I'm doing my best to traverse a sticky situation (as) maturely (as I can). It's just not something we can see eye to eye on right now, so I figured okay, I'll leave it. There's really nothing that can be done unfortunately, and the best thing to do is, I suspect, allow enough time to pass. Except this other person won't.
This is someone who, for some years now, has embraced the prime status of victim to the point where it seems to drive her every interaction with the world. She is someone things were done to, at, the receiver of. And while I'm all in favor of processing and healing, I've realized that no amount of support is enough, that she will just keep taking more and more, then turn on you the moment you speak out against some action or criticize anything she's doing. Accuse you of being an aggressor. Naturally, when that happened to me, I wasn't well pleased, so I made her aware of it and then took my distance.
It was alright. Weighed on my mind a few days, then I moved on. Having considered it, I was happy with my own stance on the issue and that was that. Except this person keeps coming back. Just when you think okay, it is what it is, another wall of text pops up.
I sat reading through the latest, offered a non-aggressive, I think fairly balanced and honest reply, then went about my day. Yet I couldn't get it out of my mind. It wasn't necessarily what was said, but the tone of it. So aggressive and in your face. I thought again it's an unfortunate situation, but it seems neither of us are changing our minds, so that is that. But this person isn't content to leave it at that, and I realize after thinking a bit more about her messages that every one has shared this same aggressive sort of pressure to get me to change my mind and agree with her completely.
I've told her multiple times I don't do echo chambers, but it seems to fall on deaf ears, alas. Either agree with everything I say, or you are an aggressor and deserve to be cut off. I'd seen it happen before to others. It was foolish of me, really, to expect my own interaction with her to go a different way.
It is what it is.
But how do we go about avoiding this kind of thing?
It's something I know I've written about before, except it seems quite important to me, so perhaps it bears repeating. As a society, we have done so much to move towards healthier attitudes and encourage people to put their best foot forward, to understand where they are psychologically and emotionally in order to lead better lives.
It gets to be a bit much for some, though. It seems increasingly, people misunderstand the "take what you need" and choose to stick only with the "take". We'll pick and choose the bits we like of the abundance of modern psychology the mainstream's awash with right now, so that we come out the hero of our own myth.
As we are. We're meant to be the heroes inside our own personal stories, except we seem to have forgotten the typical fairytales and folklore we grew up on. In the stories I read as a child, the hero had to undergo certain travails, had to earn his status as hero. Indeed, it is commonly accepted in the world of literary criticism and interpretation that the true hero is the one who undergoes significant change and ultimately grows from the hardship.
That is why, quite famously, in the Lord of the Rings saga, it is always Samwise Gamgee, and not Frodo Baggins, who is the real hero. Because his is by far the most incredible and quantifiable change from starting point to end.
Modern day people are under the misapprehension that you get to play the hero in stasis.That what they say just goes. And that they never, ever can be the aggressor themselves because they've got a different color shirt on. Except real life does not work that way.
Bad things happen to and all around us. It is our responsibility, primarily, to not allow that to harden us. And to make damn sure that doesn't turn us into perpetrators ourselves. It's damn hard thing to do, and when you catch yourself behaving poorly, man oh man, does it do your head in.
But ultimately, it is your own job to call yourself out on bullshit. To recognize when you're behaving in the way of people who have hurt you and apologize and rectify that. It's a terrible moment because it threatens your entire structure of reality. It forces you to change roles, and suddenly, you are no longer "the victim".
No. Indeed, sometimes you are the asshole. And it's only through constant observation and redress that you can reduce the number of such occurrences.
Me, I (still) like therapy. I like self-care and all those good, healthy things that make you a better person. But I also count accountability among those and it seems for that I'm in a modern minority. But then, it wouldn't be the first one, so what else is new.
Coming back to my story, I considered it prudent to disengage. I've said what there was to say. Protecting myself so I can be a better person for the people who need me sometimes means refusing to participate in other people's dramas.
How do you negotiate such situations in your personal life? And would you say you're someone who takes accountability for their own actions?
Photos are both from my book of Russian folk tales, with illustrations by Ivan Bilbin. Aren't they fantastic?
