![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
i wore sandals to work today.
which i'm sure was not appropriate attire for the arctic-tundra weather inside this building.
but like many things i do, which i may regret later, this will not kill me.
i am stil skeptical about the "make me stronger" part
Nietzsche was the sort of fuckhead who would lie to you if he thought the outcome would be funny.
i am trying to answer![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wolven's question about truth(i mean) trust
and i am trying to resolve some issues that have welled up recently regarding my relationships and forming relationships with others.
i'd like to state for the record that i stopped making friends effortlessly after i hit puberty. around the time i moved to Enid and went to junior high school, 1996?, i began to find it very hard to connect to others.
back in school it mattered, or seemed to matter, whether one had more than two or three friends.
these days i've found myself to be content with only having a few close friends and when i think about how i came to be friends with these people, i can only say that it was through happenstance and the luck of being in the right place at the right time.
***
i put myself here. as much for you as for me.
i know it sometimes seems like its just for me, i mean, who really wants to see my to-do list?
i may occasionally elect not to discuss things here which i know will upset others
but this is my life here. when i go here i dont hold back.
the choice to read the last 1668 entries is entirely yours.
and with the advent of locking my journal, the only way anyone can read my entries is by wanting to at least be "friends" with me.
perhaps because all this information is just flung out into the ether, it seems devalued.
as if it cant be that useful or important if i say it here, to no one in particular.
yet, livejournal is as close to being an extrovert as i get.
the one exception is when i am simultaneously in a good mood and drunk.
it is only on livejournal that i simply walk up to people i havent known for long or at all and tell them whatever is on my mind.
i get to say whatever i want, as directly as i want, and you can chose to read it or ignore it.
and the beauty of that is that only those who really want to get involved have to be involved.
the rest of you, who are linked to me as "friends" can elect to "TL;DR" (as they say).
there's no shame in that.
but in this kind of relationship you can only get what you put in.
which means that if you want to really know me, if you want to really be involved, you have to make the effort to connect through comments.
and the same goes for me. if i want to reach out to you, i have to do it physically[digitally].
it is easy to find nothing to say about an entry, isnt it?
i'm sure i'm not the only one, who, confronted with something far beyond myself or something more richly emotional than i feel capable of handling, chooses to simply let the entry slide by.
or, i'll come across an entry where i know that anything i have to say will be taken the wrong way, so i let it go - even if commenting would create new levels of connection between myself and another.
what does this have to do with trust?
some years ago, at least four at this point, ryam was working nights and we were falling apart.
we were living at the McClave house, i was going to school full time and would get up to leave the house before he even got home from work to go to sleep.
he was taking two classes a semester and working the full time night shift and basically got up to go to work just before dinner was served and then he'd go to work and i'd go to bed.
and he was spending four to six hours a night talking on the phone with a girl i didnt know who had, in my mind, made some passes at him, and i was picking up the $200-$300 monthly phone tab for his (perceived) indiscretions.
a storm was brewing.
the fight probably begun as a plea from myself for him to do more chores around the house.
and then progressed into, "i pay your phone bill and i know who you've been talking to and its fucking with me."
and eventually it passed into him saying, "well, i've really gotten to know her and i've realized i dont know you at all. you and i have nothing in common, we have nothing to do with each other any more, and we never really did to begin with."
which, after basically living with him for three years was a lie, but at the time of his expression it may as well have been true.
we had both stopped making the effort to reach out to each other.
we had been living in the same house and sleeping in the same bed, but we had completely stopped connecting.
we saw each other, at most, an hour or two a day.
we realized that we cared about each other, and about staying together.
we remembered that we loved each other and that differences between people are important.
we basically realized that our circumstances as much as ourselves were to blame for our drifting apart.
and we both made an effort to change our habits and our environments.
what does this have to do with you and me and the internets?
what does this have to do with trust?
the moral of the story is that it takes two willing participants to get to know each other.
and to stay known to each other.
it takes two people to trust each other enough to start a relationship and to trust each other enough to keep that relationship going even when things arent looking great.
and the staying known part is not easy. it is not effortless.
especially if you arent spending every waking moment together.
when you are newly in love with someone, it is easier to make the effort to get to know that person.
you are in love, and your attraction suffices to bridge the gap between what you would ordinarily share and what you want to share.
it makes it easier to trust that person with yourself and to trust yourself with that person.
