Say What You Mean

A Piece About How Communicating Truthfully Can Set You Free From Feeling Like A Partial Person (This Is Not A Political Piece)

—Matthew 5:37

“Say the need.”

—Marshall Rosenberg

Hello friends.

Your editor has now understood today is Monday, not Sunday.

The sleepy weekend is over, and for me, it was anything except sleepy.

I hesitate to write about personal growth, as it can seem like navel gazing when the world is on fire.

But “fatigue,” detox, health etc is also one of our themes, so I will go ahead.

You know how modern parents tell children to “use their words?”

That was not a thing when I was growing up.

You may think I am bold but in my ‘real life,’ I’d begun to descend into a strange kind of vanishing. I struggled with selfhood, being-ness, and self-imposed mutism as a way to protect myself. This “self” had become a cowering ghost, experiencing broken bonds, resulting from confusion about how to “communicate” other than in writing.

When I spoke to actual people, I rarely had any idea who was speaking, but the words uttered came out alien, designed to keep the peace, as the ‘real self’ got more and more sad and ghost like. It happened less when I spoke to people I didn’t feel dominated by. If I did feel dominated, I would say just about anything, to assuage the anxiety of being anything except a collection of efforts to “please.”

This, in turn, resulted in an experience of exhaustion, procrastination, de-realization and anhedonia, which I tried to cure with potions, supplements, dietary prohibitions, prayer, and self castigation.

This weekend I had a breakthrough.

I failed completely, to live up to something that was being asked of my double, if you will, the avatar I call “her.” The so called journalist who found things out, decades ago, but who blocks me from living, somehow. I want to say: “I just don’t know anymore. Please don’t mistake me for somebody with special knowledge. Except a few dark corners of history, where the violence can’t be described. The real story—”

Once a week I bring her to a place where I have a kind of therapy, and sometimes am asked to draw what happened on a big blackboard, with colored chalk, despite how utterly hopeless I am at drawing.

He says draw anyway.

A stick figure on a steep mountain. All hell breaking loose from the sky. (Hard to draw.) A valley on the other side, with a house, by the ocean, and a sun.

He asked me to draw the monsters, as I called them, and I did, badly. Then he said: “What do you want to do with them?”

Tears filled my eyes, because they looked pitiful.

“Send them back to wherever they need to go,” I said.

And then I took the damp rag and wiped them from the blackboard, astonished at how powerful this simple act was.

Would this exercise in drawing and erasing result in being free of the tar like shame?

I walked home a little more free. (Of myself, my inner jailer.) Bought small fresh sardines for the cats, as I always do, after therapy, amazed at this new place where I live, where people are polite, even at the fish counter.

Still, I wonder where exactly I am, and how I got here. Reports from home are that the angry crowd are now 10 times as angry at us as they ever were, and are calling for us all to be smoked out, punished and eliminated, maybe even literally. My God this is getting tiresome.

Back in my “real life,” I was still projecting : “But I was right,” from a ghost who was soul murdered, and asking to somehow be un-murdered, from facts alone. It wasn’t working.

When it came to enacting what was asked of me, I projected “I can” from a place of utter emptiness, until finally, it turned into “I can’t,” and everything imploded spectacularly.

This was the breakthrough.

In a moment of quitting, of introducing a “boundary,” I disabled my ACOA false, fawning double, who always converted expectations, and even transgressions, into opportunities to be more agreeable. Agreeableness is coupled with its shadow— the unexpressed self. In addition, I was often anything but “agreeable.” Nothing moved forward, because I was not connected to it.

“Put your own oxygen mask on first'—”

A friend said: “I think you’re not depressed, you’re angry.”

At myself, yes.

This weekend, I pulled the emergency cord.

I matched my observations/needs with said “boundary” and it resulted in an immediate dissolution of the “dead” feeling, into an “alive” feeling, with only manageable elements of guilt, over being a disappointment. The details don’t matter, only the breakthrough, as it applies to us all.

I accepted being a disappointment, which, ironically, is all you are, when you desert yourself. How can anybody trust you?

I accepted that a person I care about might be angry with me, and was freed, Houdini like, from chains and cage—the false self under water. Excuse all this drama, but it felt like a real event worth describing.

This post could be labeled “self help,” which should be offered only by those who never knew how to help themselves, but think they might be figuring it out. We don’t walk on hot coals, or ask others to, but we understand what it means when any single act of “self care,” feels like an act of grandiose selfishness, or even madness.

This weekend, terror over being insufficiently cooperative gave way to the thrill of not betraying myself. I even took a bubblebath.

