opening and unfurling

[badgerbag]

I was thinking about the metaphor of "opening up" today because of some recent thoughts about some interactions with people where I felt both pried into in ways I didn't like, but also simultaneously not seen. Like the person was trying to crack me open like a nut, but all wrong, rather than giving me space to express myself organically.

It was very much like when you are a child and someone condescendingly asks you questions that are JUST WRONG and you can also see they are concluding totally wrong things as well like operating on incorrect assumptions, attempting to extract something, thinking they have extracted it when they haven't, and then drawing wrong conclusions. You will then receive the wrong gifts for years and hear them describe you to other people wrongly for the rest of your life as they fail to absorb any actual information about you.

It is such an uncomfortable experience and I had it so strongly the other day. It made me think of other intense encounters of that kind but also of the general feeling of being in a very patriarchal or heterosexual social environment where you are being read 100% wrong.

I feel lucky that most of the time I don't experience that at all in my daily life, enough so that it isn't AMBIENT, and enough so that now when it happens, I SUPER NOTICE it!

Comments

[thistleingrey]

I had it so strongly the other day

Alas.

This post resonates, particularly for cultural (as in ethnicity-adjacent) reasons. The self-helpy stuff I read some years ago posits that it's only a childhood phenomenon, but one doesn't grow out of one's face, hair, body shape, etc. Still ISO decent readings, mostly now to pass along, if anyone's found any!

[vass]

It was very much like when you are a child and someone condescendingly asks you questions that are JUST WRONG and you can also see they are concluding totally wrong things as well like operating on incorrect assumptions, attempting to extract something, thinking they have extracted it when they haven't, and then drawing wrong conclusions.

Ah, I see you've met my therapist from when I was seven. I'm sorry to hear that. It's such a creepy experience.

[oursin]

This resonated for me - not so much the questions but a relationship I was in in which the other person clearly had expectations I would Open Up in some particular kind of way, possibly mirroring their way of telling me all about the Awful Previous Relationships and Betrayers, or actually I don't really know.

But the assumption that there is a short cut to knowing someone rather that - I like 'giving me space to express myself organically' - which may also need time - it's like check-boxes and 'did we do well on a rating of 1-5 stars?' when It's All More Complicated. 'Unfurling' is good.

[athenais]

How horrid. I remember very well how wrong my relatives got me until I was old enough to not just put up with it. Then they drew different conclusions that were not what I thought was right, but it had more to do with them judging me and not simply failing to understand me.