I’m not moving completely away from the Vinny storyline. I am making a brief rest stop elsewhere, but it is related and relevant and necessary.
We have this saying in my family: “everything before the ‘but’ is bullshit”. I feel confident that the Fisher clan didn’t conceptualize this little nugget, but they certainly get credit for usage. Although I’m not one for generalizations, I admit that sentiment tends to bounce around in my skull whenever someone makes a statement with a ‘but’ smack dab in the middle.
I’d love to go, but….
I like her but…
Normally I would do that, but…
I’ve made it a practice to more seriously absorb the verbiage after the ‘but’ as some mechanism of self-protection or the like. I don’t make a scene or challenge the person speaking. I just file the thought in my brain. Skepticism? Nah. I just like to think of it as a good healthy dose of realism. Seeing things as they are, rather than as I’d like them to be or as others want me to see them.
The first time that little trick was shared with me, I asked why someone would make a statement like that. Why would someone break a sentence in two, with the first half acting as some horseshit buffer and the second half representing the truth (or at least a thing closer to it)?
Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but I imagine that people are mostly just trying to avoid hurting other people’s feelings. I mean sure, there are exceptions, but overall, I think that is the intention. I’m not sure people are even conscious of it half the time.
I remember my mother smiling kindly at me after she delivered that response. It was a smile filled with compassion and sympathy and then also, a heavy knowledge. I come bearing difficult information. She had been around the block and that’s how she understood things, sort of. Great.
Over time I’ve found a way to navigate these caveated sentences. Good for me. Well, sort of. The problem is the glaring exception that I’ve run headfirst into, again and again. The singular thought that has rattled me and turned my life upside down. Every. Single. Time.
I remember staring down at my iPhone screen and reading the words, blurred by my tears, over and over again.
I also don’t want to be disrespectful to Kelly.
Over and over again. I was sitting in a 7-11 parking lot, holding a paper cup filled with mostly burnt coffee and I couldn’t stop looking at those words on the screen. My tears pinged off the side of the phone and created droplet shadows on my dress. I would be a mess. I was already a mess.
You don’t want to be disrespectful to the woman who you claimed was no one? You’d like to avoid being disrespectful to the human who you claimed was just a pleasant distraction during loneliness? What in the actual fuck was going on?
The disclaimers and lies and bullshit that had been carelessly thrown my way the last several weeks filled me. Consumed me. Emotional grenades exploding violently, leaving anxiety and grief in their wake. I felt like I had been transported to a parallel universe.
Right. Well I certainly don’t want that either. Sorry. I had no idea you were together or I would have handled everything differently.
Let’s fully process that response. Let’s just sit quietly and absorb the self-loathing, insecurity, and heartbreaking selflessness that oozes out of every thought. Let’s mourn my abandonment of self on every fucking level.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that I believed you when you told me that she meant nothing to you. I’m so sorry that I silenced every instinct that told me I was being manipulated and gaslighted and snowed. I’m so sorry that I don’t think more of myself. I’m so sorry that I thought too much of you, of him.
You know what was also in that exchange?
I don’t want to hurt you but….
Fuck. Yeah. That’s it. That’s the one. That’s the ‘but’ sentence that ends me. That’s my kryptonite. Instead of my nifty compartmentalization, that’s when I say shit like (you might want to take a deep breath before moving forward):
Of course. I know that.
I’m not hurt.
You couldn’t hurt me.
I get it.
I’m just being silly.
I’m just being sensitive.
Translation: Pardon. I just need a moment to fully express to you and the universe at large how much I hate myself.
I mean, do I actually believe those things or am I so programmed to say them that I don’t know the difference?
When people say they don’t want to hurt you it means they know they are hurting you. When people say they don’t want to hurt you it means that they come first and you come after, in whatever order may exist. When people say they don’t want to hurt you, they are often searching for a back door, an out. They are using those words as an exit strategy. The saddest bit? I foil the exit strategy with my response. Every time. I don’t express that I don’t want to get hurt by them either and thus, we are like minded in that way. I don’t share that whatever their intention, shit is going down. I don’t call upon my dignity to take a fucking hint. I dig my heels in. I believe that through sheer will and determination, I will right the ship that has so clearly capsized. Everyone is in the water and hanging onto whatever floating shit they can and I’m just treading water right in the middle. What a day for a swim, amiright?
I don’t extract myself, keeping my sense of self mildly intact. Oh no. I pile on. I’ll see your lies and pathetic attempt to vanish with one heaping dose of loyalty and stubbornness. I lean into the pain.
All I’ve ever asked of the people I share my life with is that they present me with honesty. Just tell me like it is at all times. I can handle it. I truly can. It might feel shitty and I might even cry a little, but I am outrageously resilient. I will emerge stronger and I will put all the icky feelings in the rearview. Of that, I’m sure.
The problem is that people can’t be honest. We aren’t programmed that way. And for the most part, people aren’t avoiding hurting feelings because they don’t want to inflict pain. Oh no. People are avoiding pain. They desperately want to save themselves the discomfort that comes with brutal honesty.
Vinny couldn’t tell me that I was great filler but not his jam for something more substantial. He wasn’t equipped. It felt uncomfortable. So, he said everything else. And I, clung to everything else. I pretended like the everything else was real. I was 15 and then 17 and then 19. I committed hard to my delusions and avoidance.
That clearly means that the cycle continues forever, right? No. It doesn’t, but something incredibly challenging has to happen. Ownership. An assumption of power. There has to be a point at which I accept what I KNOW to be true and forsake what I’m being told. There has to be a moment where I let people go, not because it’s what they need, but because it’s better for me. There has to be a breath in between the ‘but’ statement and my response.
There has to be a time where I smile and say ‘yeah, I don’t want you to hurt me either.’
I don’t, right?
xo
L.
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