Thursday, September 24, 2015
It's been five days since I last wrote here in my blog. Days have a way of passing by in a blur now. I have become so busy with my "new" life that it's easy to arrive home at the end of the day and feel so exhausted that I simply cannot motivate myself to sit before my computer and write. There are some days when I feel badly that my fatigue ultimately proves more powerful than my passion. But change, any change, has a way of challenging our existing routines. And I have been undergoing a lot of change lately.
Here is the positive material. In meeting with my therapist yesterday I found myself "complete" with my own material so early in the session that I actually asked my therapist to further describe the life of another client he originally mentioned for the purpose of drawing a parallel to my own life. The fact that I asked to hear more details about the challenges faced by another human being who is a complete stranger to me convinced me that something has fundamentally shifted in my own life. That I am willing to spend some portion of time in a session dedicated to my own wellness hearing about the life of someone I have no emotional connection to tells me that I am quite healthy now. When no amount of human suffering inspires an empathic response we can correctly surmise that we ourselves have become quite hardened. When the plight of complete strangers interests us it must mean our hearts have some softness still in them.
I continue to enjoy my job working for a local non-profit organization focused on assisting homeless youth. I have been rather careful to not identify the organization I work with on my Facebook page because I still harbor some fear that some local people whose behavior two years ago proved highly offensive and even deeply harmful to me may find it somehow not highly inappropriate to meddle in my life even now and make more trouble for me. While I know it can be easy for me to slip into a mindset of deep mistrust (this can come easily to me due to the trauma I experienced which I have recounted elsewhere here in my blog) without good cause I feel it wise to be careful, even now, due to what happened back then. And something else that happened last night convinced me all the more that my cautious approach is warranted. Now it's time for the unpleasant material.
I learned last night that what happened two years ago may still be impacting the quality of my life as well as my prospects even now. My landlord apparently heard from some people we mutually know in the time since I moved in early August. These people apparently did not give me glowing character references. I suspect some of these individuals might have some sort of association with the Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus. I can only speculate because I was given no actual names. I don't have the impression that any false information was provided about me. And yet I nonetheless have the impression that other people's wrong impressions about what happened in 2013 and 2014 still may be unjustly coloring the way they think about me and speak about me to others. Incorrect impressions are something I can understand. Deliberate lies and vicious gossip are not something I can understand or respect. Deliberate lies and malicious gossip can destroy people's lives. It is my impression that such poor behavior may still be a somewhat common aspect of the behavior of some of the membership of the aforementioned organization.
It's an unfortunate truism that gay people have a somewhat deserved reputation for being extremely vicious and malignant when they perceive themselves to be harmed. You could call it the Vicious Queen Syndrome. I say somewhat deserved because (thankfully) not all adult gay people act like intolerant, spoiled, self-important teenagers or bratty five year old children. But there are all too many gay people who do. And I feel I have already met my share of them. And I have certainly already dated my "fair" share of liars, jerks and the incredibly self-important. And I wish my future life to exclude such nonsense. I prefer being single rather than enduring people who won't get their lives together and actually be kind and decent to others.
I have come to develop a strong aversion to the passive aggressive way of living that marks Midwestern culture. Also known locally as "Minnesota Nice" I find this way of interacting with others so exasperating partly because it is such a colossal waste of time! Why spend so much of your life using mind games and subtle hints to communicate what you are really thinking and feeling to other people? In my opinion life is too short for such bullshit. If I were younger I might feel inclined to do the passive aggressive two step...but I refuse to live in such a shallow way. What if we all behaved as mature adults routinely do and simply express ourselves without fearing others will misinterpret our intent or even later deliberately set out to harm us due to their misinterpretations of our words and actions? What an amazing world that would be if adults routinely behaved as...adults! What a concept!
I felt sad throughout much of today due primarily to this conversation I had last night. It never ceases to amaze me how one-dimensional people can be in their thinking. Rather than try to understand people and accept them as they are it seems so many people are perfectly content to mistreat and judge others based on the most superficial of encounters and personal knowledge. In short I wish there was more depth to the daily reality of human interactions.
Despite the sadness I felt throughout the day I generally felt good otherwise. A whole new life is blossoming for me. I learned some lessons the hard way these last two years. And I expect I will never need to learn them again.
