explosivecombat | NIETZSCHE; DEAD PHILOSOPHERS' INBOX

It's going to take a moment of explaining before I get to the point, and since it's rare that I discuss such a thing at all, I may not be terribly clear and my analogy is far from perfect; I can clarify whatever you would like afterwards.

Imagine for a moment that you're in a closed room with no doors and no windows; the walls are painted white, and the only thing in there with you is a radio that's constantly broadcasting. Now, this radio is built to last in that no matter what you do to it, you aren't going to be able to break it; there's no switch that you can locate, there's no dial that you can see to change the station, and it runs on some sort of internal power source - there isn't any sort of cord, and you could probably remove the power source if you had a screwdriver with you. Of course, your luck being what it is, you don't, so you just have to deal with the walls and your permanently-turned-on radio and listen to whatever the horribly stupid thing decides to broadcast.

And of course, your luck being what it is, it's poorly-tuned.

Most of the time it's just white noise; it's neither pleasant nor unpleasant, and at times it can be calming if you need it to be. Sometimes, however, it does other things. Once in a while it's sounds that you can't quite hear; you think they're words but you can't be sure, and the effect is hideously unsettling. Other times it's music you like, but it's interspersed with blasts of static that make you more than a bit on-edge, and after a while you stop listening to the music in favor of waiting for the static bursts to happen again. Once in a while it's that hideous shrill noise that notifies you that something is horribly wrong and there's about to be an emergency broadcast, only the broadcast never comes and the noise itself doesn't stop.

Usually you can handle these things. Even if it's unpleasant, there are ways to solve it for at least a little while; you can always knock the radio over such that some of the noise is absorbed by the floor, or set it in the corner and go across the room and try to occupy yourself until the sound stops. Maybe do a bit of both, if it's particularly pervasive. But after a while, you decide that you've had enough, and that's when your methods get a bit more extreme. You pick the radio up and you throw it into the wall or into the middle of the room against the floor, you try to kick it until it breaks, you crack your nails trying to get the screws off the back. Whatever it takes to make it stop. And eventually your efforts manage to knock the dial into another station that you can deal with.

That's probably the closest analogy I can think of when it comes to human emotion, and why I'm glad I don't experience much of it. My default state is white noise; everything else causes the other various states of unpleasantness that I've described. It doesn't matter if the stimulus is positive or negative; it all broadcasts the same way, in the end. If it continues for too long, I acknowledge that I can't get rid of it but at the same time, throwing the radio feels more productive than just sitting there listening to it scream.

Interactions with other people usually register with me as either white noise or those odd unsettling noises that are almost words but not quite. Not something I'd prefer, but something I can tolerate. Intense relationships are more like the pleasant sounds interspersed with bursts of static. Overstimulation in general is the incessant shrill blasting that seems like it won't stop until something is done. My relationship with my significant other was somewhere between generally intense and overstimulation.

The difference with him is that, for some reason I've never been able to comprehend, he was able to turn the radio off.

Edited 2013-07-28 06:30 (UTC)

The only things I can think of to say are either pitying or insipid, and somehow I imagine you're not interested in having either one.

How many people know that this is what it's like for you all the time?

I've only explained it like that to one other person.

To your significant other?

No. To my best friend.

My significant other never knew, really.

I wonder if he would've wanted to.

As for me, I understand you better now. And I'd love you less for it — if I ever had in the first place.

And that's fair enough, though I'll thank you not to repeat it.

I warned you I'd ask where I fell on your scale. Are you willing to tell me?

What difference does it make to you?

Because I can care about you without loving you, and I can want better for you without pitying you.

And if somehow having me around makes your existence more bearable, then I want to know about it so I can keep doing it, and take steps to make sure I don't accidentally take that away from you without good reason.

And how is that not a form of pity in and of itself? If I tell you either way, it's going to consciously influence your decisions when it's neither your job nor your place to be making my existence more "bearable" for me.

I would have thought that you, of all people, would understand how little I want this to influence our interactions, outside of perhaps bringing you some sort of understanding that you seem to have been seeking for some time now; I believed I could trust you at least that far. If I was wrong about that, then so be it, but I won't have you acting as though continuing to interact with me is showing me mercy.

Because it's overwhelmingly selfish on my part. You know full well every ulterior motive I have for keeping you placated and defused. It's completely in my self-interest to keep a lid on you, and you've just made it known to me tonight that apparently the one person you've ever found who did that job better than anyone else has up and disappeared.

