It seems that I am on a lengthy trip away from the fictional world. But as it is about a crucial „discovery“ about myself, it is not out of place here, though it feels weird in English and in this environment. But the fictional world is where my „real me“ usually exercises itself.
One other thing first: I made up my mind if I like “Geneva”. I do, obviously, because I enjoyed listening to it – significantly more than to most of the Audible thrillers I downloaded! – and not JUST because of Nicola Walker. Not because it really is a good thriller – even though it is more “thrilling” than some of the Audible books I have downloaded as well. It is not a good thriller, though – in MY book! – because it has two of the “shortcomings” I mind the most in this kind of novel. The first is to start with a scene that happens after the beginning of the main plot and where you don’t know what’s happening or which person it is about. I mind because it is purposefully misleading, but it is certainly a favoured kind of beginning, therefore people who REALLY like thrillers must LIKE to be misled? In this case, though, the scene at the beginning doesn’t even really match the scene at the end of the book it relates to, and this is a no-go! That something like this happens - and I am sure this is not my first experience of this kind - shows me that people never read these books twice. (As I do and probably shouldn’t.) But I am sure I will listen to it a third time at least, for a different reason. The second thing that I hate about thrillers and crime novels is when we experience part of the story from the perspective of one of the protagonists and when there are crucial things about this person we cannot know because it is part of the plot and the suspense that their real character or plans are not disclosed until later. This is the case with the husband, Daniel. In this constellation it cannot be avoided that characters are lying to themselves, or disguising their own mind, in a way that is not convincing. There are parts where it is convincing that Daniel is lying to himself, but there are lots of bits that are irritating and just don’t add up. To empathize with his wife because of something HE has done to her – and planning to kill her at the same time! - is taking it two steps too far, in my opinion. (Again, this might be more acceptable if you read the book only once!)
The main reason why I absolutely enjoyed listening to the text, and will certainly listen to it again sometime, is the writing. It is beautifully written, and I totally like the “writing voice” of Richard Armitage (– which shouldn’t surprise me, but somehow did.) There is always something like music in good prose writing – which is why I love to read books to myself aloud to listen to it – and the “music” of this book is beautiful. And – this is difficult to express, even though it is what I find most important in prose writing – the imagination and the writing are extremely “close together”. He always finds the right words to express the imagined scene, state of mind, environment etc – sometimes very original and surprising without being overly sophisticated, so that neither the “dead” commonplace nor the obvious act of imagination comes between the reader and their object. Strange that I never really thought about this, but it is what I most appreciate in prose writing. When I was writing myself, I always noticed when I had reached this point and totally enjoyed it because then I knew that the writing was authentic and I knew what I was doing, and could lean back and enjoy the text “writing itself”. I find it interesting that I can make such a clear distinction between the quality of the book as a (classic) thriller and “as a book”, but, when I think about it, not really surprising. From my perspective, a thriller or a love story or whatever kind of conventional form of fiction is just an “excuse” for good writing or good reading. And this was some of the best I had this year.
Now to
the less enjoyable and more demanding matter: I put “discovery” in inverted
commas because I always knew. I always knew, but somehow nobody else did. Even
if I had wanted to, I couldn’t have told them because I didn’t have the right
word for it. So, the discovery was about a WORD – which I already knew as well,
as everybody else does. I just didn’t know that it applies to me.
I must have known since 1987 – at the latest! – when my father died in an accident, and when I HAD to ask myself why I didn’t feel what I was SUPPOSED to feel. That is, I felt NOTHING.
I didn’t do anything about it at the time but began to live with the knowledge of a difference, kind of excusing myself with the thought that I probably had too many problems of my own (!!!) to deal with. This might have been so, but it is NOT an answer to the question!
