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3:28pm April 13, 2012

Trapping people

There’s this thing I’ve seen people do. And I’ve literally never done it in my life and can’t understand it at all.

Like a guy I knew said to me once, “Do you like seeing the way I’m learning and unfolding?” This was one of those situations where I really didn’t know what someone meant, but just said “yes” because, well, it was a yes/no question and I tended to choose one or the other based on a lot of things besides the meaning of the words.

He then abruptly changed tone and snapped at me, “Well I’m glad to see I’m so entertaining” and stormed off.

Another time, my family was trying to explain to my brother that he seemed to sort of speak a different language than most people. The next day he handed me a computer printout and told me to read it.

It said that the following was an example of his language. And then proceeded to use all these really weird combinations of words and phrasings, talking about why it is that he does things that way.

And then suddenly it said “Actually no. That was just me running the words through a thesaurus on my computer.” And proceeded to pretty viciously mock me for being fooled.

Which is sort of typical of my brother in general. He can get very defensive in a way that comes across as incredibly bitter and kind of nasty. And pointless, too. Like it’s happening for its own sake, in many cases.

But what links those two things together, are the way the person deliberately sets you up to believe one thing, and then pounces on you (aggressively, not playfully) if you go along with it. I’ve known a lot of people who do that kind of thing. And I never have. Even when I’ve been at my most screwed up I’ve never done that, or anything close to that, in my interactions with people.

And I don’t know how to explain this. But it’s seemed like, if I look at myself and I look at a lot of people who’ve otherwise had similar emotional problems to ones I have. One of the only major differences between me and them is their tendency to manipulate people, in that way and other similar ways. I don’t know what makes that difference, other than that I would feel really ill if I even tried to do that to someone.