as small as a world and as large as alone

Whoa WTF?

I’m a Hufflepuff but it doesn’t mean I think everyone should be (I have friends from literally every House).  It definitely reflects my ideals, but I don’t think everyone needs the same ideals.  I’m definitely not a communist, although I believe in a few ideals that might be considered communist in nature.  

I don’t think anyone’s death would improve the world that much.  I seriously worry that anyone would take my opinions so seriously that they fear not measuring up would mean they need to kill themselves.  I was thinking about you the other day, at least I think it was you, because I remembered you (or was it you?) saying that many times when I described things about myself that I valued, you thought I meant I didn’t value other things in other people.  That still continues not to be true.  

I don’t expect anyone to be able to totally live up to even the ideals I hold for myself, certainly I’m not able to live up to them.  And I don’t expect people to believe my ideals wholesale in the first place.

If you are taking me so seriously that you seriously are considering killing yourself because you can’t measure up to what you think my expectations of you are, then maybe you should put me on ignore.  What I talk about are my ideas of how the world should work.  They’re only one set of ideas about how the world should work.  Nobody can possibly live up to any one person’s ideas about how the world should work.  That’s why I’ve only ever intended my ideas to be one set of ideas, one set of ideas among many, and a set of ideas that will fit certain people better than they fit other people.

I sometimes worry about how seriously some people take me.  Because I’m only one person, and I’m an extremely fallible person.  When I’m right about something it’s not because I happen to be particularly insightful, it’s because somehow, on that day, some part of the world has managed to work through me, in a way that has produced something important.  Who I am has very little to do with it.  The world needs every single kind of person, including people out there who will vehemently disagree with every single thing I’ve ever said.  Every viewpoint is important.

If you’re not able to force-fit yourself into what you perceive my viewpoint to be, then maybe my way of doing things isn’t compatible with you.  That’s all.  It doesn’t have to be compatible.  Find something that is compatible and work with that.

One reason that I’ve become as intent as I am at putting my views out there, is because until I started doing that, there was nobody putting views out there that were compatible with how my brain worked.  It wasn’t that I thought all the other ways of doing things were wrong.  But they were wrong for someone like me, and I was tired of not fitting.  So I began finding places in the world where I did fit, and finding ways to fit, and talking about them. 

And unfortunately some people have read that as meaning that I want everyone to do exactly what I say.  And that’s not true.  Sometimes I wish people would do things more the way I want them to, but then everyone wishes that.  That’s just human, and is often a product of ego.  If you can’t do what I seem to want, then you're not the problem.  What I want may be the problem.  Or it may be there’s no problem with what I want, and no problem with you, only with the way the two intersect with each other.

Either way, it really hurts to think that someone would want to kill themselves just because they couldn’t be what they thought I wanted.  That gives me way too much power.  I don’t want that kind of power over anyone’s life.  I know that a lot of people listen to me.  But nobody should listen to me so thoroughly that they internalize the idea that if they can’t measure up to what they think my ideals are, then they’re better off existing.

Plus there’s no Hufflepuff I can imagine who would wish someone dead for being different from us, including differing from our values.  So even if you’re not a Hufflepuff, I am a Hufflepuff, and I think that you’re valuable as exactly who and what you are.  And the best thing anyone can do with who and what you are, is find out your niche in the world and fulfill that.  And everyone has a niche, even if not everyone can see it.  Trying to stuff yourself into someone else’s niche, which is what it sounds like you’re doing, is only going to make you miserable, resentful, and, at worst, suicidal.

But the thing is?  I know you’re asking me whether you would be better off dead.  And I know that my answer is no, of course you wouldn’t be better off dead, of course the world wouldn’t be better off without you in it.  But on another level, I feel like I shouldn’t even answer that question.  Because your continued existence shouldn’t be dependent on my opinion of you.  Your view of yourself shouldn’t be dependent on my opinion of you.  I shouldn’t be this important.  I’m just one person among billions, that kind of power shouldn’t be mine.  Or anyone’s.

