“You’re my friend and I love you.”
Back in 2019, those were among the last words I had told my dear friend over the phone. Two days later, he died while in the hospital from gangrene.
As I mourned the loss of my friend, that was also an important moment for me. It changed how I approached people, changed how I spoke to people. I’ve always told people the truth, but I often couched it in soft language, or beat around the bush, being careful not to come on “too strong” lest I scare them away.
When Larry died, a switch was flipped in the deepest recesses of my heart.
In 2021, my mom died from a combination of renal failure and COVID. My last words to her were “I love you mom, and I will always love you, no matter where you go,” and I sang our favorite song, the one we used to sing together.
Another switch was flipped, possibly the largest switch in my heart was flipped, the one that said life was finite, the people I love are so precious, so precariously balanced on the knife edge of existence, and I will no longer hold back on how I feel about them, that I will straight up share with them how I feel.
I apply that to every aspect of my life. One of the most unnerving things about being autistic and having ADHD (or AuDHD if you like to save time like some kind of time saver), is that people often think when I say something, I mean something else. I have to assume, on some level, that neurotypical thought is built around the notion of you say one thing and mean another.
I do understand double entendre, and I understand code, I understand parsing conclusive results from incomplete data. When I’m being sly or joking, yes, I absolutely like to engage in that kind of rhetoric, but when I’m serious about something, and I tell people I’m serious about something, it can be unnerving for them to assume I’m trying to “get around” or “get one over on” them.
As I continue on my journey as a socialist, I have begun to encounter more and more self-delusion as a protective measure. Now, I don’t mean to use “delusion” as a derogatory term, we all delude ourselves in something. Half of human society was likely built on things that didn’t exist except in our own minds.
What I mean is that people protect their own hearts and minds by wrapping themselves in comforting thoughts and ideas. George Carlin used to speak on such things, like when he pointed out that at a certain age, some of us look in the mirror and say “I’m not getting old, I’m getting… older!”
The idea being we will give ourselves a soft landing on a hard idea that we’d much rather not face, and I absolutely get that. I’m pagan, so I like to believe the universe is a living, breathing entity that has spiritual aspects that science might look at askance, and that’s okay. Is there really a veil that separates the living from the dead? What are the dead anyway? Do they exist or are they just on a plane we can’t perceive? Don’t know, science can’t answer it right now, which leaves plenty of room for people like me to explore it my own way.
Still, some people will see that as a comforting delusion, a gentle pillow that offers a comfortable place to lay my head instead of having to deal with the concrete of what very well may be reality.
Still, I’m getting away from my point.
When I tell you something, then unless I indicate otherwise, very clearly in words you will understand, then I mean it.
If I tell you I love you, I love you.
If I tell you I’m in pain, I’m in pain.
If I tell you something is evil/wrong/terrifying, then that is how I feel.
I’m not saying these things for any kind of political or social aesthetic. I’m not being “woke” in an effort to sabotage your feelings or your self-proclaimed logical conclusions, I am relating to you exactly what I’m feeling as I’m feeling it, and I’m telling you because I believe that it is an important piece of some kind of puzzle I believe you’re putting together.
See, I don’t just accept things for the sake of accepting them. I don’t believe something because it’s convenient to believe. If I stand on some principle, it’s because I have searched myself deep down and have found that I resonate with that principle.
It really is that simple.
I was on a message board, in a political forum where, for years, everything I said was taken as some kind of code, as if I wasn’t being direct or honest, but was instead trying to “win” some kind of argument that I was clearly not aware of at the time.
I was eventually kicked out of that message board for saying “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free,” because, once again, the people who perceived what I was saying decided that what I was really saying was something else.
I do not know if that is a neurotypical thing, or just a human thing, but I’ve seen it often enough from neurotypical people that I’m thinking it’s something the majority of people seem to take as a given, even as people like myself are looked upon more as quietly naive, delusional (derogatory), or just “stupid.”
I hate that word, but I have been called that quite often by people who did no studying of what I believe, but were pretty damn sure I was incapable of understanding it on a comprehensive level.
That’s one of the reasons I don’t debate anymore, because when someone automatically assumes you’re stupid, what can you possibly do you change their heart and mind? There is nothing you can do, because their change has to come from inside, just like my changes had to come from inside.
I say what I mean and I mean what I say.
Surely that can’t be difficult to understand? It’s pretty plain, isn’t it?
Sometimes I feel like Cassandra, and I’ve talked about this before, where no matter what pronouncements I make about what is happening to me, to people around me, to our world, it is met with cynicism, skepticism, and sometimes outright mockery, and yet when these things come to pass there is no “oops! I guess you were right,” because there is no acknowledgment that what I said even registered.
That’s another reason I don’t debate anymore. What good is laying a problem out in clear language, openly and frankly discussing what is happening, if people are going to dismiss it and pretend it never happened and that no one could have possibly known?
I look through history and I realize this is something that has occurred for probably most of humanity’s existence. Just like what happened during the Holocaust and what is happening in Gaza are directly related, like what happened in Apartheid South Africa and what is happening in Gaza are also directly related, and yet you see people pretending that it just isn’t so, and they will continue, because I believe they are protecting themselves by believing it can’t possibly be so, because otherwise they’d be against such a thing, right? Right?
Right.
It sure is nice to get things like this off my chest from time to time. I know some folks would probably like it if I wrote like a journalist or a pundit would write, lining things up in order, tying them with neat little bows, and bullet points, but that’s not what this site is all about.
I’m not a corporate product, I’m not a commercial venture, I’m not a brand. I’m a human being who has thoughts, feelings, and sometimes just needs to pour them out in order to get the burden off of my chest, and I’ve made this nice little spot on the internet by which to do that.
Still, if you walk away from the page learning nothing else, remember this: I always mean what I say. If I didn’t mean it, I wouldn’t say it, and if I didn’t say it, then I didn’t say it.
I can’t make it any clearer than that.
.Red
