current status and todd mcgowan; or: of social media and aliens
Once again, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve blogged. Is that still a thing? Can minutes still have temperature? Or is that just slang of the Olds? For someone who spends as much time on the internet as I do, I am not current on slang among the kiddos. On the other hand, I do have some concept of what “skibidi” is. At least I have that going for me.
It’s scatting, right?
Speaking of time on the internet, part of why I’m blogging as we speak is that I’m attempting — once again — to limit my time on social media. Specifically Instagram and Mastodon, since those are the only socials I use. Neither of them is inherently bad — it’s just that for me, they suck me into a brainspace where things tend very quickly toward black & white, right & wrong, in the club & out the club, etc., and all the outrage and anxiety that sort of stark binary tends to produce. In me, anyway. YMMV, as per uzhe (which, if you don’t know, is slang for “usual”).
My brainspace is none too great these days, because I was sick with random mild viruses twice during July, then caught COVID on August 1st and spent 16 days in bed-ridden quarantine. Lemme tell ya, even this introvert was desperate and despairing for significant human interaction by Day 5. It’s a myth that introverts don’t like people or don’t like being around people. That is the definition of a recluse or, at worst, a misanthrope. Introverts, on the other hand, simply get their energy from alone time. Alone is when we best fuel up mentally and emotionally, which then allows us to go be with people and actually enjoy ourselves. It’s when we don’t get that regular alone time that we turn churlish.
Anywhich, all of that to say that 16 days of seeing nobody but my masked husband and my masked child, and each only sporadically and briefly, was a major blow to my mental health. That, plus being so very sick for so long. COVID also triggered the chronic sinusitis, so in the midst of my 16-day misery, I was also on antibiotics for a sinus infection.
The end of quarantine didn’t mean a return to normal, though. I was ridiculously weak, both from fighting the virus and from muscle atrophy. I was still sleeping most of the day. And the brainfog was unbelievable. Then, right as I was starting to feel a little better, the kiddo brought home another respiratory virus and I caught it. Which of course triggered another sinus infection necessitating another round of antibiotics.
I really, really need that septum surgery, y’all.
Today, I finally feel like the sinus infection has almost passed. But I overdid it this past weekend and the few days prior, prepping for and throwing the kiddo’s birthday party. Now, I feel weak and tired, and at some point in the proceedings I strained my left inguinal ligament again. That pain isn’t too bad, but it’s another frustrating setback.
ALL OF THIS TO SAY that because I’ve been sick and/or severely weakened for the past 77 days; have spent much of that time in shallow interactions with others or no interactions at all; have been in my head A LOT; and haven’t been physically able to engage in Zumba or weightlifting, two of my main activities for staving off the Babadook — my anxiety levels have been through the stratosphere, and depression has spiraled me lower than I’ve been in well over a year. Both anxiety and depression have been lying to me about what’s happened to me and what I need to concern myself about. And I’ve been listening, because I’ve been too weak to do anything else.
I am so sick and tired of being sick and tired.
And I have been terrified to go around people, which has led to al sorts of delightful crisis management schemes in my brain, none of which were reasonable or healthy. It has not been a fun time up in there, y’all. Anxiety especially is its own kind of virus — and what’s extra insidious about it is that it’s contagious.
This past weekend, though, I might have turned a mental and emotional corner. Seeing my therapist last Thursday helped. Later, talking it all through with a close friend helped tremendously. And somehow, even the kiddo’s outdoor birthday party helped. I got to do an arts & crafts activity with a group of particularly creative children, and that’s probably the best treatment for anxiety and depression I could’ve had at the time.
Thus, I am limiting my time on social media and blogging here instead. Which leads me to Todd McGowan.
Together with a bunch of other folks, I’ve been discussing McGowan’s EMBRACING ALIENATION — WHY WE SHOULDN’T TRY TO FIND OURSELVES in an online book group led by Peter Rollins. The group is great, and I enjoy the challenging and insightful discussions. I wish we didn’t all live scattered across the entire globe.
The book itself is great, too — although, as I told the group, “I read Todd with a desperation to understand what the hell he’s talking about.” HA. The group as a whole discussed Chapter 2 yesterday, and though I was online for part of the conversation, I only finished Chapter 1 this morning. In the past, I have told fellow writers that “sentences are not mini-vans,” meaning that not every possible available word must be packed into them; sentence-ending punctuation is your friend. That said, McGowan’s every sentence is a mini-van packed not with excess verbiage but with a plethora af deep concepts I have to think through before I feel I comprehend what the sentence is expressing. I have to re-read almost every paragraph and underline and circle key words and phrases in order to see how it all fits together. It is by no means a slog, because I’m enjoying the read. But it is challenging.
The lingering viral brainfog has not helped. But that, at least, is finally clearing. As I finished Chapter 1 this morning, I realized that I wasn’t needing to re-read quite as much….
What prompted my desire to blog some McGowan was something I read this morning. He writes:
Identity consists of the various social positions that one occupies: job, familial status, religious affiliation, political preference, ethnicity, and so on. No matter how much I see myself as any or all of these identities, I am never fully identical with them. This failure is subjectivity. No matter how I might mold them to fit myself, none of these identities can fully coincide with my subjectivity….
