Psycho Analyzing Me

A friend of mine― a former one to be exact― once tried, in a moment of intense emotion, to psychoanalyze all of me that she might understand how I turned out to be way I was. She had known me for maybe two years and yet there she goes; chopping through the dense and thorny foliage of someone not-at-all simple, skipping any preliminaries, straight to what should very well be the final exam. Of course she’s a Christian (a convicted one― the very worst fucking kind) and a student of Psychology― a dangerous combination since it the latter gives some semblance of rational justifications for the inclinations to blind condemnation of the former. Naturally she’s absolutely convinced that I have no knowledge re: ‘true happiness,’ and will never do unless I surrender my heart, soul and body to our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ. She unravels this gem of psychological insight: I am supposedly an extremely bitter and angry person (now there’s a surprise!) who hates at (yes, hates at― her term, something to do with projecting hate when none exists, etc.) anything/everything that tries to get close and help. The remedy for this kind of soul-deadening existence is, she tells me, a conversion to Christianity. And not just any Christianity― the best one! Their church! Undergoing that whole process would assure me of lightening my spiritual burden (didn’t even know I had one) and help me get in touch with my Real Purpose in this world, i.e. being so humble as to think God does everything in my life, effectively making me the Apple Of His Eye, among all the billions (literally) this world has to offer. More important is the fact that all this is supposed to make me happy. Like her. What an eerie coincidence.

This went on for some time. She continued to speak in a manner I would euphemize as ‘impassioned’ while I kept trying to remain calm (since we were in a public place) and smile wanly during the odd moments where she actually cared what I was thinking/feeling and looked at me. I didn’t laugh or even smirk when she misused ‘special’ psychological terms (I especially loved the overconfident usage of ‘appropriation’ and Jung’s anima/animus), which she did a lot, sprinkling them in way too obviously and pausing for a millisecond right after as if waiting for me to gasp and kneel at her linguistic prowess.

I reminded the smug psychoanalyst that um, she didn’t even know me that well. Two years since that night we were introduced and sporadic nightcaps every few weeks since then don’t exactly count as a meaningful relationship in the usual ways. Especially when you consider the fact that I never really talk about anything concerning just me; it’s always what I think of something. But of course that doesn’t stop her. She had the stubbornness required of a True Christian.

Oh I know you, she intoned breathily. I know you more than you will ever know. The reason, supposedly― and she really did just name one― why I was so cynical and self-destructive is that my mother and father weren’t (and aren’t) married. She told me that I blamed God for every non-pleasant thing in my life when it wasn’t His fault; and instead of moving forward and bathing in the glorious illumination of God’s love, I lash out haphazardly at everything and everyone that tries to help me (don’t be fooled― she only means her).

A keen piece of psychological insight, no doubt. As can only be expected from a little girl in a little college in a little town. I mean, don’t get me wrong: I love the whole ‘my family’s fucked-up so I guess the best thing to do would be to aggravate the whole situation and be fucked-up as well’ paradigm of explaining personal disposition, but isn’t it all just a bit too cliché for any random moron on the street, let alone me? She believes that such an explanation cuts cleanly through the extraneous layers of my self-justification, and there is some part of me that acknowledges the fact that maybe, if my family were normal and happy like no one in this world is, maybe I would be less me. But it cuts off too much. The rational thing is wrong in this case. My family is fucked-up in most branches but it isn’t any worse than most. I’m not going to glorify my present state by exaggerating how miserable my upbringing was, because honestly, it wasn’t all that bad. She is at least half-wrong here. Why must I have a horrible childhood to be the way I am now? Why can’t I be this way despite it? Is that all there is to me― a self-loathing adolescent rebel who resorts to faulty panaceas to ease my own pain while projecting everything else to anyone in the vicinity? Can I really be that simple that everything about me can easily be dissected and presented summary-form in five sentences brimming with psychological terms lifted indiscriminately off some local textbook?

I’d have to say no. And I’m being brutally honest here. It would be too easy to chalk up my um, ‘difficult’ nature to my not being a part of what the traditional conception of a family should be. But the easy thing isn’t always the right way. Most times, a multiplication of entities is required way beyond mere necessity, Ockham’s Razor be damned. Only a one-track, dogmatic bent of mind can assume that everyone (most people, but not everyone) can somehow be forced into a distinctive ‘type’ that encapsulates everything in that person without first listening to what that person has to say, since they would be the ones who would know the most about their own mind. I’m not saying no one has the right to judge a person from their own outsider’s viewpoint; what I am saying though, is that one must first understand where the other is coming from before barging right on in with their prognosis. Really knowing how to look at a person is an art. You should know who you’re dealing with first, before trotting out the paradigms and stuff. If she had listened to what I’ve been saying to her the past two years, she would have found it obvious that I am not at all the kind of person who denies things that might seem to others as ‘weak’ or ‘embarrassing.’ I am a splendid and unapologetic liar when it comes to most things, but I never lie when I speak of my opinions. I am too arrogant, too much of a perfectionist when it comes to myself. I will never be caught with an argument or statement that I’ve made about me or my beliefs that I am unable to defend. She should have known that. But she never listened. Only waited for the perfect time to get me weak, then jumped in with her half-baked analysis.