I don’t know what’s gone on to set this off, but I’m worried about you, and I hope you’re able to deal with whatever the actual problem is.  

I know that I used to get the same way about a guy named Larry.  I used to see his opinion about me as so important that when he said something that I interpreted as anger with me (which sometimes it was, but often it wasn’t) or a demand that everyone behave in a certain way (which sometimes it was, but often it wasn’t), if I couldn’t fit it was awful.  I would brood on it for days at a time, I’d beat myself up for not being able to live up to his standards, I’d feel like I’d failed the entire world.  I don’t know when I started realizing that my responses to Larry were more about me than about Larry.  And when I started realizing that he was just one more guy in the world, not someone whose opinion my life should revolve around.  But I did.

And anyway… the way I see it, my opinions are important to me, and they’re important because they are one person’s opinions, but they’re not more important than other people’s opinions.  There are experiences I take into account more than other experiences, because those are my experiences and the experiences of those I am closest to.  And everyone operates like that, I’ve never met anyone who is objective enough to take into account everyone’s experiences.  I try to take into account a wide range, but nobody can do that perfectly.  That’s why, as I said in a recent post, what’s important is that lots and lots of people are putting our differing opinions out there.  That diversity of opinion is important.

And taking in that diversity of opinion is a good antidote to staring at one person’s opinion and assuming that if you can’t measure up to that one person (or what you imagine they think of you), then you shouldn’t exist at all.

I’m now deeply worried that there are other people out there who are taking my opinions the same way you are, but aren’t saying anything.  I want to say that however strong my opinion on an issue might be, however much I might believe I’m right, I never want anyoneto die just because they don’t measure up to how I think the world ought to run.  This is not what I intend when I put those opinions out there.  And I’m deeply, deeply troubled that anyone might put this much weight on my opinions.  

This isn’t a criticism of you.  These things are just… how people’s brains work, especially when they’re vulnerable in certain ways.  I wish I knew how to make it better.  

All I can do is repeat, over and over, that if you see me as saying that:

• The way your brain works is inferior to the way my brain works.
• Everyone has to do things exactly how I think they should be done.
• People who can’t measure up to my ideals should die.

Then you’re not reading me accurately.  And also that “You’re not reading me accurately” shouldn’t be taken as a devastating criticism either.  It’s just… I would never believe these things of anyone, ever.  I’ve only ever once wished someone dead, and that was a horrible experience that passed, and that person had to do some really diabolical things to set me off to that point.

I think you may be the same person who told me once that when I write about the way my brain works, you used to take it as meaning that brains unlike mine were inferior.  And actually, what I have always been doing in celebrating the way my brain works, is reacting to an entire world that sees the way my brain works as inferior.  So I’ve tried to say “No, I’m not inferior, in fact my brain can do some pretty amazing things.”  But in doing so, I’m not saying that my brain is superior.  I’m just saying it’s not the useless junk heap that everyone wants me to see it as.

And that’s a lot of the ways it’s possible to misread what I mean by things. I never mean to say that the way my brain or body work are better than other people, only that they are unique and important.  But I believe the same of the way every single other person’s brain and body work.  The same goes for my opinions:  I think they are important, but they are only important when taken as a whole with the opinions of a wide variety of other people, including people who disagree with me in most areas.  I’m trying to be one person among many, not the one person on the pedestal that everyone has to be like.  But I know that for a lot of reasons, I don’t have a lot of control over which way people will see me, no matter how hard I try.

I hope that’s explained more where I’m coming from.  I also seriously, seriously hope that your life improves.  Something is very wrong – something far beyond me writing things that push your self-destructive buttons – if my writing is triggering suicidal thoughts.  And I very much don’t want you to die.  I like you.  I care about you.  I don’t know you very well, not even well enough to call you a friend, but I do read you and I do care about you and I don’t want you to die.  Do whatever you have to do to stay around, please?  Including putting me on ignore, if my writing triggers you in some way or makes you feel worse about yourself.  Or maybe understand that this isn’t, ever, part of what my writing means, about anybody – it’s like the opposite of anything I’d ever believe or stand for.

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