Bargain Basement Invalidation

Posted on March 2, 2005 in Childhood Disappointment Ettiquette

Living with the illness that I have, I am occasionally inclined to bouts of “exuberance” and flamboyance: in other words, I can be a pain in the ass. This leads some to ask “What’s wrong with Joel.” I must answer as this fellow does that what is wrong with me is that I have a mental illness that when it is not in a stable state may allow things that I don’t want to say to come out of my mouth. I’m not alone in this: I’ve seen it in plenty of other people and most of them are in denial. But it brings me to the point which is that sometimes when people want to know “what’s wrong with Joel?” they take shortcuts: they make assumptions and don’t check them with me.

It’s so simple to ask the question. I don’t advise drama — e.g. Hey, Joel, are you pissed at me because I wouldn’t sleep with you? in the comments. I often, however, find myself a victim of a confederacy. One person has a bad experience with me. There can be many reasons for it, including my mania is getting the better of me or the person in question was being a jerk and I reacted (perhaps inappropriately) or there was a misunderstanding. I rank these reasons in ascending order of commonality. Most people don’t want to take the risk or attempt to work things through because it is all too easy to say “Joel is a nutcase”.

It’s bargain basement invalidation. Most people with mental illness that I know have had it flung at them at one time or another. One thing that seems to matter when it comes to support is how long have you been mentally ill and how long have you been without a decent support network. In my personal experience, both of these things have been true for a very long time.

My mother used to attempt to badger me out of depression by saying “Think of happy times.” Actually, her goal was to get me to dis-reject her and the rest of the family. Lately, I have been thinking about happy times. Before the age of 7 or 8, I only remember one time when I felt scared: my parents put me alone in a wagon at the Santa Anita Racetrack. That was a mild nightmare compared with what happened in second grade: I became a problem to the family.

This was the year when my parents took in two of my cousins — the daughters of my aunt who had died the year before of breast cancer. It was my mother’s fondest wish. In the years to follow — after my cousins were rescued from my dysfunctional household by their father — my mother would sigh and say “I wish you’d been born a girl.”

During second and third grades, I remember my first episodes of crying when kids teased me. I had a nun, Sister Annette, who decided that the way to toughen me up was to join in the teasing and then lead the whole class in choruses of “Joel is this” or “Joel is that”. My parents and my brother did the same thing at home.

In the years to come, I experienced more of the same.

The problem I have with teasing comes from two directions. First, I still don’t allow much teasing from people who barely know me. There are places where I just let on that people should not go. Second, I don’t know how to tease very well. I overdo it. Probably because teasing was always so overwhelming when it was applied to me and because I’ve bought into the “you should be able to take it” model. It’s not dissimilar to the problem that Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf: a bookish man goes out into the world of pleasure. He runs into things that he has either twisted or no experience of. This brings him to disaster, in the case of Steppenwolf murder. In my case, isolation and fear of the world.

I get in fragile places. Because I hide, people often don’t take the time to look me up. When they hear of conflicts, they don’t ask me what my side of the story is. Too often, people (including myself) get piqued when I suggest that someone they love isn’t nice to me. I have little problem with this, myself, and I don’t make demands on others anymore — I don’t insist that they choose. Yet often, choose they do and I am the one who is most frequently left out even if I don’t press the point. Sometimes it is because the other person feels guilty.

Here’s a semi-fictional case: I have a conflict with a member of a group of friends which overlaps with my friends. For whatever reason, they choose to jump on me. It may turn out that one of the people realizes he was overly hard on me. He’s in a tough spot. He can apologize to me or he can not apologize to me. The people who jumped on me are telling him how great it was that he joined them. I’m unhappy. But if the fellow apologizes, he fixes things. People screw up. It’s no big deal.

The fellow probably will not apologize, no matter how clear I make it that he doesn’t need to choose sides. Why? Because the other group has already made it clear that they do expect him to choose sides. So here is this guy (me) who sets no conditions and a crew of abusers who do. So who will the fellow pick?

Experience says “not me”.

I am the one, after all, who is clumsy in the world, who doesn’t know how to fight. I’m the one struggling to be a better person, to show others unconditional love. In the eyes of this other fellow, I will be the understanding one. So when I don’t show much understanding about the sudden estrangement, they express surprise. And I find myself alone again, naturally.

After all, the big guy can take it. And when he can’t, it’s because he’s mentally ill.

I have no idea how to deal with this except by pulling inward. It’s hard for me to say “Go fuck yourself loser” and move on. Where is there to go?