The Xenforo "Discourage" Feature

serious question: why does it matter?

like, what is the purpose of being a good person to you?

there are people in my past that i've hurt. there are people i have hurt, and who want nothing to do with me, and who i want to apologize and make amends with, but ... they don't want anything to do with me. they may think i'm a Bad Person Forever And Ever, and ... okay. i can't fix that. i cannot make my past better.

i was going to say earlier, when you were asking about closure from abuse, that sometimes you just. give up hope of having had a better past. and that's true for when you've hurt people and there are no amends you can make to fix that too.

i know that for me, being a good person is helping who i can and trying to make a better future. and with forgiveness for myself, when i'm not enough, when i mess up, when i hurt people.

it's okay if people hate you. it's okay if someone never forgives you. it doesn't mean you're bad forever. it means you respect those people's boundaries, and leave them alone, and do other things.

 

also: "respect those people's boundaries" is true for people who are wrong about you

my break up with my abusive ex was nasty and the story she spun to our friends and acquaintances was that i was the abusive one. most people went "... yeah, that's false" but several people who were just on the periphery of our friend group, or who composed her new friend group after she got ostracized from ours, believed her. so there are people out there who think i'm a horrible abuser, and want nothing to do with me because of it.

the solution there is to leave them alone. i don't need to prove them right about me. i don't need them to realize that she was the abuser all along. i definitely fantasize about it? it's a hella nice power trip fantasy, where everyone who's ever come into contact with her realizes how toxic she is, and rejects her, and all the people who said unkind or nasty things about me repent. but it's just a fantasy. in the real world, i let go of it, and i don't talk to them or seek them out.

 

i think that's what i'm trying to get at with "give up hope of having had a better past."

a big thing for me has been trying to move past the ... bitterness and rage i have at my parents, particularly my mother, for the ways i've been hurt and the ways that hurt has prevented me from having a happy life. and i wouldn't say i'm there, yet. i'm still so so so bitter over these things - but it taints my future in weird ways, too. like, embarrassing to admit, but w/e: seebs and jesse had a p big impact on me during mid/late high school, and, interspersed with my normal daydreams of running away to dc to be a homeless crack whore, i used to daydream about somehow ending up in minnesota with them. and when nick moved in with them, and then got adopted - my first reaction was to be really jealous, honestly.

and i still regularly fantasize about giving my mom a kickass Reasons Why You Suck speech, but ... i'm never really going to get what i want from them. and i'm never going to get the thing i want(ed) most, which is a childhood where i was honestly loved and wanted. and sometimes the bitterness and anger make it feel like if i'm angry enough, if i hurt people enough, if i make my abusers suffer enough, it'll give me that childhood i wanted? but it won't. it can't. i can't have a better past than i do.

and re allyssa's way of talking about it like acceptance is really good! if that's the framing and terminology that let's you reach that, awesome. for me, it's ... learning to let go of the hope that i could have that loving childhood, if [train noises].

 

Yeah, the problem is, this reasoning feels a lot like the one I had when I was 7, and spent about six months just not bothering to tell anyone about how my teachers were locking me in the toilet or putting me in stress positions under their table whenever I was annoying them in class by doing things like asking questions or not sitting perfectly still.
So, now, my brain is firmly locked in "No, this is not normal, and I have to fight against it" mode. I guess it's not always good, but... IDK, it feels intensely weird and counterintuitive trying to get rid of that.

 

also, backing way up in the conversation:

mmm i don't know how to disentangle this from my religiosity, because my faith is major component of how i approach this, so... sorry? urk

broadly speaking, i am someone who supports the death penalty. broadly speaking, i am someone who agrees that the wicked should suffer.

but in practice, i am a terrible judge. it's not that i don't think bad people deserve bad things happening to them, or even that i think violence is intrinsically bad. it's that i cannot reliably judge when doing violence to other people is justified. and i think it's really easy to get into a horrible feedback loop, when you make exceptions for these things, where everything becomes an exception. when vengeance is righteous and feels like justice, who cares if the violence is disproportionate? or if there was collateral damage?

i don't trust my judgement to be right all the time. and i think when it's things like talking about killing people, or causing unbearable suffering, it's something that i need to have 100% accuracy with.

