trust, or something like it
May. 16th, 2009 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
turbogrrlA therapist, were I to avail myself of one, would tell me that I have abandonment issues stemming from my unfortunate childhood. Knowing a thing and coping with a thing are in fact two very different things, however, and I suspect I may in fact be somewhat late in the game to start coping differently.
Actually, it isn't coping so much as modeling. I'm fundamentally unable to model any relationship that involves me. Most people, I think, can build reasonable, if simplistic, models for the relationships around them. But any model a two-year-old is going to build will never be able to cope with suddenly being pulled from one world into the next with nothing so much as a doll to hold on to.
(I've never even considered that exact facet of it. I had nothing of my prior life. I went to the orphanage with nothing to hold on to. They even cut my hair off. Poor child.)
So, yes. Predictive models clearly were useless. I'm not sure I tried to ever really build one again for myself; instead, I assimilated data, and created the occasional negative model. For example, if my dad came home too late without letting us know, well, I would just conclude he was never coming home. Because people could do that, in my world. The plain truth was that you never really know a person.
The problem, with not having a model, is that it deprives me of the ability to weight input. It deprives me of a useful filter for what is important and what is meaningless. Every interaction is thus incorporated as valid, and assigned an equal weight. Though, I suspect, in thinking about it, that later interactions are weighted higher than prior ones, because now is the milieu we all deal in. There is no use holding on to some idealized state. There is nothing so sacred that someone won't willfully hurt it or walk away from it.
For someone without a predictive model, there is a safety in knowing that anything is possible. That the person you love may just not show up ever again. Or in fact turn out to hate you when they had been saying they loved you all along.
This used to vex Shields to no end. He couldn't wrap his head around it. "You don't trust me. You don't respect me. Why would you spend time with someone if you *expect* them to treat you badly?"
Respect, in his lexicon, seemed to be some sort of false optimism. What could I say? I expected him to be him. I trusted him, as much as I trusted anyone, which is to say-- people are capable of anything, and I'm not capable of predicting what they might do at any given point.
People leave. Not just my biological mother, or the mother I had after that, or her husbands; but friends and lovers do, too. People stop talking to you without explanation, or decide they hate you. It's just another data point. "Oh. Ok."
Sometimes, later, they decide they don't. "Oh. Ok."
I can't predict it. And I really can't hold it against them. We are all complex bundles of contradictions, but there is generally something worthwhile in all of us. Good, and bad, in season. I try to hold on to the good, and accept the rest.
It hurts, though. I don't deny that. Because if I like someone, if I care about them, well, I want them to care about me, too. So, it hurts when they don't.
Nick's parents did this to me the other week, in front of guests. "Oh, god. You. Why do you keep coming around?"
Well. Likely because you keep inviting me, but that is merely what I thought. Instead, I blinked, and changed the topic of conversation, and eventually vanished from the table, as I've learned to do over the years of dealing with endlessly mysterious people.
I don't really hold it against them. It hurts, because I do believe there is a line at which it's not possible to say such things and not mean them, and they well and truly crossed it that night with other similar statements, but I will get over it. I will keep caring, because it is what I do, and they will keep jabbing at me, because it is what they do. It has nothing to do with trust or respect, but I doubt that I will ever be able to articulate this well to satisfy someone so literal as Shields.
What is trust? I really do not know. It's a model I was not issued.
-------
I wandered aimlessly through the humid city tonight, in search of food or drink. Bar Pilar was full, as was Rice and Pasha Cafe and places in between. I knew it was going to rain, but I had brought no umbrella. Eventually, I ended up at Kramers, and the deluge started. I curled up with Rilke and a cider at the bar, and ate my dinner in pleasant solitude.
------
Actually, it isn't coping so much as modeling. I'm fundamentally unable to model any relationship that involves me. Most people, I think, can build reasonable, if simplistic, models for the relationships around them. But any model a two-year-old is going to build will never be able to cope with suddenly being pulled from one world into the next with nothing so much as a doll to hold on to.
(I've never even considered that exact facet of it. I had nothing of my prior life. I went to the orphanage with nothing to hold on to. They even cut my hair off. Poor child.)
So, yes. Predictive models clearly were useless. I'm not sure I tried to ever really build one again for myself; instead, I assimilated data, and created the occasional negative model. For example, if my dad came home too late without letting us know, well, I would just conclude he was never coming home. Because people could do that, in my world. The plain truth was that you never really know a person.
The problem, with not having a model, is that it deprives me of the ability to weight input. It deprives me of a useful filter for what is important and what is meaningless. Every interaction is thus incorporated as valid, and assigned an equal weight. Though, I suspect, in thinking about it, that later interactions are weighted higher than prior ones, because now is the milieu we all deal in. There is no use holding on to some idealized state. There is nothing so sacred that someone won't willfully hurt it or walk away from it.
For someone without a predictive model, there is a safety in knowing that anything is possible. That the person you love may just not show up ever again. Or in fact turn out to hate you when they had been saying they loved you all along.
This used to vex Shields to no end. He couldn't wrap his head around it. "You don't trust me. You don't respect me. Why would you spend time with someone if you *expect* them to treat you badly?"
Respect, in his lexicon, seemed to be some sort of false optimism. What could I say? I expected him to be him. I trusted him, as much as I trusted anyone, which is to say-- people are capable of anything, and I'm not capable of predicting what they might do at any given point.
People leave. Not just my biological mother, or the mother I had after that, or her husbands; but friends and lovers do, too. People stop talking to you without explanation, or decide they hate you. It's just another data point. "Oh. Ok."
Sometimes, later, they decide they don't. "Oh. Ok."
I can't predict it. And I really can't hold it against them. We are all complex bundles of contradictions, but there is generally something worthwhile in all of us. Good, and bad, in season. I try to hold on to the good, and accept the rest.
It hurts, though. I don't deny that. Because if I like someone, if I care about them, well, I want them to care about me, too. So, it hurts when they don't.
Nick's parents did this to me the other week, in front of guests. "Oh, god. You. Why do you keep coming around?"
Well. Likely because you keep inviting me, but that is merely what I thought. Instead, I blinked, and changed the topic of conversation, and eventually vanished from the table, as I've learned to do over the years of dealing with endlessly mysterious people.
I don't really hold it against them. It hurts, because I do believe there is a line at which it's not possible to say such things and not mean them, and they well and truly crossed it that night with other similar statements, but I will get over it. I will keep caring, because it is what I do, and they will keep jabbing at me, because it is what they do. It has nothing to do with trust or respect, but I doubt that I will ever be able to articulate this well to satisfy someone so literal as Shields.
What is trust? I really do not know. It's a model I was not issued.
-------
I wandered aimlessly through the humid city tonight, in search of food or drink. Bar Pilar was full, as was Rice and Pasha Cafe and places in between. I knew it was going to rain, but I had brought no umbrella. Eventually, I ended up at Kramers, and the deluge started. I curled up with Rilke and a cider at the bar, and ate my dinner in pleasant solitude.
------
We lead our lives so poorly because we arrive in the present always unprepared, incapable, and too distracted for everything.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
