Sticks & Stones

I had a very poor interaction with the supervisor of one of our remote sites this morning. I was frustrated with the fact that he knows enough about computers to be dangerous and is hard to direct for purposes of troubleshooting. He was defensive, as if every question I asked or advisement I made was intended as an attack. He finally accused me of having an attitude and went off on me for a couple of minutes. I think I managed to defuse the situation with an explanation that these were not attacks, nobody expects him to be a mind-reader, and I'm sick--which is a defense because it's quite possible that things which sound perfectly harmless coming out of my mouth when I'm in my normal, upbeat, tech support persona do not sound harmless when I'm sick and exhausted.

I was in tears by the end. Partly--maybe mostly--out of anger. My reaction to extreme levels of frustration and pissed-off-ed-ness is tears. As if the strength of emotion has to come out somewhere, and chooses my eyes. But also, factored in there somewhere, is the thing I keep coming back to this afternoon: What did I do to upset him? What did I do to trigger this reaction? It's not like he just made up this feeling that I have "an attitude" out of thin air--some perception, correct or otherwise, led him to this conclusion.

Did I do something wrong?
Was I hurtful to or denigrating of him?
Am I a bad person?

None of these are really questions. The answers are "probably not," "I don't think so," and "no, not even if the first two conditions were 100% correct." But I keep coming back to them, because--in my mind, in my social structure, with my ethos and empathy--causing someone emotional distress is one of the most horrific things I could possibly do. Not because it is, but because if I were on the other side, it would be one of the most horrible things someone could do to me.

I was never grounded growing up. I was spanked once, when I was four, for being up on a step stool where i could have broken my neck. I remember being grossly humiliated, not hurt. The worst punishment I ever received--the worst punishment I could receive--was a harsh word. From either parent, but especially from my father (both because we were too similar, personality-wise, and because he seemed to have so many of them . . . because we were too similar, personality-wise). I would rather have been grounded than yelled at, not that either happened terribly often.

Physical abuse from the other kids was easy to ignore. You can wash egg off cheap poly pumps. Pelted by rocks was a bid to get a reaction, so I refused to react. And told my parents, who complained to the school, which resulted in the vice principle sitting across from the bus stop in his car for a week or two. Presto, no more rocks. On the occasion when a group of kids decided they were going to keep us from entering the schoolyard via the chain link gate, I kicked it in in their faces.

There wasn't much of this. I think they picked up on the fact that I was serious. They weren't. But I have too much of the warrior in me. My reaction is to meet violence with violence if I feel genuinely threatened. So I think they learned not to threaten me that way.

Instead, there were sharp words. Insults. Denigrating statements. Quiet things I was meant to overhear, that cut me to the bone. It was . . . the most hurtful thing they could possibly have done. I didn't realize that at the time. But now I look back at it and think about it, and wonder how they could have been so hurtful. The answer, of course, is that it wouldn't have been. Not with any normal kid.

My father had little or no sympathy when I cried about these things. He got the shit kicked out of him more than once at as a kid. I think it's part of the reason he ended up choosing to go to a private school. And nothing else was really real to him.

But me . . . I'm still feeling wounded from this morning. That I upset someone. That someone else holds a low opinion of me. It's like having a splinter under your fingernail: exquisitely painful, and nothing you can do will work it out. You just have to give it time. Worrying at it only makes it worse.

I have higher standards for myself than for anyone else, and a deep-seated fear that I'm not good enough: for my friends, for my workplace, for Pete, for those I "failed" in the last life. Adulthood lets me manage it a little better, and St. John's Wort keeps me from blowing something like this up into a suicidal depression, but the fundamental fears and reactions don't change. And I don't think I really want to meddle with them. I don't know if I'd like the person I'd become if I didn't care what other people thought.

I could say that I'm too fucking empathic. Gods know, that's what I was fuming to myself as I drove home from the off-site this morning. On the other hand . . . I am empathic, in a way that has new age mumbo-jumbo overtones to it. If "sympathetic" means you feel for someone, and "empathetic" means you feel with someone, then I'm going to use "empathic" to mean that I feel as someone.

If you're hurting, I feel every blow on my own psyche. Whether it's the supervisor blowing up at me this morning, or the woman in the bus station in Florida with knuckle-prints beneath her eye where the boyfriend she's leaving punched her, or a friend dealing with depression, or my boss sitting in his office in a Stage 1 mad. Without your saying a word . . . I feel it. When you color the ether with something bad, it makes it hard for me to breathe.

The pen is mightier than the sword, a sharp tongue can cut the keenest blow, and sticks and stones may break my bones--but words can really hurt me.