#purty mindset is a cage

[notmuchtoconceal]

Seeing your recent post, I'm still mad at myself for reducing you. I can't believe I did that. When I told you that I used to speak like you, looking back, the thing that burned away my creative voice was rage for the exact same reasons you're describing. And instead of rising above it, I went on a quest to reduce others.

When I talk about this Quest for Reduction, it is something that stems from how others treated me. The demon you were talking about? Some of them are there in a person from the very start. Mine was born a few years back and grew over time, but the ingredients to his rise may have been there much earlier. He's something of a Language Demon. He's not capable of original thought but he can twist others'. He doesn't change words, but emphasis of words. You take a sentence like "I stole three hats from the store today" and change just the emphasis, and you get different meaning.

"*I* stole three hats from the store today." Not him, not her. Me.

"I *stole* three hats from the store today." Not bought, not borrowed. Stole.

"I stole *three* hats from the store today." Not two, not fifteen. Three.

His whole game is subtlety. He understands the importance of background music in a scene. You ever seen that video Alfred Hitchcock makes about how order and sequencing of a scene can drastically change what it's about, even if you don't change a single image. He's all about that shit. He wants you to believe *you* failed to communicate something. There's always some way to reduce a person's writing.

What I'm about to tell you next is so hideous. But you earned it by outfoxing me. And maybe it's interesting to you. Maybe it's not, maybe you've seen it all before. Maybe everything is boring to you. But I think I'm less boring than I let on, even if I am cruel. Whatever.

So he (I) went on a tirade. We found wordsmiths. We searched for the subtleties in peoples' writing and we knew the perfect things to say to make them doubt. It was never direct criticism, too obvious. You had to pretend you were someone else. It's like--if you walk up to Elon Musk and want to hurt him, you don't say "Elon, I hate what you did to Twitter and think you're a pseudointellectual hack," you instead deliberately get trapped in an elevator with him and pretend you mistook him for Zuckerberg and express your excitement about joining his new social media account, Threads. Then you walk out before he can respond.

There's a lot I could say here about my methods, but I'm so divorced from the idea of continuing I can't speak about them without complete disgust of myself. Maybe I'll share some stories someday. Needless to say, the strategies are all different.

With you, I saw a potential interpretation of your writing as rambling, non-sequitur, and lustful without substance (it's not this, I've come to realize--not even close). My first method of attempting to reduce you was to appeal to what I had mistakenly believed was your self-importance. I gave you a nonsense fantasy topic and tried to see if you could attach postmodern, disjointed meaning to literally anything I said. I've done this before, and it comes across as innocent and playful after the fact. You let people fall on their own sword and just grab the popcorn. Easy. But you didn't take the bait. You laughed at me and dismissed me. So I moved onto the next step.

I tried to frame everything as a metaphysical trap that you had "solved" so I could dissolve your writing and do this back-and-forth where we pat each other on the back for being clever enough to solve the mystery. You see this in cults a lot. Cults are addicting because you feel like you're privy to some sort of secret knowledge that all the other "sheep" just can't see. Leaving them requires the acknowledgement that you're just as lost as anyone else. You didn't fall for that, either.

Then I just got sloppy and appealed to my own sense of lust. I tried to wrest control from this game that was spiralling away from me by fixating on the erotic aspects of your writing and pretending you were playing into my hands by fulfilling a role I had always sought after. Probably my most pathetic attempt, but the Language Demon was running out of options. It's not a lie that you definitely awakened something lustful in me. But it's a lie that that's all this was and a lie that it started that way.

When you finally split, you managed to reduce me. I had nothing to offer you. When you said this, it was the perfect thing to say to humble me and humiliate me. You didn't hate me so much as you'd seen my type before, both in yourself and in people you'd known. I wasn't a villain. I was a good, worthy person who was afflicted by a demon. Evil would be interesting, but I'm not even that. Not evil. Just common. DAMN.

I've never met someone who's the Real Deal before. Never met someone who's put me in my place quite like that. I'm not exaggerating when I say you blew my mind. I don't think you exorcised the Language Demon, but you sealed him away for a while. You halted my Reduction Tirade.

And I've been reading your stuff this time. Not skimming it, not reducing it. Actually trying to comprehend it. And there's more depth to you than I could have possibly imagined.

I'm writing this because it disturbs me that you're going through a rut right now, and I'm terrified that I had a hand in causing it. I've destroyed a lot of people this way, but you're the first I want to salvage at all costs. I figure that perhaps by adding some clarity to my intentions I can help you realize it's nothing you did wrong. It's my own hunger that caused this. It's a hunger born from my own inability to communicate properly. Not evil, but common, like you cunningly implied.

I want to sit down and listen to you now. I hope you come to realize that people can be interesting through their own interest in you, or that people don't have to be interesting to be worth your time. Or that you, as an interesting person, can *make* other people more interesting by giving them ideas.