friendship is a kind of love. it requires just as much trust as love does.
and the attraction you feel for a friend, while not specifically physical, is attraction none-the-less.
it is this attraction that allows both participants to place barriers and prejudices to the side and let the other person in - to trust that person.
and this attraction, as in love, must be mutual.
if you feel no initial attraction, you are unlikely to pursue a person as a friend or lover.
but, as in love, the initial attraction will not suffice if you mean to keep the relationship going.
more importantly, as in love, with friendship you must continue to have effort and trust in order to keep the relationship going.
so, i'd like to bring this back to what all of this has to do with trust here on the internets.
here you basically get all of my effort at reaching out without attraction or reciprocity.
there's trust here, but its not specifically two-way.
i am trusting anyone who reads this, regardless of who they are or whether or not they trust me or are attracted to me.
you can choose to be not a friend, but an acquaintance who gets to know a lot about me without sharing a lot about yourself.
we can, essentially, share the same bed, but never see each other.
truth and trust - an h and an s
this doesnt perhaps answer yet what trust means to me, so much as it answers how trust functions to me, here in the web and in my life.
to me,
trust is this intangible thing that you can build like a city
it works like grout filling in the spaces between who i am and who you are and what we do together
but its not the sort of thing you have all by itself or all by yourself
trust is the sort of thing which only happens when stuff, people, places, truth, moments, come together - and stay together
its the sticking pole upon which you nail your faith
its the electrons within and between atoms
and trust can be dismantled just as it can be built
cities burn, grout crumbles, faith corrupts, and atoms split.
but i dont agree that re-building trust is harder to do than it was the first time around.
i am something of a romantic, so i think this colors my perceptions of building trust.
i think trust is the sort of thing which, like hope, may spring eternal if it is allowed.
i have been burned by trusting on the internet, by leaving myself here for others
but i keep coming back for more, i keep offering myself up
perhaps because i like the way it feels when it does work.
***
i have basically been writing this all day.
i keep working on it and then leaving it alone and then coming back to it.
i contemplated posting this to the original entry that asked the question about trust.
but in the end i think i exceed the character limit on comments.
and if not, i am sure that this would be better served here than there.
i have been debating whether or not to put this here publicly.
but i trust you.
which i'm sure was not appropriate attire for the arctic-tundra weather inside this building.
but like many things i do, which i may regret later, this will not kill me.
i am stil skeptical about the "make me stronger" part
Nietzsche was the sort of fuckhead who would lie to you if he thought the outcome would be funny.
i am trying to answer
wolven's question about and i am trying to resolve some issues that have welled up recently regarding my relationships and forming relationships with others.
i'd like to state for the record that i stopped making friends effortlessly after i hit puberty. around the time i moved to Enid and went to junior high school, 1996?, i began to find it very hard to connect to others.
back in school it mattered, or seemed to matter, whether one had more than two or three friends.
these days i've found myself to be content with only having a few close friends and when i think about how i came to be friends with these people, i can only say that it was through happenstance and the luck of being in the right place at the right time.
***
i put myself here. as much for you as for me.
i know it sometimes seems like its just for me, i mean, who really wants to see my to-do list?
i may occasionally elect not to discuss things here which i know will upset others
but this is my life here. when i go here i dont hold back.
the choice to read the last 1668 entries is entirely yours.
and with the advent of locking my journal, the only way anyone can read my entries is by wanting to at least be "friends" with me.
perhaps because all this information is just flung out into the ether, it seems devalued.
as if it cant be that useful or important if i say it here, to no one in particular.
yet, livejournal is as close to being an extrovert as i get.
the one exception is when i am simultaneously in a good mood and drunk.
it is only on livejournal that i simply walk up to people i havent known for long or at all and tell them whatever is on my mind.
i get to say whatever i want, as directly as i want, and you can chose to read it or ignore it.
and the beauty of that is that only those who really want to get involved have to be involved.
the rest of you, who are linked to me as "friends" can elect to "TL;DR" (as they say).
there's no shame in that.
but in this kind of relationship you can only get what you put in.
which means that if you want to really know me, if you want to really be involved, you have to make the effort to connect through comments.
and the same goes for me. if i want to reach out to you, i have to do it physically[digitally].
it is easy to find nothing to say about an entry, isnt it?
i'm sure i'm not the only one, who, confronted with something far beyond myself or something more richly emotional than i feel capable of handling, chooses to simply let the entry slide by.