I tell you this not to be self indulgent, in a time of epic tyranny and multiple genocides, but because I see it as the most readily available freedom, within our reach.

Not all tyranny involves complicity, but on a private plane, we can discover gold, when we practice “non violent communication,” which means calm, clear expression of needs from a self that is actually on one’s own side.

“Healing” is about daring to feel; Fatigue comes from the dancing seal that hopes somebody will read her mind, or his. Stopping the utterances of the split off “other,” who speaks from a place of incoherence, causing a mess for everybody. Those who take responsibility for their well being can be seen as selfish—hence the formation of the double. The double basically lies, and then vanishes, when words become impossible.

Every alternative healer should ask: “Are you by chance a self-betraying double-talker, who splits off from yourself?” (Or a gentler version of this question.) “Maybe that’s why you’re so tired.”

Assertive people never seem tired.

Well, it worked.

Yeah, I was at fault, I had created another mess. Tried and tried to assert my needs, only to wind up with a thrown electrical circuit that brought it all to a halt.

The unmet tasks, betrayed promises, unwritten communications, engulfing sense of doom, was all caused by over-promising and procrastination— escape from reality.

Promise less, do less, but do it well.

I’ve been looking for broken vitality/interest in life for so long, but avoiding the possibility that a false double was running the show, trying to prove something about how little I require, like those star shaped cacti that need neither soil, sunlight, nor connection to other cacti.

A man, years ago, who never agreed to be called “boyfriend,” actually gave me one of those once, as a present, a first and last present. “It doesn’t need anything,” he said, somewhat excitedly, when he presented it, but stopped short of saying, “And when I saw it I thought of you.”

Of course, I thanked him, and laughed only much later.

Writing is the only freedom, to covert it all, convert it all, into a redemptive painting composed of what we were really thinking and feeling, who we wished we could have been seen as, and amidst all this, talking to yourself when you have nobody else to talk to.

How is it that whoever is reading this, has assumed the role of “caring” what I think? It’s a miracle. No, it’s a form of fiction, a set of musical notes aimed at the universal, not the personal.

Is the writer the real self?

Yes.

Maybe.

Hunter S. Thompson was said to move literary journalism into the faintly sinful realm of writing about “himself,” but I have read everything he has ever written, and see no “self” in it. Only the “self” as a lens, or device, to refract the universal.

The thing about him was that he invented new rhythms, never before seen in Anglican writing, like the invention of jazz applied to the written word. He said: “This is what an American, from Kentucky, sounds like.” Untranslatable, and I trust no foreign translations were ever attempted.

We’re only people, having a human embodied dream we may as well tell people about, because at least it breaks the silence. Nothing is all that serious, and we betray ourselves when we play roles.

Now, to merge the false self with the real self, and try to forgive them both.

It was late, raining, and 1:30 am, after I did this, but I wanted to go out, suddenly aware of a rare life force.

For once, I could feel the energy of the full moon over the Alhambra, and I didn’t feel the usual lead vest, the numbness. I took photos and was so overcome with the misty beauty of this ancient landscape, I didn’t know who to thank. Maybe it was all just there for me to enjoy, without any chorus of protestations saying “All that is for other people, not you. You? You have made people mad. Earthworm.”

The moon was for once, my moon too, and those voices dissolved.

I had been helped and blessed, and I think the other party may have been a concealed angel, challenging me to snap out of it all, get strong.

I was in bed, around 2:30 am, inexplicably happy, listening to Martyr Made, in a pool of cats, who were all purring symphonically, as if to say, “We don’t have a problem with you, and you’re not a half person,” (except cats don’t think like that.)

We isolate, and bond with animals because we can “get it right” with them, because no false selves enter in. But it’s a stalling tactic.

Could it be this simple, I wondered? My “depression” was an inside job?

What about the guilt? Lutheran, Jewish, a dash of Catholic, but above all Farber-ian.

In our family, always coveted being like what we called “normal” people, which meant, to me anyway, people who were not primed to self-destroy as a means of assuaging approaching clouds of anger. (Not to say we are not also, at times, infuriating, and/or unconscious.)

We’ve lost most or all “friends,” these past five years, but what if the ironic gift of Covid was: “Be yourself. Remember who you are and only apologize if you have done wrong, but no more guilt, or accusation, toward self or other.”

If somebody treats you as though you are a poorly trained servant, don’t try to become a better servant—become a memory. Always thank them.

Check yourself always for your own role, and avoid self serving victim interpretations.

It’s all just poor communication, and failure to signal.

I slept 12 hours, and was informed it was Monday, by my friend Paul in Australia, who called, as I woke, near 11 am. I’d sent out a Saturday evening podcast, on a Sunday.

