(144) Conflict
I used to be friends with this guy, Blurt*, who was brilliant and funny and catastrophically talented at everything he tried. He also had moments of such gentleness and kindness, that it was often hard to imagine a better human ever existing. Blurt was, for a long time, one of my favorite people.
After a few years of friendship, we had a disagreement. I have no idea why it took that long. I’m ornery at best. Disagreements usually crop up in a few weeks. Amongst friends, these disagreements involved me ceding, them ceding, a combination of ceding, or both of us finding some way to laugh ourselves out of it. They rarely bubbled into anything akin to a fight.
Blurt and I disagreed over a then-hot topic regarding political correctness and humor. The topic was vaguely triggering to me because it dealt with sexism and the insidious ways polite sexism enables and enflames outright misogyny and violence. When Blurt, a white, straight male, vehemently shut down everything I had to say about it, I felt disrespected as a friend, as well as ignored as a female in that conversation.
The argument meandered into how he was treating me rather than the supposedly less personally specific topic at hand, and it soon devolved into a horrific example of gaslighting and coldness to the point where, after it was all said and done, I cried for a week, and to this day, cannot remember him without sadness.
This does not, in any way, mean that I held my own side of that argument without flaws. I tend to be blunt anyway, but there were moments in that argument where I was downright disdainful of what felt like his deliberate deafness. I focused on remaining calm and articulate, but as the argument continued, the warm and free-flowing blood in my words grew cold and sticky. I stopped caring about being his friend and began to care more about beating him at his hurting game. I, eventually, contributed to the awfulness of that conversation.
That turning point has stuck with me. I could feel it, as I succumbed to it; I could feel the blazing nastiness leeching my care from its cozy hearth near friendly fire. I remember a stark sense of relief when my care changed hues because it meant that I, for a brief time, hurt less. But, I woke up from that fight without my friend. Worse, I woke up from that fight without wanting my friend, and the lack of my want was scarier than any other thing I’d lost in that battle. For the first time, I could measure my care, and it was less.
Having said that, I of course have no regrets. I put myself first; how people who claim to care treat me is a deal breaker in any relationship I have. But the path I chose in that argument haunts me. I don’t know that there was any other way. I’ve since worked on different communication methods, but I’m dubious that any of those would have stemmed the tide. The refusal to hear me, on his part, was that thorough. I think what haunts me is that I could be that person. I could be a troll, if pushed far enough. I saw the unrelenting, rabid anger in me during the last grotesque flails of that fight. I saw the troll, lurking. Ready.
I have no idea what spawns a troll in its truest, most basic, sense. I suppose there’s an argument for someone who exhibits troll behavior only in certain circumstances being a different level of awful than someone whose predominant behavior is trolling. I’m not sure if the difference is enough to matter for the duration of the rest of whatever relationship can be salvaged afterwards, though, let alone in the heat of the moment. And, if I’m being frank, I love that the non-trolls of every encounter have varied but equally effective ways of dealing with the putrid soiling of an otherwise solid thread, even if it means we sometimes find ourselves flinging rocks with our defiance towards the sneering face of unchecked entitlement. I love that when an obvious bully decides to shit in a public field, the people enjoying that once shitless field have resources, methods, and ways to keep their space clean and free of abuse.
I watched a group of lovelies take down a reputed troll a few days ago, and I was impressed with how quickly they banded together to utterly eviscerate that angry, two-dimensional tube sock. It made me wonder why standing against something is so much more difficult in other situations. I remember when I first started speaking up about systemic racism, I fought the urge to message people for help when even the tiniest dingleberry hit the fan. I’d be panicking, shaking and sweating over the exchange, and I would tell myself that if I truly believed what I was saying, then I wouldn’t be so scared; that I wouldn’t want help.
It wasn’t my belief that was weak, though. It was my ability to deal with another instance of not being heard. It’s why that fight with Blurt broke something in me that will never grow back together; it’s part of a tree that just looks different these days. I’m better at standing on my own; I’m better at tossing off an asshole who can’t or won’t hear me. But that fear is sneaky; it will slink into my tallest moments and whisper to me that no one has heard, that no one cares or understands. It will toss laughter at my surprised back, and leer at me over my ambushed shoulder.
The difference is now I will stand, still tall, and own my imbalance. I see my desire for aid as a personal struggle, because aid must be freely given, or it isn’t called aid anymore. The recent Light It Up trend on Medium has had me asking what it takes to stand with someone; why it’s so often such a hard hand to offer. We aren’t dealing with trolls on a regular basis; we are mostly dealing with people who act like trolls. If there isn’t a difference, then why does a personal connection make the point of contention so much harder, in ways that have nothing to do with your attachment to who you thought that person was? If there isn’t a difference, why does empathy rear its biased head so inconsistently?
And if there is a difference, does that justify the behavior double standard? If there is a difference, is it big enough to let empathy close the divide? When is the lurking troll in all of us enough to make the trolling stop? Is trolling the inevitable snowball at the bottom of a frigid mountain made of our inability to disagree? Or are our disagreements reaching critical mass, are we nearing a moment of mutual clarity born of shedding old ways?
- Blurt is short for Blurtastrophe, after the Greek Mansplaining Hydra
