Disinformation

Amidst watching three movie on Sunday, two "with" a special someone…ugh, special someone is off, it sounds contrived…like the word fond….let’s say two "with" someone radiant and divine (better, sounds genuine because it is), I started thinking about things.  I don’t know why or where exactly the thoughts came from.  I can attempt to place them on a tangent with either of the first two films, but I don’t think they came from there.  I think they came from somewhere else, some volcano inside that had its fill of pressure and needed to release.

There is something I don’t think a lot of people understand, well, there are many things, but this thing has been plaguing my mind as of late.  It has to do with honesty.  With truth in the sense of what is true and what is lies.  Many people believe that honest can be achieved simply by telling the truth, but it is not as simple as that.  Stay with me now, I’m not saying that telling lies is to be an honest person.  What I’m saying is that many people believe by just not saying Anything, they are still an honest person, even though it would very well behoove them to tell people certain things.  Sometimes these are secrets, and most people agree that honest people don’t keep secrets…but sometimes these are just random facts or factoids that people purposefully and knowingly omit from their conversations and lives, things they don’t admit to or don’t talk about because, well, by telling the person who might want to hear them the truth of the matter, or the fact, it may cause difficulties. 

Stephanie did this quite frequently.  She didn’t believe she was lying by telling me she didn’t see herself in a relationship with Jamie.  She didn’t believe she was lying when she said they had so little in common and a lot of his practices irked her without end.  And yet, she ended up with Jamie.  I have no idea if they are still together or not, perhaps they are…I remember her telling me last we spoke or perhaps two times before last that the fact was, she made a bad choice but she had to stick with it now rather than admit she screwed up.  Perhaps she was drunk and didn’t mean it.  But all I could think to myself as I continued to listen to her talk then and the next time or later that evening, I don’t quite remember our last conversations that well since my mind ever after January has been a bit clouded when it comes to her and my general disappointment, that if she could tell these things to me, then she never really loved him.  And if she told those things to him, she certainly didn’t.  But I don’t really ever think she told him half the things she said to me.  Is it lying?  No.  It is the omission of the truth.  And that right there is the definition I was looking.  Honesty is the presence of truth.  That means that either the presence of lies or the omission of truth are both being dishonest.  As the movie "No Man’s Land" said last night, "Not choosing a side, neutrality, is choosing a side."  It connects in the fact that omission of truth is the same as lying, it is just a fancy name for it.  Inaction is still an action.  Random is still a pattern.

Honesty is key with me.  Sometimes I rib people when they confess to things a bit awkward and socially "unacceptable" that they’ve done.  Volunteering their penis size, sexual habits, the awkward story about stool samples that my boss just told me, things of this nature.  I have always been one willing to tell these things to those interested, sometimes those not-interested when I was younger.  I believed in absolute honesty.  I perhaps believed this because I wanted to be read by someone, and wanted to be an open book so they could.  But I find it seems that a closed book often gets more attention…someone with secrets behind the pages.  The trouble with that is once you learn how to keep secrets from people, you learn how to do it for everyone.  If you can be dishonest with one person you care about, you can easily do it again.  It’s just human nature to find ease with the repetitive surmounting of obstacles….we are in some ways like a machine. 

I have a hard time trusting.  In "The Good Shepherd," and this I feel did spark a bit of the reaction, they talked about what made a good CIA member…and one thing was a great deal of paranoia.  I am a paranoid person.  I’m a very astute person, as well.  I tend to be a hunch person.  If my hunches prove wrong, I’m all right with that…but when they prove right I’m all the more protected.  I’ve grown to protect myself because I have no one else to protect me.  My parents don’t know how, my siblings don’t want to, and I don’t have the kinds of friends and relationships that breed that sort of interest.  I tend to ask girlfriends whether they’d stand by me if I turned to something criminal and most say "yes."  i wonder if they really would have or would.  I know my siblings wouldn’t.  Sometimes some of  my friends might, but I think I tend to keep friends who are dreamers but not much in the way of action…they tend to work slowly to the grand design, methodically.  I’m a bombastic person.  I intend to sweep by storm everything I do.  Another part of me is logical and careful and that part of me is the one that I have successfully allowed to prevail upon my current acting career.  Take my time.  Make money to save up.  I’m saving slowly but surely and feel come this Pilot season, I can devote with full weight my attempts.  We will see.

