There are people whose craziness could be solved with a little ADD, and then there are people whose craziness is more on par with cutting an ear off and sending it in an envelope return-addressed GREENDALE SCHOOL to girls that dis them. And then there is this guy, who is a whole nother level of crazy you could probably spend the next year trying to wrap your head around but suffice it to say she JUST WASN'T THAT INTO HIM. I don't know the details, because the sender was just like "I dated this guy for two months, if you want to run some of his poetry I can get it for you." And truly, readers, it was only after mulling the notion of running this guy's poetry that I began to understand why the Pentagon gets all mad when Al Jazeera runs Bin Laden footage. Discussion topics: does this mean hell really is other people, and that we therefore have to believe in it now? Also: were people like this why you took up binge drinking in college? Print this one out for the ride home; it's one for the history books.
I was about to cease and desist anyway, though you are very wrong to think I am fawning after you and misunderstand why I want to talk to you. I have already moved on, no offense to yourself, but I am a very curious person who withholds judgement for a reason — it is a very hard thing to know what someone else is thinking. I had intended to tell you my true thoughts in person so you could see the veracity of them more easily, because my emails and phone calls have partially undercut my true purpose and so I could witness your response, but I will explain presently since your premature judgement forces my hand.
First, let me say that this was the most interesting, unusual and pleasurable relationship I've ever had, but as it was pleasurable, the pleasure itself was a sort of poison I do not want to ingest again, nor do I even think I could, having developed something of a healthy immunity to it. It was also extremely illustrative for me. We are strange opposites, you and I. You are a rare female whose emphasis is on sensuality and I am a rare male whose emphasis is on intimacy. In many other traits we are diametrically opposed as well, judgement being an obvious example and another being directness, where you tend to be extremely subtle and and I tend to be extremely direct. This resulted in a quite unusual dynamic or power struggle, that could easily be described in terms of Jung, Hegel, Sartre or Crowley, but I will keep things simple, because at this point I earnestly want to be clearly understood, while before I both did not want to be understood and did not understand. I also should emphasize that I don't really care what its called or how it is moralized. Sartre and Crowley agree for example that it is a paradox, but Sartre moralizes it negatively and Crowley positively. I should also be clear I am not in any way presently in love with you, though I did have very strong and irrational feelings for you at the time due to this dynamic.
In any case, I lost this struggle very early on when you subtly asked to lead with a reference to Willow and I passively let you. This led to a downward spiral of concessions which lead to your dominance of me. In Hegel's terminology you were a master and I a slave. It is basically the same thing as Stockholm syndrome or captor-bonding; I identified with you to an extreme degree (please Wikipedia for Stockholm syndrome and captor-bonding if you are not familiar with the terms, as I don't want to be confused any longer). Part of this lead me to be unable to see or to overlook the ways in which you were being critical of me, especially as they were so subtle, but yet they still were taken in somehow and led to a strengthening of the captor-bond. In your terms, I was projecting on to you and what I was projecting was apparently 'wisdom' or in Jung's terminology the Sophia archetype. Thus, in all the absences that I was blinded to but you could plainly see at the time, I saw wisdom. Its pretty fucking hard to question what your head tells you is wisdom. At another time you referred to this as an Oedipus complex, which is not so far off either, but nor is quite right, as this was a rather unique experience. I've never been on the submissive side of a relationship before and my mother definitely was not overbearing (she's kind of flighty in general and being a flight attendant was away a lot, leading to me being rather independent, though ironically this being the exception to the rule). The feeling was so unique I can only describe it properly in mythical terms. Indeed, it seriously was the closest feeling to religiosity I've ever felt, which makes a good deal of sense as religion has many of the same sort of captor-bonding bonding principles built into it. However, like a victim of Stockholm syndrome, this extreme identification led to self-distortion.