Subjectivity is undefinable. Who we are as subjects is a problem that has no solution…a question that has no answer. Symbolic identity of whatever stripe — man, woman, Chinese, Italian, Hindu, Muslim, lawyer, dentist — constructs an answer to this question, a solution to this problem…. But no matter how much effort I expend to identify with a symbolic position, I cannot traverse the distance between my subjectivity and this identity. I’m left with a failure to fit in….
All identity is conformist.–Todd McGowan,
Embracing Alienation,
pp. 10-11, 12
So. Each of us is a subject. Not in the grammatical sense, here (with verb and object). In this sense, I am a subject because I am not my various identities. I identify as female, as a writer, as a wife, as a mother, as a friend, as a confidante, as a daughter, as a wyrde individual, as a seeker, as an a/theist, as a person who deals with various chronic illnesses, as a dancer of Zumba, as a gardener, as a painter, as a hobby linguist, etc, etc, etc.
But my “I” is not equal to any one of those identities.
Each of those identities is a symbol. Every time I say “I am a writer,” I am calling up a host of ideas, thoughts, concepts, practices, experiences that all belong to The Definition Of “Writer”; these are all things that manifest (demonstrate) my writerness or the ways in which I possess writerness.
But at the same time, “I am a writer” also calls up a host of ways in which I do not possess writerness. “Writer” is a symbolic identity. And who I am will never be exactly what “Writer” is; who I am will never wholly possess writerness.
The same, by the way, holds true for “I am Courtney.” Every time I say that, I am standing at a distance from “Courtneyness” and pointing at it to claim it as my identity. But it is not the whole of my identity. There is always going to be a part of my identity that the word (or signifier) “Courtney” cannot express. There is always going to be a part of my identity that the signifier “Courtney” negates. Opposes, cancels out, is not equal to.
Every affirmation requires negation.
Every time I say “I am Courtney,” I am also saying “I am not Courtney.” Reversing those is valid too: when I say “Courtney is who I am,” I am also saying “Courtney is not who I am.”
This not-being-at-one-with-self, this inner dislocation, this lack of completely identifying with self — it’s called “alienation.” “Alien” comes from the Latin “aliēnus,” which means “belonging to another person, place, or object.” We all harbor an inner foreignness to ourselves.
Whatever your name, familial statues, friendship status, profession, religion, worldview, politics, hobby — not a single one of those will ever signify who “you” is. If you say “I am an underwater pizza deliverer,” you are also saying “I am not an underwater pizza deliverer” or “underwater pizza deliverer is not who I am.”
“I” is not reducible to who I believe I am or to the signifiers I claim.
“You” is not reducible to who you believe you are or to the signifiers you claim.
“They” are not reducible to who they believe they are or to the signifiers they claim.
There is always more to each of us than the signifiers (words and phrases) we use to describe ourselves. What really bakes the noodle is that we know only some of what the “more” is. A truth of every human is that there will always be part of our identity that we’re not even aware of. And the scary, thrilling, beautiful part is that the people around us are more aware of that part than we are. The people around us hear our words and see our behaviors, and those words and behaviors are the outward signs of the things we don’t know about ourselves. This is one reason why the people we dislike the most are often our most accurate mirrors. (And sometimes, the reason we dislike them in the first place is that the mirror is too accurate for our comfort.)
This is why none of us can know even part of who we are unless we’re in relationship with other people.
I think about these things, and I want to deny them. On an intellectual level, I have seen, heard, and experienced enough for them to ring fully true to me. But on an emotional level, I still freeze like a deer in headlights, panicking with anxiety. That’s part of why my anxiety has been so high recently. It’s not just the danger of COVID or of Long Covid or of any other damaging viruses. It’s (primarily?) the fear of accepting these things as true, the fear of embracing my alienation.
I’ve been so terribly scared to move…when what I need to fear is the lack of movement.
Last week, I shared these fears with a friend who listened, let me know he understood why I was feeling that way, and then told me the blunt truth about myself.
That I’d been in a closed-loop brainspace that did not allow for reality, hope, or joy.
That anxiety and depression had been lying to me and I’d been listening.
That I had been choosing the fear.
That I could choose to stop feeling frozen.
That chasing the greatest possible safety was yet another example of my chasing the perfect instead of the creative, the hopeful, and the joyful.
That I could move.
I won’t say that this one conversation fixe everything. As I told my friend through tears, “I don’t know how to just let go of this.” The anxiety freeze and the depression spiral are still there.
But.
I do think their power is lessened. Their attraction less magnetic. Their pull weaker.
I have been humming again as I go about my day.
I’ll take it.
A question I have now is:
Yes, in a significant way, I do know that I don’t know who I am. I do know that I am alienated from myself.
So, how do I go about engaging with peopole who don’t know that they don’t know who they are? who don’t know that they’re self-alienated?
And the beginnings of an answer come to me in the memory of my friend, who offered me kindness and warmth but also did not pull any punches…my friend who gave me such extraordinary grace:
“What grace is given me, let it pass to them….”