thinky post
phew. busy week for my brain. i found this article in the NYT: The Americanization of Mental Illness. It gave me a lot to chew on. My favorite line was about Americans' peculiar habit of psychologizing every day events. We do it to each other, we do it to ourselves, we isolate the individual and attempt to break him or her apart into blocks, some which should be fixed, viewing these blocks like dry skin that needs lotion; a cough that needs some syrup.
I am so unbelievably guilty of this. For the first time maybe ever in my life, I feel completely normal. I am America!
But I think this article was fascinating because it points out the harm in doing this, in isolating individuals, in isolating certain behaviors or neuroses. But damn if I feel like I'm solving a really fun puzzle. I have been doing this incessantly with the writer, with whom I finally had a huge blow-out. It went horribly. I sent an email to him, brimming with my analyses of his behavior, in case he wanted to think about these things in the future. Of course, while sending it I couldn't entirely convince myself that it wasn't entirely presumptuous and, well, a not-good thing to do. but all the conversations in my head had to go somewhere, didn't they?
Nope. And now I feel kind of icky about it. People are whole. Perhaps they should not be nitpicked and analyzed to death. He likes hostile and reluctant women and he can't sexually perform; these are a few traits, and i of course immediately link his inability to have sex to his preferences for hostile women. But why would I assume these are things to fix? First, I love quirky, strange, not-normal people. I have never dated a normal. Second, it is obvious that we're just not going to match given these traits. But I no longer know how I have thought it was perfectly acceptable to break apart his person and identify certain aspects of his abnormal-ness that should be changed to appease me.
Anyway, now I wonder just how badly this habit is interfering with my life. I spent an embarrassing amount of time "figuring out" the writer. Aside from the futility of figuring out a historical figure (as he now is), it deceived me into feeling I understood him better than I probably did. Rather than just having a reaction to the whole situation and behaving accordingly, I spent months trying to pick it apart and assess the probability of X benefit and Y cost and total net enjoyment in a world parametered this way and then the other. I wasted a year going through a time loop no less than three times. THREE TIMES! We had the same reactions, the same behaviors, the same emails in the same order three times in a row. And each time, I picked the situation apart, analyzed it, offered my analysis, and was told to go to hell. And then a few months later, we would wash, rinse and repeat. I was no less than horrified to read through old emails and discover that almost nothing was new. no new words. no new feelings. same ol', same ol'.
God, I wonder if i can ever successfully re-direct my mental energy away from this type of analysis. It seems as bred into me as my eye color. It's also just feeling increasingly un-human of me. to interact with people by breaking them apart like radios and trying to put them back together again. human-looking, but no more than a collection of important experiences, insecurities, and desires i feel competent in disassembling and re-assembling at my whim.
It is time to date a robot. Clearly that is my conclusion.
I am so unbelievably guilty of this. For the first time maybe ever in my life, I feel completely normal. I am America!
But I think this article was fascinating because it points out the harm in doing this, in isolating individuals, in isolating certain behaviors or neuroses. But damn if I feel like I'm solving a really fun puzzle. I have been doing this incessantly with the writer, with whom I finally had a huge blow-out. It went horribly. I sent an email to him, brimming with my analyses of his behavior, in case he wanted to think about these things in the future. Of course, while sending it I couldn't entirely convince myself that it wasn't entirely presumptuous and, well, a not-good thing to do. but all the conversations in my head had to go somewhere, didn't they?
Nope. And now I feel kind of icky about it. People are whole. Perhaps they should not be nitpicked and analyzed to death. He likes hostile and reluctant women and he can't sexually perform; these are a few traits, and i of course immediately link his inability to have sex to his preferences for hostile women. But why would I assume these are things to fix? First, I love quirky, strange, not-normal people. I have never dated a normal. Second, it is obvious that we're just not going to match given these traits. But I no longer know how I have thought it was perfectly acceptable to break apart his person and identify certain aspects of his abnormal-ness that should be changed to appease me.
Anyway, now I wonder just how badly this habit is interfering with my life. I spent an embarrassing amount of time "figuring out" the writer. Aside from the futility of figuring out a historical figure (as he now is), it deceived me into feeling I understood him better than I probably did. Rather than just having a reaction to the whole situation and behaving accordingly, I spent months trying to pick it apart and assess the probability of X benefit and Y cost and total net enjoyment in a world parametered this way and then the other. I wasted a year going through a time loop no less than three times. THREE TIMES! We had the same reactions, the same behaviors, the same emails in the same order three times in a row. And each time, I picked the situation apart, analyzed it, offered my analysis, and was told to go to hell. And then a few months later, we would wash, rinse and repeat. I was no less than horrified to read through old emails and discover that almost nothing was new. no new words. no new feelings. same ol', same ol'.
God, I wonder if i can ever successfully re-direct my mental energy away from this type of analysis. It seems as bred into me as my eye color. It's also just feeling increasingly un-human of me. to interact with people by breaking them apart like radios and trying to put them back together again. human-looking, but no more than a collection of important experiences, insecurities, and desires i feel competent in disassembling and re-assembling at my whim.
It is time to date a robot. Clearly that is my conclusion.
posted by slickaphonic at 2:18 AM
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