Paul is going to be our South Africa guide—we’re working on a series about South Africa, where he grew up, and it will tie in the the Musk story, but not as the main focus. The main focus will be all of us wrapping our heads around South Africa, as we are now more or less ruled by a white South African, which is quite the plot twist.

I think Paul was stunned that I was actually able to focus and work on an edit, of his first piece. I told him: “I’ll now be attentive, and present, as your editor. We will edit in real time, and get it published. Things will be different now.”

Nobody is out to get us, and nobody needs our “anger,” but we’re all on the same path, negotiating what the Bible calls “a real yes,” or “a real no.”

The Bible says “anything else” is “of the devil.” And it’s our own devil—not the other person’s.

Marshall Rosenberg’s three word mantra was: “Say the need.”

I always thought, when I heard him say that: “Don’t you need some kind of status, to do that?”

You need the courage to be and represent you, and not the anticipation of the other. Others.

You think people will “respect” you if you desert yourself, say yes when you mean no, because you’re being a good egg. But you’re also being a coward and it’s not fair to them either.

One person who will understand precisely what I’m talking about here is our friend Anna Runkle, of "Crappy Childhood Fairy.”

It wasn’t merely “crappy,” it was a full scale exercise in the practice of self-denial, scoping every moment for anger frequencies the false self put out with a firehose we told ourselves was a form of goodness. And maybe there was goodness mixed up in it. But really it was tactical survival.

Until one day, late in life, you realize you won’t live long, like this. And you reach for the “you” that says what she, or he, needs to say. Also, you listen to others, as you yourself crave being listened to. The only joy in life results, I feel, from devoted hearing. What if we (our type) have done the very same thing to others?

It’s not too late to change.

And it need not involve ceasing to love anybody, or betraying the dead, or, as they would say sharply, in Sweden, “…thinking you are somebody.”

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“Somehow, there was a cat, but it wouldn’t jump.”

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterly’s Lover

On another note, we’re avoiding taking every last piece of bait the simulation machine produces, as we have noticed everything is always about to happen, yet rarely happens.

We (speaking for our type) are no longer a fawning child, making excuses for our parents’s epic war, or demanding of our siblings that they be sufficiently appreciative, and thwart legitimate apprehensions.

Lara Trump said, about a week ago, that Americans should be “kissing the feet” of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

Do the Trumps need a new Public Relations firm?

Maybe Americans should be apologized to, one of these days, for how we were so brutally assailed, rather than being asked to kiss anybody’s feet, just yet.

This process I write about here began with some observations about the constant demands from alt. media inc to “support” Trump, Musk, Bondi, Bongino, Patel, or any of the rest.

That too was scary, but I did it.

I was a little tired of stuff like this:

Well, if so, he’s a well paid wrecking ball. And I’ll thank him when I’ve tended to this stick figure on the steep mountain whose journalistic efforts were carefully concealed acts of self-immolation, now coming back as some kind of rare insight.

We’re free to accord faith, loyalty, and respect as we wish, as we see fit, given the information as we understand it, vale?

No guilt tripping in this space. Feel what you wish, doubt as you wish, believe as you wish, but don’t chase other people around with a broom.

All of that said, there’s now a Trump tweet about the “autopen,” a new character in our psychedelic living dystopic novel. Biden…could not even…sign the pardons himself, not even when he was pardoning half his own family?

I’m not selling you on imminent “arrests” of the Bidens, Fauci or anybody else— we are permitted to suspend a personal sense of relief until they deliver something actual. At which point the feet kissing can perhaps commence.

Here’s the tweet, which we take with a grain of salt, remembering that we are free now, from self imposed serfdom, not merely when all these people, God willing, are at Gitmo where they belong:

How does all this tie together?

If we unhook the ghosted self from the heroic simulations that bombard us, if we learn to be actually kind to ourselves, despite (in my case anyway) mortifying remnants of long, ugly wars, enacted, often to re-cast the blights of childhood, we can come back to ourselves as “mere” people. Real people.

I start by saying “I don’t know,” when I don’t know, and “I can’t,” when I can’t. Or even, “I don’t want to,” when I don’t want to.

Fireflies of relief, sparks of joy, even, come to us then.

Nobody else will ever tell you you are ok, despite all the things you don’t get done, don’t fix, achieve, or make right.

Nobody except cats and dogs, who don’t understand debt, the word for which, in both Swedish and German, means both “debt” and “guilt” in one word.

In Spain, they seem way less interested in trying to pin shame on people—in fact, not interested at all.

We’ll see if Roger agrees.

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