The Kobayashi Maru Of Emotional Vulnerability

So because I’m still really sort of processing, I’m going to core-dump in my journal for a bit about the problem I alluded to earlier.  (And please take special note about the “Don’t do that, then” style of advice.)
What I’m struggling with right now is the Kobayashi Maru of emotional traps: how do I tell someone I’m hurt when I’m not even sure I’m right to be hurt?
Thing is, when I’m in a hypersensitive mood, I see neglect in everything.  Hey, did you not put bacon on my cheeseburger?  How could you?  You know I love bacon.  Your lack of bacon must mean that you’re purposely out to deprive me of bacon.  That’s really a shitty thing to do, you know, fucking my cheeseburger over when you could just tell me the love is over.  If you really loved me, I guess you’d have remembered the bacon.
No.  I honestly get like that sometimes.
Over the years, I’ve learned to calm down and process… but it takes me a while.  Because sometimes it’s not bacon.  Sometimes, someone’s done something genuinely shitty, and it turns out I need to talk to them to say, “Okay, what you did was mean and unfair.”
What I do know, however, is that talking to them in this tizzy does no one no good.  I’m accusatory, no matter how hard I try not to be.  I’m defensive, because I know I might be silly.  And even if they do apologize, an apology generally isn’t enough because I’m so hurt and saddened and vulnerable by having to reveal my inner processes that I need not just an apology, but a full-on reassurance that I’m loved and not stupid on top of it – because the problem is not that you did this thing, but thing made me feel full of self-loathing and neglect, and I want to not feel that way any more.
Practically nobody does that.  Mostly, an apology is about the best they can muster, especially if I am being stupid about things.  (Which is, you know, often.)  But at that point it’s not about the bacon, but this stir of terrored intensity that I’m totally unloved.  Going, “Sorry, you need bacon” doesn’t cut it at that point.
People say they want to know.  But I’m so unreasonable in these times that I know it’s better to withdraw.
Now, in an ideal world, I’d withdraw for a couple of days, retreating into myself while I process and emerge with a measured conclusion.  By then, a simple bacon apology will do (if in fact I decide I need to mention the bacon at all), and we can move on… Except I’m chatty, so people generally notice my absence.  And they ask, “Hey, did I do something wrong?”
(I can also try to fake it and talk to the person who wounded me during this time frame, but I do such a shitty job at pretending nothing’s wrong that they invariably notice.  I know I’m being foolish, but the emotions are pretty overwhelming, and it’s like trying to carry on pleasantries with a man who’s kicking a puppy.  I’ve tried to do casual conversation for years, but in my downtimes I don’t have the social skill to fake it.)
So here’s the paradox:
KOBAYASHI SCENARIO #1: I TALK TO THEM BEFORE I’M SURE THIS IS ACTUALLY A PROBLEM.  But I do it poorly, because I’m emotional and unreasonable.  Shit blows up, and they feel I’m unfair and grasping (which I may well be being), and I injure the friendship.
KOBAYASHI SCENARIO #2: I ADMIT SOMETHING’S WRONG, BUT TELL THEM I’M NOT IN A GOOD SPACE TO TALK TO THEM ABOUT THE PROBLEM RIGHT NOW.  Yeah, that trick never works.  The minute they know something’s wrong, they panic, and pepper me with questions about what they might have done until they know (complete with misintentioned reassurances that no, they’ll be fine), and then we’re back to Kobayashi Scenario #1.
KOBAYASHI SCENARIO #3: I SAY NOTHING, AND HOLD MY GROUND.  They notice something’s wrong.  they get mad at me because clearly I’m bent out of shape and not saying anything, and by the time I’m ready to talk (or let it go) they’re furious because what the fuck, man, you were just so cold and mean.
Whatever happens, whenever I’m injured, I wind up doing damage.  Which sucks.
I’ve since learned that #1 is the best option, but it still sucks.  Because then there’s a big fight, and I come out of that fight feeling whipped and saddened and hated for who I am, and I have to put on my Big Girl Panties and pretend “Hey, everything’s fine even though we’re pissy at each other!”  Which takes even MORE energy, this happy-go-lucky pretending that everything’s cool even though I feel less loved than I ever have in our relationship before…. but eventually it heals shit over.
(I used to dig deeper to try to “fix” things when I was in this mood, which shredded friendships like a woodchipper.)
I dunno.  I just wish I didn’t have this hypersensitivity, or the social ability to pretend that things were fine when they weren’t, but years of effort has shown that I’m not likely to acquire these tendencies any time soon.
And it’s not just me.  Gini’s said she has this same problem with me when she’s trying to figure out whether it’s a genuine issue she’s going through.  So I figure someone must have a way of dealing with the “I need space to process, but people aren’t good at giving it to me” problem.
Suggestions?