Honestly why the fuck is someone with your gift not out there changing the world right now. I'm not saying you have any sort of duty or obligation to lend your talents to anyone, but rare people are cosmic chances that the world has--chances that are temporary and must be seized upon immediately or you have to wait a century for them to show up again. You said you thought maybe you'd consider just writing erotic stuff, but that's far too reductive for you, I think. The Language Demon you sealed away would love for you to do that, which makes me think it's a bad idea.

Anyway, I'm typing this up fast and not really correcting myself because I have limited time all of a sudden because Reasons. So here's my boring crash-landing of a conclusion: I don't know exactly what you want for yourself, but you're the most deserving person of love I've ever met. (Yeah I know everyone deserves love, blah blah blah, I'm speaking from my id). I realized that both of us made the mistake of letting our past interactions with others color our perceptions of the strangers we were. I don't think it would be wise for us to do that. We're entirely new people. We aren't a "type," and I think it's dangerous to assume such. It is so, so tempting to fixate on the aspects of you that are a reflection of me. But I can't do that, and I think the reason why I do is because I have a tendency to view happiness as an amorphous inevitability that can never be as unique as anguish.

We say that pain shapes a person, but happiness is treated as if it's just some sort of icing used to coat other, "truer" feelings. When people say "these are my true colors," why is happiness always left out as a truth? I think there's something to be said about its purity that we discount it. And I don't think happy people are boring by any means.

I want satisfaction from you. I understand you, and I don't. But I am happy to listen. And I'm waiting to hear you speak again.

I would have forgiven you. I would have let you back in had you the strength to have said this to my face. Man to man. Unblocked me. Treated me as a friend instead of a pawn in a game with yourself.

As well-studied as you may be, you could have only given this apt of a reply in resonance with the truth. By continuing to hide, you put the truth in service to deception and despite my awareness that you needed to become someone else to arrive at truth, I don't like being lied to.

Is it possible that you're such a compulsive liar, you're unafraid to lean further into the truth, well-aware you can build-up doubt, re-orient, re-direct later; in essence, taking two steps forward with the intent of taking three steps back? Possibly. Is it possible that you still think you're an innocent bystander and you're telling me to my face what you think my game is under the pretense of claiming it as your own? That's possible, too. You could be so afraid of how good I am at manipulating you, you'll sit there and lay out -- point by point -- every projection you saw in me, as if hoping some evil in my heart would feel flattered and gladly take it as my own, hence you would have managed to "feed" me.

You would have massaged the medicine into the dog food or whatever the exact words of stated-goal were you repeated over and over.

Alternatively -- you being the one to block me, to go on a smear campaign against me, willingly destroy yourself because someone you wanted didn't want you back (you never really wanting him until you couldn't have him) -- maybe you're so afraid of how covertly manipulative I am you need the distance to have the clarity to say any of this out loud.

The existential crisis you induced in me may be your own, but it's one I saw in myself from an early age, having known abuse so intimately. I had feared my entire conscious personality was a ruse to lure people in and torture them. While I fear that may be true of you, it isn't for me. I don't need to hide from those I love, they need to hide from me. My pride and vulnerability wounds them, for living in accordance with the truth (as close to the truth as a man can get, one must always strive) irritates their deceptions as though dissolving a spiritual and psychological bacteria.

You worship filth. Not in the way John Waters does as a means to build up an earthy tolerance -- manure, urine and ash containing vital nutrients which endow the fields with richness -- rather you worship corruption. You're as much of a towering intellect as athleticbrutality. Like all those afflicted with the Christian mindset, you're a devil worshipper. It stems from your polarized split-view where good and bad are cleaved to alleviate yourself of the traumatic severing of your feelings from your will.

Satan is the One True God of Christianity. Satan is not the Broken Heart of the Jewish people, whose Tribal God of Abundant Love grew shattered and vengeful in exile as any Broken Heart Would -- but the collective manufactured fears and agonies of the displaced who have made themselves slaves in a final desperate plea to make the pain end.

To clarify, I remember the day you said more people ought go to church. Churches are nesting grounds for demons because they're grease traps for spiritual bacteria. The displaced huddling masses coming in to beg for forgiveness leave trace elements which grow heavy and leaden, accruing over time to defile the holy places as spiritual super bacteria which survive the purgings make themselves at home, copulating on the altars. Truthfully, ritual purification is a lost art far from a glorious affectation, and it should ideally be performed before entering and after exiting any holy place, much like one would wipe their feet on a welcome mat.

(The same goes for hanging out with people after intense periods of productive work, but smart phone technology having made seeming illusions of time and distance, we're seemingly encouraged to pry open one another's mouths with our filthy, butthole-prodded fingers at any moment of any day and not only be proud of the convenience, but sneer at anyone who doesn't make themselves a willing opening.)

We defeat Satan by ignoring him, for to even acknowledge his presence feeds him. When he makes the attempt to strike us in his weakened state, we may simply laugh him off.