Then – it will be ten years next year – my life’s path went round a bend, and I figured out how to be happy for the first time in my life. In retrospect it was mainly to get out of my hole and somehow KEEP MOVING. That suddenly made all my problems go away. But of course they didn’t really disappear. I think being marooned in Covid kind of made them come creeping back. Things that hadn’t been dealt with which I knew would affect me sooner or later and make my life shit. And then, of course, there is old age …
So, quite suddenly, I find myself expelled from my land of bliss, right in the middle of dealing with shit. I wrote in my last post that 2022 is a shit year, which was even more accurate than I knew then, but doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a BAD year. DEALING with shit – even when it is not hugely successful - reduces fear and may even be rewarding. Mike Thyson – usually not a role model! – said that you have to try to do the things you hate as if you loved them. It‘s a bit like „laugh and you‘ll feel better“, just more decisive. At the moment, this strikes me as the direction I have to take …
My great role model was recently made a „Doctor of Lettuce“ by Leicester University and gave an amazing speech which was very personal, as I would have expected. At the end he said something he particularly singled out as personal experience, and I was absurdly pleased because I thought: This is what I KNEW he would say (but maybe hadn’t been prepared to say until then?) He said that the only thing you can control (about your life as a public person) is your reputation. Therefore always show people the best version of yourself. (And if others do something you like, always cheer them, because then they will do the same for you.) Somehow I don’t think that most people I know would have appreciated this advice as much as I did. But why did it feel so important?
Another question added that will hopefully be disentangled at the end of this.
The next enormously helpful thing was a question I got about myself that was nagging me because I felt it was important and I couldn’t answer it. I should have known the answer because it is a life question, like the first one about my feelings, and is clearly linked to it. It was my friend asking me why I always thought that I was DIFFERENT. I think I reacted kind of annoyed, like: Why would I even WANT to be NORMAL? But people always think of other people as normal and treat them as normal, as long as they act normal, and why should they know or care about the difference? But in some cases, absurdly, to FEEL NORMAL ABOUT YOUSELF you have to deal with the difference.
There is a tangle of small events, and trying to disentangle it somehow brought me an enormous step forward. It is probably not important at which end the disentangling began. But there were two or three things still, at least. The most important of all, the one that kind of drew all the rest towards it and coerced me to finally tackle the issue, was that I went to a therapist for the first time in my life – not about myself but together with my youngest sister because of a problem in the family. (One of the things I knew I would hate but had to do as if I loved them …) I was better prepared than I thought because my other sister has had therapy lately, for burn-out, and she made really good use of it to effect decisive changes in her life. I was very impressed by it and made time to meet her and talk with her several times. So I already had adopted the position that I had to look at myself as part of the problem. Still, I was annoyed about the lack of progress. I had no clearer view of what I should do, but, in retrospect, the question I had had in the beginning had changed slightly from: „Why am so totally UNABLE to talk about this problem?“ to: „Why am I so totally UNWILLING to talk about this problem?“ And I think this slight shift caused an avalanche …
This still doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I hope it will when I add the last bit of the puzzle. Which was that I read a newspaper article about „everyday psychopaths“. How to deal with the situation when your boss is a psychopath, and so on. I tend not to take psychology seriously because of Freud. How can a science be right about anything if it is based on faulty premises? But psychology has moved far beyond Freud, and not ignoring it might have saved me a long detour. On the other hand, a long detour might have been exactly what I needed to catch up with myself.
PSYCHOPATHS
Quite
often fiction is a great shortcut to really complicated psychological problems.
Sometimes it really isn’t. We think we know what a psychopath is because „we“
have met them in horrid thrillers where they kill and mutilate dozens of people
just for the fun of it. Everybody loves a psychopath! - Being a psychopath
myself, I must say: THIS is not helpful. Theoretically, everybody knows that
this kind of psychopathic murderers are an evanescent minority that only
becomes visible because of the enormity of their crimes. On the other hand, everybody
knows at least one psychopath and hates them, especially if they are somebody
in their own family or at work above them in the hierarchy. Psychopaths without
power over other people, like me, tend to go unnoticed. I suspect that people usually
know what is wrong with us, but, as long as we function, there is no need to
look into it. In fact, not functioning finally became a problem.
WHAT IS A PSYCHOPATH?
In my understanding, a psychopath is somebody who doesn’t feel empathy. No wonder that I was always fascinated with the bit in Richard III where he says:
There is no creature loves me,
and if I die no soul will pity me.
And wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?
As with lots of psychological issues, Shakespeare knew all about it.
THE „PITY INDICATOR“
Richard III (in Shakespeare!) certainly IS a psychopath, but, obviously, not all of us are like him. If being pitied tends to annoy you, though, or make you furious, and if you seldom or never feel pity for other people – except in a condescending way which isn’t real pity! – you are certainly „on the spectrum“. As I have already pointed out, the term „psychopath“ is misleading and discriminatory, and it might be more to the point to talk of an „empathy disorder“. But there is a reason for me to use the “P-Word”.
PREPARE TO BE HATED!