or, i'll come across an entry where i know that anything i have to say will be taken the wrong way, so i let it go - even if commenting would create new levels of connection between myself and another.
what does this have to do with trust?
some years ago, at least four at this point, ryam was working nights and we were falling apart.
we were living at the McClave house, i was going to school full time and would get up to leave the house before he even got home from work to go to sleep.
he was taking two classes a semester and working the full time night shift and basically got up to go to work just before dinner was served and then he'd go to work and i'd go to bed.
and he was spending four to six hours a night talking on the phone with a girl i didnt know who had, in my mind, made some passes at him, and i was picking up the $200-$300 monthly phone tab for his (perceived) indiscretions.
a storm was brewing.
the fight probably begun as a plea from myself for him to do more chores around the house.
and then progressed into, "i pay your phone bill and i know who you've been talking to and its fucking with me."
and eventually it passed into him saying, "well, i've really gotten to know her and i've realized i dont know you at all. you and i have nothing in common, we have nothing to do with each other any more, and we never really did to begin with."
which, after basically living with him for three years was a lie, but at the time of his expression it may as well have been true.
we had both stopped making the effort to reach out to each other.
we had been living in the same house and sleeping in the same bed, but we had completely stopped connecting.
we saw each other, at most, an hour or two a day.
we realized that we cared about each other, and about staying together.
we remembered that we loved each other and that differences between people are important.
we basically realized that our circumstances as much as ourselves were to blame for our drifting apart.
and we both made an effort to change our habits and our environments.
what does this have to do with you and me and the internets?
what does this have to do with trust?
the moral of the story is that it takes two willing participants to get to know each other.
and to stay known to each other.
it takes two people to trust each other enough to start a relationship and to trust each other enough to keep that relationship going even when things arent looking great.
and the staying known part is not easy. it is not effortless.
especially if you arent spending every waking moment together.
when you are newly in love with someone, it is easier to make the effort to get to know that person.
you are in love, and your attraction suffices to bridge the gap between what you would ordinarily share and what you want to share.
it makes it easier to trust that person with yourself and to trust yourself with that person.
friendship is a kind of love. it requires just as much trust as love does.
and the attraction you feel for a friend, while not specifically physical, is attraction none-the-less.
it is this attraction that allows both participants to place barriers and prejudices to the side and let the other person in - to trust that person.
and this attraction, as in love, must be mutual.
if you feel no initial attraction, you are unlikely to pursue a person as a friend or lover.
but, as in love, the initial attraction will not suffice if you mean to keep the relationship going.
more importantly, as in love, with friendship you must continue to have effort and trust in order to keep the relationship going.
so, i'd like to bring this back to what all of this has to do with trust here on the internets.
here you basically get all of my effort at reaching out without attraction or reciprocity.
there's trust here, but its not specifically two-way.
i am trusting anyone who reads this, regardless of who they are or whether or not they trust me or are attracted to me.
you can choose to be not a friend, but an acquaintance who gets to know a lot about me without sharing a lot about yourself.
we can, essentially, share the same bed, but never see each other.
truth and trust - an h and an s
this doesnt perhaps answer yet what trust means to me, so much as it answers how trust functions to me, here in the web and in my life.
to me,
trust is this intangible thing that you can build like a city
it works like grout filling in the spaces between who i am and who you are and what we do together
but its not the sort of thing you have all by itself or all by yourself
trust is the sort of thing which only happens when stuff, people, places, truth, moments, come together - and stay together
its the sticking pole upon which you nail your faith
its the electrons within and between atoms
and trust can be dismantled just as it can be built
cities burn, grout crumbles, faith corrupts, and atoms split.
but i dont agree that re-building trust is harder to do than it was the first time around.
i am something of a romantic, so i think this colors my perceptions of building trust.
i think trust is the sort of thing which, like hope, may spring eternal if it is allowed.
i have been burned by trusting on the internet, by leaving myself here for others
but i keep coming back for more, i keep offering myself up
perhaps because i like the way it feels when it does work.
***
i have basically been writing this all day.
i keep working on it and then leaving it alone and then coming back to it.
i contemplated posting this to the original entry that asked the question about trust.
but in the end i think i exceed the character limit on comments.
and if not, i am sure that this would be better served here than there.
i have been debating whether or not to put this here publicly.
but i trust you.