This resulted in behaviors, which I'm sure you noticed, but I was helpless toward. First, my speech was paralyzed in your presence. You probably noticed I kept repeating myself, had extreme trouble conversing, my thoughts kept flitting away and I kept merely echoing your own opinions. By identifying so strongly with you I lost a large part of my own subjectivity. I became incapable of fighting for intimacy for the identification led to an exercise of only one will, despite the fact that intimacy was the only thing I really wanted, and at the same time I was chained in place by the lack of it as a sort of servant to your will begging for bits of intimacy. Another distorting effect was placed on my self-descriptions. I, for example, kept telling you I have a problem choosing. Yet, I've never thought I had any such problem before or since. I tend to choose very well, easily and minimalistically, emphasizing those things which matter most to me and permanence in what I choose, but I felt at the time like I could not choose at all. This is clearly part of the identification as well, as I could not choose because it caused me to let you choose for me. A further side-effect was extreme loneliness from lack of intimacy, which then at its opposite led to an obsession or addiction to you. As I said before, I'm usually rather independent but I kept asking you about your friends and conveyed myself in a way that made it seem like I was friendless, but this was due to the loneliness you caused and not reality. Actually, Eric, my doctor friend moved back to Philly in the last month, I really do have more friends than I let on and I have met some new people too recently, but in general I'm usually so independent that I don't really care all that much about it beyond having a few good friends, which I already do. Another example is that twice when you told me you are not a vegetarian, I defended or echoed your stance. I've never done that before as I tend to argue in the opposite direction, and it clearly seems to me an effect of identification. In fact, in retrospect my intuition leads me to think you and I both used to be vegetarians, even though we never shared that with each other.
Now, because of this self-distortion, which was basically a sort of irrationality I couldn't see at the time, when you ended things I felt like everything was foggy because the paradigm from identification with you and my own paradigm were not in accord. Things which you said that had multiple interpretations, as all things do, all were forced by identification into a idealized, false paradigm. I started to be able to see alternative interpretations, which the Stockholm syndrome prevented me from grasping, and became confused as to what interpretative schema was correct. It was in this state of fogginess that I came to your house that day and notice what I did — something disobedient but not in any way harmful or even very offensive, just slightly disobedient — and while I'm not sure exactly what drew me to test you in that manner other than simple doubt as to what paradigm was correct, your reaction was extremely telling in retrospect, which I will get into later. Since the identification was dissolving but not dissolved at that point, the disobedience caused me mental anguish (Indeed, any previous disobedience caused me pain and in reverse most of my fantasies resolved around causing you pleasure, which is how you managed to extort sex from me with a commitment I only assumed was there). So I wrote you a letter apologizing because it mentally hurt to be in discord with the identified figure, but the letter was from the identified, self-distorted part. Then sometime later I felt more like myself and wrote another letter. But it kept oscillating back and forth. And since I could never accord the two parts and desperately sought to understand why I was being so inconsistent I kept writing to try and make the parts fit together. I also kept intuiting paradoxical imagery, which was a more symbolic way of expressing the paradoxical mental schema I couldn't see till later. I should add, while the captor-bond prevented me from understanding what was occurring rationally, it didn't mess with my intuition at all and in fact seemed at least to myself at the time to enhance it. I kept irrationally, subtly feeling like I had some sort of prescient ability. I intuited we were passing like strangers, while thinking you had deep feelings due to my identification. Indeed, the day after I met you I had a dream, which I only remember because it was such an unusual dream for me. In this dream, I was raped by a woman, who looked not unlike but not exactly like you, and I enjoyed it at the time but it was clearly conveyed in the dream as me being raped. Then afterward, I was in the old farmhouse, where I used to live as a child, crying because I was hurt. At the time I had a tendency to write off such things, but reading a bit more Jung has me looking at that as my unconscious mind postulating the future. Also, part of the reason I gave you Yonnondio was due to an intuitive attraction to a certain scene in the book where Mazie watches over a dying man, whose self is described as a cosmos. He gives her books and then her father sells them the next day so she never gets to read them. It seems somehow appropriate now, to me at least, but it relates to Hegel and Jung and this letter is already monumental enough for me explain it now. Anyway, I'm not usually the type to feel like I have prophetic hunches, so the whole thing felt rather usual, though even now that I'm thinking rationally I can't completely discount the phenomenon and have a hard time deciding if it was insanity or made a certain sense — probably somewhere in the middle, things I was grasping at not completely consciously, as Jung might say.