I knew from the first night she stayed up with him all night that she was in love with Jamie.  I continued on as if nothing was wrong, I even made it a concerted effort to allow myself not to be too put off, but I know I failed on many levels.  I didn’t like him from the beginning, and I know that part of this was because he was swooping in and taking something away from me that I cared for dearly.  I perhaps am doing the same right now.  Let’s just say I am.  I tend to like to fault myself a lot of the time mostly because so few people are willing to….but whether the fault is mine or not I’m staking claim to some of it.  I’m not sure exactly which actions of mine lead me to lose Stephanie if any did at all.  I’m not sure which is more comforting, the inevitability or my mistakes.  I will say that I don’t believe either of us handled the separation very well….I know I had a meltdown.  But truth be told, I was alone and she wasn’t.  She had already gotten herself something else to brace her and tell her how she wasn’t wrong…a yes man to her actions.  It is one reason I try to stay out of the way for the most part from this current situation.  Do I want Kristen?  Yes.  Do I think I’m better for her?  Yes.  But I won’t step in the way.  Not this time.  I can’t. 

Just because I keep on going doesn’t mean I’m not scarred or broken.  It doesn’t mean that I’m not ready to lay down, either.  I keep going because I know I must, even though it would be easier to stop.  It would c

ertainly hurt me less at times.  I know and hear when people lie to me, when they omit something.  I’m an astute observer of people.  I know them intimately.  I watch them constantly.  It is hard to get something past me.  It is not hard to feel you’ve gotten something past me, I tend to just let things go where they will.  I don’t jump up and stalk people across the internet, steal their phone to check their outgoing calls, I don’t hack into their accounts or demand a full schedule of where they are.  I will ask.  And if I feel like I’m being insulted by someone being very obvious in their lies and omissions, i will become hostile.  Lie to me all you want, just don’t treat me like I’m an idiot.  At least TRY and go through the effort of keeping it secret.  I knew Stephie wasn’t calling me because she wanted to test me.  I’ve always known that Rachel has wanted me back.  I’ve always known that Rachel kept things from me because she’s a young girl with a great deal of freedom and not a lot of morals…not that she’s immoral, just that she is a human being, born and raised in Chetek, Wisconsin, where the idea of morality is either a rigid thing, or spider-web in the wind, barely visible and constantly moving. 

On the other hand, I dont’ want to be unbroken.  I don’t want to be fixed.  What has happened to me is a part of me now and I want to be able to allow that piece to exist just as much as the future of me gets to be happy and charming and elated and in love.  I want to be able to mourn when I feel like it.  I like being serious.  I like taking things hard.  I shouldn’t say I like it as much as I understand it, want it, and believe in its importance.  The world is full of fools trying to make everyone think like them…I dont’ want that.  I just want to be able to think for myself…and be allowed to do it with faith.  Although, I would wish this paranoia was gone or at least that the paranoia would subside.  I don’t even know half the time what I’m worried about…but there’s this vague worry always in the back of my heart…it’s not in my mind.  My logical mind tells me there’s no point, I could get hurt at anytime by anyone.  And my mind also says that I’m allowing myself to get hurt by things that aren’t worth hurting over and I tend to always have allowed that to happen.  Stephanie never got that either.  She never got that every word was a promise and that I thought that love meant being almost god-like in attentiveness and devotion….she got it on some levels, but no on others.  I think I need to give up that dream.  It is expecting something from someone else that they may not be able to give.  Which is part of the whole point I was making…that we can’t impose our own will on others.  I guess we are all guilty.

I wrote in an entry a long time ago, I was rereading them as I assigned them to chapters….that I had been trained like a dog.  For the first three years of college whenever anyone would raise their hand near me, I would cringe and coil up, like a dog about to be hit.  That’s what High School had done to me.  I have sinced managed to be a little less jumpy in that aspect.  I haven’t been hit in a long time.  I think my heart is still coiled and coiling up…it is still trained like an unloved mutt to run towards any hand that will pet it and recoil only moments later, afraid of unpredictable and unprovoked attacks.  it’s a poor metaphor, I’m running out of steam for this entry.  Everytime I write these things nowadays I lose all my steam by the end and just want to lay down in silence and….I dont’ know.  Sleep.  Cuddle.  Mourn in quiet rather than talking about it. 

But I’m trying to be honest.