and so, even though i'm someone who, in thought exercises and the like, genuinely believes, yeah, death penalty is totally a legit way of handling things ... i don't trust myself or anyone else to make that judgement 100% perfectly every time. so, in practice, " " violence is always bad uwu " " ends up being my position.

personally, i satisfy my urge to cause suffering to the wicked by telling myself that god has perfect judgement and will deal with them fairly, but that's not gonna be the solution for everyone

 

minor quibble but-

this? no.

you need to take ownership of the things you've done. very few people have alienated you, you have alienated them

admittedly, this could just be a language barrier thing or a typo, but I wanted to point it out regardless bc it's very much in line with other things I've seen from you

 

kind of a language barrier thing, kind of I should avoid having this sort of discussion while doing other things and being kinda tired.

 

also, THIS

 

Hi yes I want to add on to this as well, but Alix, remember a few months ago when I quipped at you in one of the Athol threads? (sorry about that, by the way! that was rude of me). Remember how, at first, you asked why I was doing that, and then when I told you, you congratulated me on the therapy and getting better? That was actually really nice of you. I was pleasantly surprised. Like, if you had really, truly, no control, and flew into a rage every time someone was rude to you, it stands to reason that you would have done that to me when I said that. You didn't. You were nice and civil to me despite me being rude to you.

So I don't ever want to hear from you that you don't have control because you very clearly do. You're just... doing very bad things with said control. But you've shown a few times that you're capable of using that control to do good things, to be nice to people. Do more of that! Make that a habit instead of trying to hurt people every time you feel wronged. Because what you're currently doing sucks for all of us involved and has for years now.

 

I'm late to this party and this is probably unnecessary but time to make this All About Me.

Why? Because there's logged evidence on this forum from a situation where I wanted to be right so badly because that's what the facts were. They supported me. And multiple people got hurt bad because of this.

Like you, Alix, I had a lot of difficulty naming my emotions to the point where I had no idea how my words would really effect someone. I still do, but I'm making a concentrated effort to cordon off my dick thoughts and anything that could be confused for kindling to the trash fires of Kintsugi. It's hard work, especially with a group so big that I can't accurately assess who will find fault with my words (a big Nope to my brain, which actually makes stirring the pot to be a more attractive choice in horrid situations because at least then you know and accept that you're offending someone).

But that's not the 'me' I want to be. Why? Because getting caught up in all that bullshit, fighting with 'facts' against what I viewed to be an injustice? It was exhausting, and I said that multiple times in the thread that I'm referring to. Maybe you remember this situation. Maybe you don't. But pretty much, the only advice I got from Seebs about all this can be summed up as, 'Have you tried actually helping people?'

Alix. You have no idea how much I thought this was a bullshit suggestion. It was concise and snarky, and I felt like if they actually wanted to make a response to my actions then they would have treated me to the multiple paragraphs that they occasionally grace their forum with. After all, I had already proved in private venues that I could match them word for word and could dig up links and evidence to support any and all of my claims.

A bit of a point of pride for me, you see. Being able to prove that I'm right and getting my grubby little fingers into everything so that I can support every point I make.

But that was some time ago, and the more I think about it, the more right Seebs was in this case. I haven't put in a ton of effort arguing over what's right or who's right since Athol, but that was less 'I'm right and here's the facts' and more 'Sit down, you're abusive-- and now you called me salty WELL THEN'. Different tones there. But in bigger group settings, I'm trying to make that shift from telling something to others, and instead focus on communicating. And I'm feeling like that's the right path to be on. It's not a very clear distinction to make in the moment, but I don't feel so drained after typing a post and that's the biggest tell to me right there. And like I've found out and hold true, and relay to others, there's no magic book of answers that explains how to never hurt people again. You mess up, you make mistakes, but you learn.

The difference in this situation though, is that I wanted to be right and thus, what I was doing was the right thing. You want to do good and thus, your actions (though you'll admit to them being horrid) are a means to this end. Both are responses to an injustice either on a personal level or a societal one. But do the way you feel during and after really seem to correspond with that goal?

Also like you, Alix, I've fucked up big time. Bigger than getting caught up about being 'right' in a stupid internet fight. See, there was a group of friends who I was casually acquainted with who made their own little roleplay back when Pesterchum was big. I was more of what you'd consider to be a more serious roleplayer - even if it was a medium designed for quick lines, my characters had layers upon layers of depth and deep motivations for doing the things they did. This group? Just cared about the three 'f's of life. It was beyond slice of life, it was stupid vapid drabble.

