Still working up to writing my Letter To A Dead Dad. It will probably happen after I come home from therapy tomorrow, as I am sure as fuck going to be talking about it there.

Right now, I am still processing the emotions and getting them into a form which can be expressed in words.

So instead, let’s talk about crankiness and I.

Patient readers know that expressing anger in the form of crankiness is sort of a “thing” for me. I grew up in the shadow of my late father’s short temper, and it caused me to resolve to never take my bad mood out on others.

Small problem : I forgot to include actual legit targets for my bad mood. So for me, a bad, cranky, cross mood had nowhere to go.

And when that has nowhere to go, it just becomes depression. Depression can be defined as anger turned inward, and is often a form of internalized abuse.

The child of the parent who take their anger out on their kids become the adult who takes it out on themselves.

And while I would never be able to live with myself if I started abusing people like my dearly departed Dad did, and I have been internalizing my anger since forever, what occurred to me just a short time ago was that those are not the only two options.

I mean, the world is not divided between angry abusers and passive self-haters with depression. Most people must find some sort of middle ground. Some way to express their crankiness without taking it out on those they love.

My first guess is to how this might be is that they express their anger TO the ones they love, but not AT them.

So they bitch about their lousy commute, their idiot co-workers, and their dickhead of a boss to their friends and family, but never direct that anger at them.

I think I have finally deduced how healthy families work.

Took me long enough.

Plus there are various aggressive hobbies that could help with the physical stress involved. Whether it’s ping-pong, Halo, or chess, there is probably a socially acceptable form of aggression based upon mutual consent to compete out there for everyone.

Not sure what it would be for me. Multiplayer video games activate my social anxiety, and that’s a whole “thing” unto itself.

I suppose I could try things like word games or the like. With those, I could at least have the feeling that I am going into them with the core skills necessary to win.

But I would still feel like I was conspicuously a “noob” and not as good as all the experienced players there.

So maybe the real issue is the one that plagues a lot of us former child prodigies : not being willing to just plain suck at something for long enough to get better at it.

Academic success came to me way too easily as a child and that meant I never had to just tough it out and keep trying something till I got it.

Those things that didn’t come to me naturally, like gym and arts and crafts, I either passively resisted or just plain refused to do.

Still can’t believe I got away with all that. But I guess when you crush it at the academic stuff, people aren’t that worried that you can’t glue things to a piece of paper properly.

Or kick the soccer ball right.

Can’t fault their priorities, I suppose.

But bad things can happen when the smart kid goes unchallenged.

More after the break.

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On Total Candor

We’ve been watching the new Star Trek show, Picard, and on it there is this Romulan sect that practices what they call Total Candor, which in their case means speaking their exact emotional truth at all times, no matter what.

Which is, of course, very non-Romulan^[1] of them.

And this plus other factors has got me thinking about my own relationship with candor, or rather, its rough and tumble cousin, bluntness.

Because there was a time in my life when I was thoughtlessly blunt. I just said whatever popped into my head.

But then my siblings managed to get me to realize the consequences of doing that and showed me that I was hurting people by not choosing my words more carefully and I certainly didn’t want to hurt anybody, so I changed.

Eventually. And somewhat reluctantly. But I changed.

But there’s still a little part of me that wants to be able to say whatever the fuck I want whenever the fuck I want to say it. To just tell it like it is 24/7 and not have to worry about the consequences to others. Fuck them if they can’t handle the truth.

it’s all very “id”.

And while to give in to that side of me entirely would make me a monster ten times over, I do think I might have overcompensated somewhat.

Again, as with the above, I forgot to open some kind of pathway to the expression of how I really feel.

Sure, being totally blunt would be monstrous, especially for someone with my gift for powerful and impactful self-expression.

But total candor and total suppression are not the only two options.

For example, there’s diplomacy. As I have noted in this space before, when i was a kid my definition of diplomacy was “the art of getting away with telling the truth.”

See, I had figured out that often it’s not what you say but how you say it, ergo if I was diplomatic enough about how I said what I felt to be the truth, I wouldn’t get in trouble for saying it and I might even get praised for my being so gentle about the whole thing.

Of course, as I grew up, other factors came into play, like emotional sensitivity, personal politics, situation awareness (never a strong suit for me), and the desire to hear as much of someone’s POV as I can so I can add it to my own came into play.

But deep down, there is still a part of me that wants to get away with being blunt.

I’ve just managed to turn it into being an open and honest person.

And I think thbat’s pretty awesome.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.