Lesson # 3. From Rock Bottom

Gaslight

Speaking the same language doesn’t mean you mean the same things with the same words.

Speaking the same language doesn’t mean you’re communicating or getting through to the other person. In many ways, language obfuscates and misleads as much as it enables expression and communication. There is a lot that is lost when something is put into words especially when speaking of feelings and when using abstract terms. The same words mean completely different things to different people. This is quite the drawback of language. The magnitude of the feeling, the catalyst of it, its duration, the intent—all of this gets lost. The happiness I feel and express after writing something that pleases me is completely different than the happiness of a mother taking her newborn home. And yet language, at least abstract language, puts the same label on both ‘happy’. You can try and make up for it by being more precise and concise and articulate which is easier for people with self-awareness. But even then, that is only half of the interaction. It is a lesson we all learn painfully to pay more attention to people’s actions than their words. For people who like words, feel words deeply, value words and honor their word, that is a harsh lesson to learn. There are most definitely abusers and manipulators who deliberately lie, deceive, gaslight, and believe their own lies and delusions. Their words are completely divorced from and the opposite of their actions and of reality. They will call their abuse ‘love’ and ‘help’. They might very well think their disgusting, reprehensible behavior is ‘love’. That is their definition of love. It is quite revealing when you see what a person thinks ‘love’ is. Do not believe other people more than yourself, than your own feelings. Do not let others tell you who or what you are or what you can and can’t do. Do not let other people poison your head with their fears and limitations and ugly worldview.

This can even happen with people who aren’t trying to abuse or hurt you but who simply are incapable or unwilling to understand, respect, and fulfill your subjective needs and reality. And of course, everyone needs to define for themselves what love, care, joy, happiness is to them, what being in a relationships means to them, what help is, what success is, what morality and ethics are to them, what being a good person means to them. It helps to be as specific as possible especially in terms of the concrete actions, words, choices, behaviors, terms and conditions to clarify what you need and what you mean. For some being in a relationship means someone you drink with, eat with, and have sex with exclusively for a while. And to them that is a relationship. If that’s enough for you, you might be emotionally underdeveloped or dead inside but to each their own. For others a relationship means having someone to talk to about the things they love and sharing their interests and values, having someone miss them and worry about them when they’re not around, having someone remember things about them showing that they were listening and paid attention, having someone to lift you up when you’re down on your luck or despair is dragging you down that day. For some ‘success’ means making partner at a law firm or making as much money as possible. For some success is having peace and freedom to rest and enjoy life and devote one’s self to creative pursuits. For some ‘fun’ means being surrounded by boisterous, excited people in a nightclub playing techno music that sounds like a printer is choking. For others ‘fun’ is grappling with a literary or philosophical text and analyzing it. Neither is right or wrong. It’s just different. Now there are differences that become wrong due to incompatibility. Two people who are incompatible are not right or wrong in and of themselves. They are each who they are but they are wrong for each other due to incompatibilities that will prevent them from speaking the same language, enjoying, thinking, feeling similarly. Of course, these definitions and what words mean even to the same person will change over time as they should. What ‘love’ means to a 15 year old is not what ‘love’ is to a 50 year old (one hopes). We must all make our own private dictionary for ourselves.