The Advice We Really Need When We're This Messed Up

It takes having a deep-seated psychological flaw to understand the value of shortcuts.
Take me, for example.  I’m an introvert.  I can masquerade as a severe extrovert for periods of time as long as a weekend, but it completely drains my batteries.  At the end of that period, I’m ridiculously sensitive, taking any slight with the sensitivity of a knife to the chest.  If you mock me laughingly during those no-battery periods, I may react with furious anger, or I may stop speaking you entirely for a couple of days while I learn to get over myself.  Neither’s a particularly good reaction.
Yet I know if I went to the internet to say, “Hey, how should I deal with people when someone injures me during my recovery stage?”, the advice would be, “Well, don’t get injured!  Stop feeling that way!  Why don’t you fix that shit?”
On one level, that’s wonderful advice.  Lordy, if I was less tender during these recharge periods, my life would be less drama-filled.  And certainly I’ve spent the better part of twenty-five years learning to be less angsty, mapping my psyche to figure out whether this is a joke or a legitimate insult, and doing all the things I can to minimize the turbulence of emotions I feel during this time period.
But it’s been twenty-five years, man, and though it’s better it’s not going away.
Like many, I’ve come to realize that after long periods of socializing, I’m going to be in a place where I’m hypersensitive, no matter how I fight it.  Yet a lot of so-called advice centers on the idea that no matter how deeply-rooted your problem is, you can get rid of it entirely with a dash of effort!  So go do that!  Now!  What’s wrong with you that you didn’t think of that?
Sadly, no.  I know some people who’ve spent forty years working on getting rid of their social anxiety, and it’s still there.  There are folks who’ve spent decades working on anger issues, and that fury still burns.  Depression, co-dependency, fear of intimacy… All those things can often be reduced, but they’re never there.
What we need are shortcuts.
We can’t excise these issues, so what we’re seeking is workarounds.  If we’re depressed, then how do we still get to our jobs?  If we’re terrified of going to a party, what spurs will get us out the door?  If I start screaming in the middle of an argument, how do I apologize properly to get back to rationality and kindness?
Yet the Internet is full of people who give kind, well-meaning advice that boils down to, “Hey, just stop being fucked up and then this whole thing goes away.”  Which would be lovely.  But though you should try, not every weak point can be built up to a strength.
Because hey.  Used to be, I couldn’t even talk to people.  I’d shrink at parties.  But I spent years learning how to listen to people and tell stories, applying a lot of effort in discovering the mechanisms of how to make friends and influence people… And now I can be a party-holder, gathering friends about me.
That’s lovely.  That’s the story you want.
But I’ve put the exact same effort into fighting my lack of self-esteem, and though I’ve gone from “Cripplingly dysfunctional” to “working most months,” I think I could live to be 160 and it would never be considered a strong point.  Some weak points just remain weak, no matter how much effort you pour into them.
And so when you ask for help, saying, “How do I get around this?” what you’re often looking for is the very kind assumption that yes, you’ve worked on this, you will continue to work on this, but given that despite all the effort you’re sinking into it, it’s unlikely to go away… so what do you do now?
That’s what we need.  Advice that assumes this is still a problem, and we need handholds to try to drag ourselves around this gaping hole in our psyche.  Those shortcuts are what hold us together when we’re flying apart, and only those who know the truth of this internal error can hand us the keys.
Sometimes, the best advice acknowledges that the central problem isn’t going away, and tells you what you can do regardless.