You don't want this to influence our interactions? If anything, this maintains our status quo, because I'm rarely a good conversationalist when I wake up in the middle of the night to find you're overstimulated and blowing things to kingdom come, and the more that happens, the less likely I am to want to keep associating with you anyway. That's not a threat; that's simple rational logic. I don't like you when you're upset, you don't make the experience of being overstimulated sound pleasant at all, and so frankly I don't see why it isn't completely in both our interests to find an arrangement, if one exists, to keep that from happening.

I think you would read what I think of as "love" as the highest form of pity. But I told you that's not what I'm offering. I want an arrangement, a bargain, a negotiation. The fact that I'm allowed to like you while I do it is a separate consideration entirely.

[Right. Right. Just. Give him a moment, Carmen.]

Here's another thing that I'm willing to state outright for you, then. You know that I enjoy your company, and I quite prefer it to your absence; by extension, I quite enjoy our usual discussions and the sort of tone they take.

However.

What I told you was highly personal information; I know it may seem counterproductive to you, but the more personal the information I tell you, the blunter I need you to be with me while discussing it. I can't read it properly otherwise, but I can tell you're trying to soften it. It reads as condescending, not understanding or sympathetic, which is the last thing I want after trusting someone with something so personal. So don't try to be coy, and for the love of all things holy and several things that are not, don't try to soften it. Not over things like that.

[Only if you grant her about ten of her own because she needs it after that one. Given that her hands are probably shaking bad enough that her texting would come out riddled with typos if she tried it before settling down.]

Then in the interest of candor, let me clarify something I said as bluntly as I can. I have many motives when it comes to dealing with you. Most of them are ones that have nothing to do with our relationship and everything to do with keeping you under some semblance of control — as much as I can hope to exercise over the things you do from the position I'm sitting in, anyway.

But at least one of those motives is that I genuinely like...this. You. I don't always like acknowledging that because I know what you are and what you've done, and you're always quick to remind me of it if it starts to look like I'm forgetting it. But you're important, and that means I don't like it when I'm told there's a problem and I haven't at least tried to fix it.

It's not pity — no, I amend that. It's not intentional pity. If I feel bad, it's because that's who I am, and if I try to fix it, it's partly for you but it's just as much for me. Because when the problem is fixed, then I'll stop feeling bad myself.

That's my explanation. It's more of a confession than I otherwise would've liked, but in the interest of equivalent exchange, I probably owe you that much, at least.

That entire first paragraph is the other reason what you were saying read so strangely to me, you know.

I would think that if nothing else, I've proven to you by now that I'm not an idiot; I'm well aware of what the majority of our arrangement is, and why it exists in the first place. Most, if not all, of your fondness for me developed well after you decided you were going to use yourself as some sort of buffer between myself and whatever might happen to set me off. There was interest, maybe, but I suspect that existed solely because, again, I'm not an idiot, and you tend to like people who are intelligent and dangerous and just out of your control.

I'm aware that fondness exists now, but to hear you attempting to make it sound as though what we were discussing was at all for my benefit - because you like me - is something you and I both know to be blatantly untrue. It was jarring, especially after you said that you wouldn't say anything pitying or insipid because you knew I didn't care to hear it, and given the topic it brought the implication that you were suddenly of the idea that I'm too mentally incompetent to know the difference.

I was operating under the impression that if I said I wasn't going to say anything pitying or insipid, that would be taken as clarification that if for some reason I did say something that came off that way, then the problem was in my phrasing creating false implications, not in my intent itself.

I respect you too much to pity you, you know.

Given what I am and what I've done, that isn't a word I'd expect to hear from you, you know.

I respect my teachers, and I respect the people who change me, for better or for worse.

You're both. For better or for worse.

Well, surely you're aware by now that the respect is returned.

And as your teacher, I'm going to recommend that you attempt to get some sleep soon - it's obscenely late, isn't it?

What am I going to wake up to tomorrow, if I do?

As I've said, I have no intention of breaking our agreement, intentionally or otherwise. If it comforts you any, that best friend of mine that I've mentioned from time to time has seen fit to decide he's spending the night with me - apparently he noticed the...possible beginnings of an incident earlier.

And by "spending the night", I mean he's gripping me so hard that he might as well just claim my ribs in the name of his homeland, he's managed to fall asleep like that, and I'd have an easier time dislodging a vise.

It's small comfort, but I'll take what I can get.

...For what it's worth, I think there's a better word for you than "wolf".

Is that so? Let's hear it, then.

"Plámja".

не правда ли, Nietzsche?

So that language does exist in your world...interesting.

Я согласен, by the way.

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