The question „Why do you always think your are different?“ was so useful to me because I hadn’t really decided if I thought I WAS different or just LIKED to be different instead of normal – as I do in fact as well because I am bored with normality and like people who are different. Maybe not so much in real life where they are often annoying and threaten my routine, but certainly in fiction! And in certain real-life contexts I get extremely interested in people who are „different“ and suffer as a consequence because I find it so unjust … I never realized, though, that this was because of me!
If you are different, PREPARE to be hated! I was always prepared to be hated just because I KNEW I was different. I mean REALLY - or fundamentally - different, like people with autism or lesbians are different from me because their brain is WIRED DIFFERENTLY. (Of course, in an “every-day” way, everybody is different from everybody else, and it is great that they are.)
On the surface, it was never a problem to be different because nobody really knew it, and even if they disliked me – mostly because I just didn’t care if people liked me, respectively because I didn’t (actively) like them – they had no right to HATE me because my deviation was not visible. UNTIL NOW the empathy disorder has even been more advantageous to me than feeling empathy would have been, in my opinion. As I was lucky to grow up in a healthy and caring environment and, as a passionate reader and amateur writer, became extremely involved with feelings, emotions, moral issues, people’s predicaments and so on, I just LEARNED all the things I NEEDED to learn. Feeling no empathy – I would imagine! – spares me a lot of anxiety, pain and hurt, and – the absolute best about it! – makes me completely immune to emotional manipulation.
The other good thing is that I never hated myself for being different and am not at all appalled by my „discovery“. I only just realized why. I have always been annoyed and puzzled by the question if people are „born“ good or bad. The question as such is nonsense because “good” or “bad” carry no fixed meaning but are totally context-sensitive. A bad apple is bad because it is rotten, and Hitler or Putin are undoubtedly bad people – because they have caused a lot of devastating hurt to others. So – if you don’t put another context “behind” the question, like a religious one – “good” or “bad” in people can only refer to their ACTIONS, and nobody can be good or bad BEFORE they have done anything. So, nobody is good or bad because of the way they are wired, it might just be more difficult to make something good of your life.
But there are circumstances where being a psychopath really makes things difficult for you. To notice that somebody has a severe and complicated psychological problem and act on it, is an impossible situation for me because it requires genuine empathy, not just the put on one I have learned and that has served me well enough. Besides, only real empathy can provide you with enough motivational energy to see this through. It might not be impossible to get over this impediment because I am good at doing things I hate as if I loved them – if I put my mind to it. (And with my two sisters as “back-up”.) But this certainly means that I will have to become much more entangled in the real world for a much longer period of time than I want to … Therefore my feeling that this blog might be dying (or changing?) was not unfounded.
To end this on a positive note, I am getting back to the „doctor speech“. Of course this is a very subjective interpretation – it is expressly about MY OWN truth! – but I liked it so much BECAUSE the positive personal experience sits on top of a very dark one. Everybody who is „wired differently“ – especially in a way that other people can see if they want to – has to be prepared to be hated. In my case, this kind of remained under the surface because everybody had the choice to ignore the difference – and, as I usually behaved, they usually did. They just didn’t LIKE me. I thought this was alright because I wouldn’t have liked me much either, and, come to that, didn’t like THEM that much. If I did, by accident, I wouldn’t show it. It would have appeared as weakness.
But this is exactly the problem with being (fundamentally) different. The moment you find out, you have this feeling about yourself that THE WAY YOU ARE you should rather not exist. And this is such an incisive experience that it will remain there, buried in your system. That is how you know! And to LIVE in this way, just accepting the knowledge and trudging on – IF you want a good life! - is definitely not the path to take!
There are better ways. One frequently trodden path is to do everything so well and be so great that everybody admires you and will forget that you are different. I always was fascinated by perfectionists but somehow always knew: this is not for me. Probably just because I am too lazy to try and be perfect, but there is a slight but important difference to what Richard Armitage was saying. Being a perfectionist has a distinct anti-social aspect. It is just about yourself being better than anybody else and shine so much that nobody can touch you. Perfectionists are admired but not liked. There is a bit of this in always showing the best version of yourself because it can become an armour. And as a public person you NEED an armour. I don’t, but I believe I liked the advice so much because I was already following it. Showing people the best version of myself is also ABOUT MYSELF. It is the obvious way of BECOMING the best version of myself, which is rewarding, and it is also the best I can do as a social being because my best moral qualities will become effective. In my opinion, this is exactly how we fulfill our purpose as a human being.