Mass Effect 3: The Review (Abstract Spoilers)

As it turns out, I only play videogame RPGs to have sex with people.  But it’s not shallow, I swear.  I just like to talk.
See, in Bioware’s videogames like Mass Effect 3, there are invariably romances to be had – which can only be unlocked by talking repeatedly to your “friends” at every turn, unlocking new conversation trees, finding out new things about your pals (who invariably have interesting histories).  And if you’re open for a romance, you can keep talking to various people, having them fall more in love with you, until eventually you unlock the side-boob sex scene in Act III.
This is the juice of the game.  Without this lure of finding out more about your friends, all the BioWare games are reduced to “Let’s enter another dungeon and kill baddies!”  The romance is what turns a bunch of wandering monster encounters into a story.
Unfortunately, Mass Effect 3 cockblocked me.
See, I spent all of Mass Effect 2 romancing [NAME REDACTED], a long and arduous romance that was actually the most fulfilling videogame romance I’ve ever had.  I actually felt protective of her, such was the magnificent writing of Mass Effect – yes, it’s silly to fall for a fictional character, but damn if they didn’t get me to do it.
So when Mass Effect 3 told me that [NAME REDACTED] was a romance possibility, and we could continue dating if we’d dated in ME2, I was thrilled!  I’d have more conversations with my sweetie!  We’d spend more time together!  I’d find more about her history, what she was up to now!  It was like a whole new world, a dazzling place I never knew….
So imagine my disappointment when the “romance” consisted of “I meet her in a club, say ‘I miss you,’ we dance together once, and she goes off to a place where I never see her again.”
Worse, this “romance” barred me from romancing anyone else.  I didn’t realize this dance was an iron-clad commitment, but suddenly all the other romantic possibilities had nothing to say to me.  I’d go into their room and click on them, and they’d say nothing.
This is terrible design.  But it actually made me cry.
Because in Mass Effect 3, the whole story is about terrible choices and how your character, Shepherd, is the only one who can make them.  It’s implied heavily that this is a suicide mission.  And here I am, with all of my friends refusing to talk to me, alone and horrendously isolated as I’m reduced to a mindless fighting machine with no friends….
…It wasn’t what they intended.  But somehow, this lack of conversational options made me feel like the world was ending.  Which is sort of a genius misfire, actually.
The thing about Mass Effect 3 is that the game is top-notch, but the story is lacking. I won’t give (major) spoilers (though if you’re spoiler-allergic on all fronts, then walk away now), but the ending is craptastic for three reasons:
1)  The ending is utterly not dependent on anything you’ve done before.  It comes out of nowhere, and you’re given some choices, but if you’ve played Paragon the whole time and decide to fuck the world with a Renegade ending, sure!  Go ahead!  The hundred or so hours of history you’ve poured into all three games don’t enter into it.
2)  You don’t find out what happens to your companions afterwards.  Dragon Age did this right – you got to hear the history of all your pals and know whether your choices helped or hindered them.  The last you see of your best friends, they’re entangled in the Huge-Ass War that ends the series.  Are they alive or dead?  Well, I guess you don’t need to know.  (I am vaguely lying about one part of this to preserve mystique.)
3)  To get the “good” ending, you must either a) play a shit-ton of multiplayer, or b) pay Bioware $7.99 for the iPhone application.  This is bullshit EA practice, because winning at multiplayer gets easier – surprise! – if you pay EA money for the upgrades.
It does not help that BioWare is lying their fucking ass off on this one.  When I posted about this on Twitter, several people pointed me towards BioWare’s PR person saying, “No, you can get the good ending if you just play all the quests.”  This is untrue.  You can get the good ending if you come in with a 100% Paragon/Renegade save from ME1 and ME2 and do every quest in ME3.  Stutter a little at any point in this segment, and you will come up short.  I did every quest I could find, and still wound up 400 points short of the “good” ending.  (It doesn’t help that to get the “perfect” game, you have to be Manual, Dangit perfect.)
In other words, the only way to get the good ending is to have been obsessive for all three games.  Otherwise, shell out money, or play a game that you really didn’t want to play.  (And the non-good endings are sufficiently downers that there are online petitions with 10,000 signatures asking for BioWare to put out a DLC to get a better ending.  People are willing to pay to have a satisfying ending, which should show you how dismal it is.)
This is unfortunate, because whenever Dragon Age 3 comes out, you bet your ass that I’m going to see whether EA fucks me over by forcing me to jump through their hoops.  If they do, I’m not buying.  I dig they need alternative revenue sources, and I appreciate the add of multiplayer, but if I wanted fucking multiplayer I’d play Call of Duty.  There are better ways to encourage me.
So.  Mass Effect 3 is like Return of the Jedi – a little disappointing, certainly lacking the momentum of the previous films, but pretty good.  I liked a lot of it.  Sadly, the ending is the major disappointment, and the thing I’m most likely to remember.  So it goes.