I actually wrote the first poem I sent you, "mockingbird song," before you ended things with me and before I read any Jung, but the method of its creation was right out of Man and His Symbols, again in retrospect (which I am becoming tired of saying). I took a bunch of proverbs such as "a chain is always as strong as its weakest link" and common phrases and rearranged them to form a koan, which is ironically a paradox. The poem however over time, as I wrote more, seemed to take on new meanings and as Jung would say, I was expelling constellated material from the unconscious. For example, in one letter I called you wise and then in the poem I wrote I was drawn to holy grail images and previously drawn to alchemy and a poem about the philosopher stone in Newton's Cymestry. Then when reading Man and his Symbols, Jung grouped all these under the Sophia archetype. I could easily see you not understanding, but its clear to me internally that that is a rather accurate description of what I was projecting onto you. Also, connecting the water as a symbol for you and boat imagery I ended up using for the other poem, "so weak from the water" is a rather accurate description of the boat, which with both considered would be a male-end symbol for a relationship. A lot of the stuff I ended up sourcing or writing connects in ways I can see now more clearly. So, anyway, basically first I simply felt foggy and vacillating, from between the self-distorted, identified state and my "normal" self, then I saw I wasn't being consistent at all and started hinting at it, then I admitted all of what I wrote was lies and started actively lying on purpose to discredit myself as I continued. Note, I didn't plan any of it, and while the letters repeat many of the themes in this one, they are also interspersed with falsehood and distortion, it taking me a while to separate the wheat from the chaff. Indeed, much of them are somewhat counter to how I think and thus is why they needed to be expelled. You see, for a while I was still partially identified and even though I started to see things more clearly I was still projecting wisdom at you and thought you would understand what I was doing and not think I was merely obsessing over you, which is why I simply mentioned the philosophers stone to you when I dropped of your dish (I irrationally assumed at the time you would know what I was talking about due to the wisdom projection), but in the process of expelling the false paradigm I also discredited myself. Essentially, since I was so self- distorted by you, the letters and poems were a path to find my way back to me again. I had hoped to simply meet you in the future and explain this to you, so you could see it wasn't another ad-hoc explanation and see even though I sent lies through letters that I bring honesty in person, but I have now been backed into a corner.
Now that I'm using my own subjective interpretative schema, I also see you better. It seemed a few times, you were looking to me for help and yet by being so seduced myself, I was unable to give it. You are manipulative, but also very sensitive in a certain way even though you act cold. I did not realize this for a while, and now I see that all these emails probably have hurt you as you tend to hold to the worst interpretation possible, while I tend to hold to the best (neither being right), and if so I am very sorry, even though you would most likely deny being hurt. If I had to guess, I'd say you have been abused or neglected in the past. If so, I wish I could give you sympathy for it, but it is the very act of giving you sympathy that allows you to manipulate. When I came to your house, even though I wasn't angry and was simply a bit obstinate and rude, you seemed highly stressed consistent with fear and though I am a male who it is very hard to anger and wasn't angry at the time, I could see your behavior type easily triggering anger in other males and your fear seems a result of past experience as you had no reason to fear me. Indeed, that need for power over your environment comes from you feeling powerless and from this powerlessness comes your desire to rape or control males which you feel as "bossiness." You avoid all strings, dates and commitments but it is these things that define true human connections. Without these one becomes like a puppet-master who only has strings on others and acting in such a manner is the surest way to become like a puppet oneself, wooden and unfeeling. I should apologize for the attitude in my last phone call. I acted as a strongly dominant-type male would and it evoked a very strong response from you after you spent two months ignoring me and my two other acts of even slight domination or lack of submission, refusing to leave your house for five minutes and trying to get you to agree to meet me, also evoked a strong anger response in you. I'd had rather simply have talked to you about all this than attempt manipulations to get at truth, but being extensively manipulated myself, seeking to help ultimately and having no other options, I feel somewhat justified. You deeply hate aggressive, dominant males, but yet you act in a way to provoke an aggressive dominant male response and you tend to only respond to aggression and force aggression through avoidant behavior. This is what you should truly be thinking on.
Due to the fact that a sort of sickness in you caused me to grow sick with identification over the summer and sick with its dissolution into the fall, there is a very real sense in which we haven't met yet apart from a date or two. You likely have a horribly fragmented image of of the real me and I don't blame you if you soon grew tired of my company due the effects of identification, but what you saw as weakness is now strength. You see me as doting for additional manipulation, when really now I see the manipulation clearly enough to call you on it and because I am no longer identified it cannot cause me pain or pleasure. I know I can help you from a position of equality and that you can help me as well. If I had your judgement we would not be here, but if you had my compassion we would also not be here. I know that continuing to avoid me is part of the problem. You need to accept people into your life who you cannot manipulate. Additionally, you have wronged me by treating me as you did and you should admit it and correct it rather than continuing to run away from it. Finally, I'm half way through Saramago's Seeing, and it would be nice to have a friend in you to talk about it with, which is all I seek.
I know you may have a tendency to think to yourself along the lines of "what does he know what I need," to adopt a superior, downward-looking stance, to shy away from resolution fostering conflict through absence, to ignore this letter or put off responding to it or to judge me harshly for the mistakes I have made. I ask you to resist. I ask you to forgive my faults so I may forgive you yours in return, for what else is it to be human than to have such flaws. So there you have it at last, honesty, and I ask for the same in response.