And it’s so fucking sad. Not only did she totally miss the mark on the family angle (she concentrated on the nonexistent marriage of my parents when that was the only thing I was okay with in the whole family deal), but sneaked in a ringing advertisement as to the glories of her family (since she makes it seem as if she were happy). It further stressed an already precarious relationship by using something I had told her in confidence (the only way I manage not to lie is because I never tell things easily) as something to be used against me.

Look. I hate misguided attempts at psychological attempts and ironclad judgments based solely on what others, i.e. you, see, so let me help it all advance for you. I love my mother unconditionally and have a weird hate-indifference relationship with my father. I don’t blame God for whatever it is that transpired between them with regards to me since they were both adults by then and anything stupid I think they’ve done are done already through a conscious willing by two right-minded (for the most part) adults and not at all a celestial happening no one had any control over. That’s it. All of it.

You know, I find it amusing. That people can look at me and actually see a lost child groping for love when I am shrewd and calculating― I have long accepted what I am and where I come from. There is no use grappling over the past. Only morons try to change things that cannot be undone. I am not a moron. And I don’t really care for marriage anyway; I don’t believe in its sanctity, its holy underpinnings. If my mother had married my father maybe I wouldn’t love her so much now. Can someone please tell me why would I be bothered about my parent’s situation, then? It’s funny. And I laugh when some boob tries to peg that shit on me, reducing my whole self to nothing more than a reacting piece of machinery, the proverbial troubled kid whose story will forever be used by fear-mongering parents to tell them what not to do. Like I said, it’s very funny. Until of course a friend does it to you. Then it hurts.

Especially when you consider the fact that you have told them details re: your life and they use it injudiciously, throwing you under the ever-going wheels of her One True Love, i.e. Christianity. Every quirk you have, the things you have worked so hard for to learn, the things you have chosen, all of them treated as aberrations, trivial tics to be used to show you just how dumb you are and how you would be better off with our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ. I found it unforgivable when it happened to me. I could be wrong; and I sometimes feel pangs of guilt-like feeling whenever I dredge the whole story up. But what can you do. It started and ended with one go.

I mean, think about it now. Was it really worth our friendship, having a crack at my teeming neuroses and complexes? You could have just asked me what my deal was. I would’ve told you. In fact, I’ll tell you now: everything in my life― bad, good, or as is usual, somewhere in between (but always leaning towards the bad)― hasn’t made me bitter or cynical. You can ask anyone I knew as a kid if they had any inkling I would turn out this way. They all didn’t. What made me this way is my life, yes. What made me everything I am now is my deep-seated knowledge inside that things aren’t right. Everything is wrong. And I want to see them right. That’s all it is. And I’m not going to turn inward like you have done. I will make something better.

I made that point to her once in an e-mail (since I by then couldn’t stand her stupid face and the smarmy way she would look at me across the table with her legs crossed daintily at the ankle and her chin upturned slightly― how subtle her looking down on me was!). That she was nothing. All she has is Church. It’s the only thing that defines her in a world that has given her nothing. Why would I hate God, I had said, when it is you who hadn’t been given anything by Him? She blamed God for her awful mediocrity but instead of thinking that maybe there isn’t one, or that He isn’t all that cracked out to be, got scared and snuggled deep into his bosom like people who need to befriend professors to get a good grade.

She called me a month after and started chattering about some dumb Christian camp and asking me if I wanted to go*. It took a long time for me to speak. You read my e-mail, right? Hm, she said (she really did say hm!). Oh, yes. The one with all the swear-words, right?

I couldn’t believe that she had managed to belittle me yet again: reducing everything substantial I had said in that letter (and I did make some good points re: Christian humility and the folk psychology she applied thoughtlessly) to a careless stream of scatological rampage (and there weren’t even that much swear-words: three instances of ‘fuck’ and two each of ‘shit’ and ‘bitch’). It was more than I could take. I dropped her call and rejected all the others that followed. Imagine how close it all was. She could’ve just asked me why I was so angry. Maybe then we would still be friends. I note that not with regret, but with unabashed relief. She could’ve just asked me! I guess thanks are in order for a Higher Power.

*Actual Chuckie Manio tidbit from late 2006! (I’m kind of embarrassed about my cursing a Christian camp, but you were young once I assume.) Verbatim!

Re: Christian camp invitation. In one word: no. In ten: no no no no no no no no no no.

Fuck Christian camp. Nothing but a bunch of losers with nowhere to go. Nothing but a pathetic, weak group of humans weary of rejection, deluding themselves of a better place outside this earth because they can’t cope with real life. Nothing but a collection of privileged kids who stomach the idea of a benevolent Supreme Being since they themselves haven’t seen anything more evil than a cockroach. Fuck Christian camp. No no no no no. I’d rather bathe in sulfur and brimstone and hellfire (and if you have your way, that’s exactly what would happen, right?).