The Problem With Eye-Opening

Jay Lake wrote a pretty good essay on the bullshit myth of Christianity being persecuted in America, but what I found troubling was when he said this:

“To my Christian friends: if you want to be taken seriously by people outside your own faith narrative….”

The problem is that for most Christians, you can stop right there.
As Jay notes, 89.3% of the members of Congress are Christian, as is roughly 75% of the country.* Which means that for Christians to be successful, all they have to do is appeal to other Christians.*
When you’re a majority culture, reality ceases to be a necessary function.  In fact, past a certain point it becomes a hindrance, because once you start preaching the stuff they don’t believe to be true, you lose their votes.  So being taken seriously by people outside means that you often lose the inside.
So Jay’s assertion that the Christians would want to be taken seriously by outsiders is, on some levels for many Christians, wrong.  Being taken seriously by outsiders means battling your own people, losing friends, losing popularity, losing votes.  It’s a real hardship, having that kind of fight.  Those who do it are noble, fighting the good fight, working towards real and wondrous change… but let us never forget that to a large extent, not buying into the narrative when you’re inside the majority group turns out to be a net negative.
Which is why I don’t like majority cultures – be they white, heterosexual, or able-bodied.  After a while, every majority culture starts to create these mythologies which explains why they got to this privileged status, and those myths are always this bullshit combination of “We worked harder than everyone else” and “We had more inherent smarts and/or morality!”  Neither of which is really true.**
The reason you’re seeing such a crazed Republican primary season is because the majority Christian culture (or, at least, the fundamentalist culture that drives the Republicans) has taught themselves all these crazy lies that no longer jine up with reality.  They really can’t manage the country because they’re no longer effectively interacting with it – they’re interacting with the Obama-is-a-Muslim-socialist and Christianity-is-dying myths that they tell each other to keep each other motivated. ***
They talk to each other.  And they don’t have to talk to anyone else.  The hard mathematics tells you that from an electoral perspective, it’s better to sway 50% of the 75% Christian vote than it is to get 100% of the 8.9% Jewish vote.  Which sucks.  And it’s why majority culture often winds up becoming so blinkered.
How do you fight majority culture?  That’s a whole other essay right there, and one that I am perhaps not qualified to write.  But when discussing the need for Christians to “open up their eyes,” you gotta remember that when you’re inside the bubble, there’s a hard-edged pressure to keep your eyes closed…. Or to find a new set of friends.
* – Note that I self-identify as Christian, though I don’t follow the Church’s teachings, which I suppose makes me a very bad Christian.
** – Yes, hard work counts for a lot.  So does luck and background.  As humans, we want to naturally dismiss all the scary bits that are out of our control, like luck and family and genetics, to focus on the things we can control.  This is often good, but becomes bad when you start thinking that everyone who didn’t make it failed just because they weren’t as hard-working as you.  Sometimes, people work even harder and fail because of reasons that they had no control over.
*** – It’s not that minority cultures are any less susceptible to this kind of “We’re awesome because we’re awesome” groupthink – hoo boy, they are – but in being forced to deal with the majority culture, these self-serving narratives tend to get squeezed out more effectively.  If not totally.

I'm Fine, Really

I had several posts vaguely planned for this week, and then I had to delve into work because I’m leaving for a writing retreat on Friday.  (Yay for Dallas!  I may even get to see the Texas Book Depository!)  But some folks worry when I disappear, so I figured I’d say howdy.
So hey, I’m busy… but why not tell me something good (or eventful) that’s happened in your life lately?  Liven up my day, and the day of everyone who reads the comments.
When I eventually return, I’ll tell you why Mass Effect 3 was vaguely disappointing.  I’m sure you’ll be waiting with baited breath.