To say that I introduced a character that was a bit of a troll in behavior (not in race) makes it sound like I'm passing off my actions as something I had no hand in. I knew that they were the best and worst choice to put into that venue. Best because they seemed quite superficial, worst because they would destroy the foundation from the bottom up. Anyways, a few minor IC plots later, yadda yadda, "Etansel just get to the point already!" their plan was discovered and it was felt as a huge betrayal. Cue the retconned 'there would have been cameras in the room!' and 'everything is listened to and recorded' to which I laughed in the admin's face.

I was expecting some yelling, at worst a ban. What I got was me causing a severe mental breakdown in the admin, to the point where a mutual friend had to talk him down from suicide. That was never my intention, not to hurt him like that. But you know what? If people were to shun me for driving a man to that point, I can't say that where I am today, I would blame them. They're allowed to carry that perception of me, and I can only hope that my actions in the years since have solidified that that is not the person I want to be, then or now.

Now, you have a lot more quirks in line with my own abuser. Holding yourself hostage, figuring out the best way to get under your victims' defenses, dragging in other people to bust past their boundaries if you view them as unfair. And I've never played the 'wasn't me' game with any of my accounts. Hell, it's not a great secret as to which account was my vent sub, just an unspoken one by those in the know. But I've been in some of those holes that you claim you keep falling into and that are the crux of your behavioral problems and let me tell you: You're misplacing the blame and misidentifying where the issues are, but by doing that you're not gonna navigate your way out.

As someone who's suffered at the hands of someone just like you, and who also has more in common with you than you've probably ever assumed, believe me when I say that I know exactly why you've brought all this up. Subconsciously or not, this is mostly due to the fact that there were two consecutive trash fires in the tumblr.txt thread. Why am I so certain? Because you've pulled out and admitted to this strategy before. And as I've told you in recent history, you're too comfortable with your current toolset to consider moving outside of it. So even if this was just bad timing, I think that it falls too neatly into the pattern you've established for yourself to not be part of your self-examination.

And I know. I hear you when you say that it's discouraging to be told that you're the same as you were a few years back. But it means that whatever you're changing isn't what needs to be changed, or you didn't try it to the extent that it needed to be done. The response shouldn't be to give in, stop trying and prove people right, but to actually stop and listen to why they say that it's harmful and triggering.

So, what's the teal deer here, what is it I'm trying to communicate?

I kind of get where you're coming from. Different means (Being Right vs. Down With The Abusers) to an end goal of solving what was perceived as an injustice.

The solution to bettering myself? Step one, switch gears and refocus my goal. Instead of laying down proofs and links and screencaps of my point to show that my view is the right one and that not only are people assholes, but they're assholes who are wrong! I now try to focus on just self-expression and use that same logging and referencing to fill in the gaps in my own memory and to support things that I think should also be looked at and considered. Similar concepts, but distinct in my mind.

Secondly, I put down the tools that made me comfortable. The speaking up just to offend because it's the most reliable option? There are comments in my void thread that I preface with 'this is a shit thing to say' and say them because I feel like I should be still expressing them, but I'm not bringing them into the wider sphere where they're likely to really cause harm. And then I revisit them after stepping away for a moment to let my emotions reset themselves, and figure out what the important parts of them are so that I can bring those to the table. Every now and then, I still fuck up, but I try to figure out how to solve the fuck-up. Not so that I can be perfect and flawless, but so I can do my best to try making amends and keep from hurting someone again.

Third, people are allowed to have reactions based on your actions. If they want to see your side of the story, then feel free to share it, but don't force them to hear both sides before they make their decision about you, and don't approach them with the goal of proving your innocence.

Finally, this whole revival is really transparent and I'm certain exhausting for everyone involved. I know you have issues with your computer running games. Can it do old-school flash? Because if so, maybe consider adding Anti-Idle as a proverbial tool. And then when you know you're pissed and you're typing things in a fury, let Kintsugi save the draft before you post and take some time before submitting it. And then decide if it's worth the effort and exhaustion after some time spent doing literally anything else.