It's been five days since I last wrote here in my blog. Days have a way of passing by in a blur now. I have become so busy with my "new" life that it's easy to arrive home at the end of the day and feel so exhausted that I simply cannot motivate myself to sit before my computer and write. There are some days when I feel badly that my fatigue ultimately proves more powerful than my passion. But change, any change, has a way of challenging our existing routines. And I have been undergoing a lot of change lately.
Here is the positive material. In meeting with my therapist yesterday I found myself "complete" with my own material so early in the session that I actually asked my therapist to further describe the life of another client he originally mentioned for the purpose of drawing a parallel to my own life. The fact that I asked to hear more details about the challenges faced by another human being who is a complete stranger to me convinced me that something has fundamentally shifted in my own life. That I am willing to spend some portion of time in a session dedicated to my own wellness hearing about the life of someone I have no emotional connection to tells me that I am quite healthy now. When no amount of human suffering inspires an empathic response we can correctly surmise that we ourselves have become quite hardened. When the plight of complete strangers interests us it must mean our hearts have some softness still in them.
I continue to enjoy my job working for a local non-profit organization focused on assisting homeless youth. I have been rather careful to not identify the organization I work with on my Facebook page because I still harbor some fear that some local people whose behavior two years ago proved highly offensive and even deeply harmful to me may find it somehow not highly inappropriate to meddle in my life even now and make more trouble for me. While I know it can be easy for me to slip into a mindset of deep mistrust (this can come easily to me due to the trauma I experienced which I have recounted elsewhere here in my blog) without good cause I feel it wise to be careful, even now, due to what happened back then. And something else that happened last night convinced me all the more that my cautious approach is warranted. Now it's time for the unpleasant material.
I learned last night that what happened two years ago may still be impacting the quality of my life as well as my prospects even now. My landlord apparently heard from some people we mutually know in the time since I moved in early August. These people apparently did not give me glowing character references. I suspect some of these individuals might have some sort of association with the Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus. I can only speculate because I was given no actual names. I don't have the impression that any false information was provided about me. And yet I nonetheless have the impression that other people's wrong impressions about what happened in 2013 and 2014 still may be unjustly coloring the way they think about me and speak about me to others. Incorrect impressions are something I can understand. Deliberate lies and vicious gossip are not something I can understand or respect. Deliberate lies and malicious gossip can destroy people's lives. It is my impression that such poor behavior may still be a somewhat common aspect of the behavior of some of the membership of the aforementioned organization.
It's an unfortunate truism that gay people have a somewhat deserved reputation for being extremely vicious and malignant when they perceive themselves to be harmed. You could call it the Vicious Queen Syndrome. I say somewhat deserved because (thankfully) not all adult gay people act like intolerant, spoiled, self-important teenagers or bratty five year old children. But there are all too many gay people who do. And I feel I have already met my share of them. And I have certainly already dated my "fair" share of liars, jerks and the incredibly self-important. And I wish my future life to exclude such nonsense. I prefer being single rather than enduring people who won't get their lives together and actually be kind and decent to others.
I have come to develop a strong aversion to the passive aggressive way of living that marks Midwestern culture. Also known locally as "Minnesota Nice" I find this way of interacting with others so exasperating partly because it is such a colossal waste of time! Why spend so much of your life using mind games and subtle hints to communicate what you are really thinking and feeling to other people? In my opinion life is too short for such bullshit. If I were younger I might feel inclined to do the passive aggressive two step...but I refuse to live in such a shallow way. What if we all behaved as mature adults routinely do and simply express ourselves without fearing others will misinterpret our intent or even later deliberately set out to harm us due to their misinterpretations of our words and actions? What an amazing world that would be if adults routinely behaved as...adults! What a concept!
I felt sad throughout much of today due primarily to this conversation I had last night. It never ceases to amaze me how one-dimensional people can be in their thinking. Rather than try to understand people and accept them as they are it seems so many people are perfectly content to mistreat and judge others based on the most superficial of encounters and personal knowledge. In short I wish there was more depth to the daily reality of human interactions.
Despite the sadness I felt throughout the day I generally felt good otherwise. A whole new life is blossoming for me. I learned some lessons the hard way these last two years. And I expect I will never need to learn them again.
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