Your old messages are so revelatory, I will take your partial repentences gladly, though you yourself will still be ignored.

The old gods are real. Darkness and light are elemental forces. The words angel and demon are mistranslations of words which refer to messengers between the human and divine realms and the quality of mind which possesses one like genius. There is only mind -- matter itself being mind solidified, all things endowed with the soul of their creator -- and you know-well fear to be the mind-killer. To fear anyone reduces them to the bestial. This is why love sets us free. On the Earth, we have choice and we choose daily to live in heaven or hell, but neither of those are real places outside our imaginations. The splendor of this material world and how our mind moves in and out of it possesses too much grandeur to reduce to hoary old self-persecutory cliches. That's what all false binaries are: gay, straight, black, white, man, woman, self, other. All things are spectrums for the rainbow being the symbol of God's promise to never destroy is a plea to open our minds and recognize gradation rather than annihilate in the name of appeasing the old order.

Admitting one is lost is the first step to being found.

In keeping with your admission of the dangers of subtlety, I'd like to clarify I could never be as lost as you. I won't apologize for saying this, you being aware you pulled me off-course semi-deliberately (you having been so confused, the nature of your cognizance is ambiguous).

I don't think happiness is inevitable. Rather, misery is.

It's only a matter of time before each of us experiences sickness and heartbreak again, and we weather them as any coming storm, for our happiness is well-worth fighting for, much like our freedom and our love for our fellow man. Part of me wishes to chastize you with your favorite word "spoiled" that you could ever view happiness as inevitable, but rather a certain false happiness which is, as Malcolm X would say, the negation of conflict is inevitable in a neoliberal establishment where abuses are ignored, platitudes given, and business proceeds as usual.

The next time you feel compelled to call you or someone else "spoiled" remember always that your material bounty was a bribe you accepted to excuse spiritual and psychological deprivation, and had you been given the choice (been stronger to see past the lies; how your love was twisted by words) you would have fought harder to preserve the gift of choice, it being the only gift ultimately worth keeping.

I tried to kill my capacity to love to keep myself from loving you. I'm not anybody's savior. All I can do is save myself and hope those I love enough to interact with can come to the correct takeaways themselves. I sometimes feel so desperate to love and love freely I open myself to those who are beneath me and let them smear me with the filth of their shadow projections, being so tolerant they drag me down to their level and attempt to usurp my identity.

You could never be a lifelong friend, but you being smarter and more driven (and in your way, honest) revealed numerous self-defeating patterns in my own life, and I'll always be thankful I knew you.

Were you not in so much pain yourself, you could have communicated these vital points to me, for I only learned them by being engaged and putting the pieces together as though mentally reconstructing a house which had been hit by a cyclone.

You absolutely can talk to people calmly, firmly and to their best interest when you have the capacity to separate your bullshit from theirs.

I confess, you first being like a mentor, once I felt myself "outgrowing" you I would have cherished you as an advisor, having such a dynamic perspective which wasn't my own, there was much I could have still learned from you, had you valued either me or yourself enough to stay in my life.

You demand other people rule you, then resent them the power you willingly surrender. You demand an owner for you can't claim ownership of yourself and can thus only resent any opportunity for equality. In that vital sense, you're just like my last boyfriend. You lack genuine humility. You're not willing to learn from those you admire because making yourself subservient to someone you wish to learn from requires not only vulnerability, but humility.

I didn't become more than you through ruthless domination alone, oh no. It was by being selective in those I served. I think on some level you're aware you tell yourself you should serve everyone freely and this is "the way it should be" because you want everyone to serve you, just because. You think by surrendering your right to choose, that's a sacrifice everyone you meet should make because you did, it "being good enough for you" you've allowed yourself to have righteous indignation for anyone who doesn't willingly make themselves a slave.

Writing erotica or horror stories isn't only a way to get the itch out, it orients the mind toward confrontation and clarifies values.

When you're not aware of what's in your unconscious, you replicate it unthinkingly.

This is why we learn from the things we make.

This is why we make to learn, not show off.

Physical beauty and social prestige are symptoms of right work, not things in themselves to chase. A lot the problems men have with the overreaches of "feminism" are ultimately cart before the horse thinking which require witchcraft to resolve.

We don't make social progress by making excuses for ourselves. We do so not through the pretense of doing our best to escape blame, but by just doing so. If you've been amputated to fit a standard model theory of human worth, you may not know how to ask for things which would allow you to do your best, but feeling powerless, would follow the wrong example of other helpless people in your position.

Never forget how afraid you were that I could really love you. Never forget that you chose the comfort of the misery you already knew over striving for something more dangerous, fulfilling and ultimately real. Never forget I admired your thriftiness and your savvy, but never your globe-hopping because I couldn't separate in you what was a willingness to explore other cultures and what was a pretense to have "experience" and "knowledge" to browbeat those you regarded as bigger sheep than you.

I don't envy those who run away and hide.

It's as simple as that.