood by and silently watched while I was systematically eviscerated in front of her close friend Lori – WHY ON EARTH would I want to connect with her again? But that was exactly what she wanted to do, and insisted on it over and over and OVER again.  If I feel uncomfortable with her and choose not to connect, she should accept it as my decision without questioning it, not pursue me all over the internet, finally driving me to explode and then REALLY be the villain.

I did not stay on my hometown Facebook page (which is the way Lynne somehow connected with me again, trampling the boundary of my blocking her a couple of years ago) for more than a few days, before realizing everyone had their head up their ass and was obsessed with the past. She took my brief interest to mean I wanted to endlessly reminisce about a place that nearly destroyed me. In retrospect, certain things can look very different, and now I see that what she did was every bit as savage as what Lori did (prompted by nothing, by the way), or worse, because her utter silence and total lack of ANY semblance of defending me was making her complicit. Quite simply, she literally stood by and watched.

I don't want that energy in my life, but the way it panned out made it, guess what, ALL MY FAULT for refusing her 'concern'. But even that didn't stop her. By some devious means, she found my YouTube channel (which goes by the name of  ferociousgumby) and left a comment on a video about side effects of meds, telling me I should taper off! If a person blocks you, GUESS WHAT, they do it because they are uncomfortable with you. Those times she visited (she invited herself to have coffee with me twice when she was in town from Ontario), I did not want to see her and did not enjoy the long conversations about Chatham and the past, which is where everyone STILL lives now, including telling me in detail about one person I barely knew who committed suicide. The rest was about how no one in the school system understood her son. Her conversation was one-sided, a monologue, and a drag on my spirits. I felt awful, yet relieved when she left. I did not know how to say no in those days, at all, and now that I DO know, it still causes an interior struggle.

I don't know why I tolerated it, except SHE phoned ME, assuming we were still "best friends" or even friends at all after decades, with a lot of bad blood in the past. Later I dodged the bullet, but as usual with these things, I was left feeling bad for what I had to do. I saw just the beginnings of a tirade from her on Facebook messaging (and HOW can you message someone when they have been blocked??) and didn`t read it, knowing what it would be like and how I would be cast. And how it would leave me feeling, basically ruining my day.

When someone says no, when someone erects a barrier or a boundary, you MUST accept they have their own reasons for it which you may know nothing  about (and are NOT owed an explanation for because it is none of your business), and respect it. Otherwise you don’t respect the person, and then why are you even trying to get the so-called friendship from decades ago (laden with bad blood) going again? Why try to trample down those barriers, and just arm-twist and arm-twist until that person says, Oh, forgive me, I was wrong! I DO want to be your friend again! Let me just push down this barrier I erected because I am so DAMN uncomfortable with you. And kindly do not twist this around and leave ME feeling bad, when the violation is YOURS.

I guess these people just HAVE to win this somehow, to push themselves on you repeatedly until you give way, or even tackle you in the name of friendship. 

I have learned from Linda L. and that really insane Terri chick who was obsessed with Harold Lloyd that you MUST be careful not to get swamped or even sucked into a little whirlpool that has its own sick agenda. There is this bizarre sense that time has stood still (which it apparently HAS in Chatham) and youll just happily fall into step again and be best buds, which we never were. At all.

I am actually shocked at what she did, but what with her, Linda L. and that HL-obsessed chick, I am now much more careful. They were much more blatant examples of actual mental illness, personality disorders, but I learned from them (mostly, what to avoid). And what do I lose? Nothing at all, though having to push back on the troll offer left me feeling subtly dampened during an already hard time. It just left a bad taste in my mouth, something I did not need on a grey day like this.

But it's all a potent reminder that no matter how the internet has evolved, it is still the wild west, and right now it seems to me it reflects the worst of human nature far more often than the best.

KEEP YOURSELF SAFE!

Though I've posted well over a thousand of my videos on YouTube, they haven't figured large on this blog, for reasons I'm not sure of. Maybe I don't want to duplicate myself? But then again - why not? I post lots of other people's. This is one of my rare "message videos", in which I actually appear. On YouTube I am called ferociousgumby, and on this blog (more or less) The Glass Character, which was really Harold Lloyd's character's name. So who knows who I really am. But I want to post this, just because I've found it creepy of late to have "sticky" people adhering to me on the internet, or trying to, even jumping media from Facebook to YouTube expressly to stick to me some more. One woman, a complete stranger, after messaging me for two weeks on Facebook, proclaimed her undying love for me and asked me to move to Los Angeles to live with her. This same woman attempted to scale a fence around Harold Lloyd's grave, and wore a nickel he once owned around her neck and never took it off, not even in the shower. The other was a dubious high school friend who WOULD NOT be rejected by me, for reasons I still haven't figured out. Looking back, I never liked her much to begin with, and was out-and-out abused by her in one particularly harrowing memory. 

Why does this happen? I know I am hardly unique. It's this boundary-less quality, this  sense that everyone belongs to everyone else, in the same world, and we don't. Not even close. I'm glad the past is the past, because it belongs there. It's the past because IT HAS PASSED, and trying to somehow recreate it out of silly putty and string just won't work. Plus it gets in the way of the strange bliss that is Today, and I mean that in the most ordinary, even semi-boring sense. I wrap the day around me, and all I want is some peace, peace from my own screaming inner voices, and how can I have THAT if these weird people keep on chasing me?

Setting up a YouTube channel specifically to leave cloying messages on someone else's videos is beyond creepy. But these people never see themselves. They are too busy being Nice. I have no time for Nice. Kind is a different matter, because it seems more volitional. Or is it just an innate quality, after all?

I have been happily obsessed with Christopher Walken, realizing he is me, and one interviewer described him as having "unexpectedly kind eyes". I think, myself, that he radiates kindness, and warmth, and that "steepling"  thing that he does with his hands on TV interviews is just a way to protect his heart. Those earth hands are beautiful and solid and deeply connected to earth in a personal way. He has often said "I don't do anything" and "I don't have any hobbies". He has been married for longer than me, even, and seems to like it and want it to last. Good for him.

So what does any of this have to do with any of this? Nothing at all. Just -  keep creeps away, don't be "nice", but be unexpectedly kind if you can manage it.