Many People Have Tried To Destroy Me
I have chosen to take a public stand for certain values and a result, have been attacked by gossip at least a few hundred times that I have heard of and probably several thousand more times that I have not heard of.
My words have been taken and distorted!
Let’s get a working definition of gossip going:
The thing about people who are not in reality is that they do not report the facts as they are. They report a self-serving distortion in an ugly game of telephone. The more personal dysfunction a person carries later into life, the less of a grasp they have on reality and the less reliable their testimony is. Apart from the personal, you also have to look at the framework a person is coming from: their belief system, their political orientation, their livelihood, and even their language.
I also like this take on gossip:
It reminds of these lyrics from the Bob Marley song Who The Cap Fit, which apply in a big way to my experience of going out in the world and trying to spread virtue:
You will make whatever decision that provokes discomfort in a person and they go from being your buddy to spreading nastiness behind your back. I have had “friends” of several years go completely scorched earth on my reputation behind my back, people who I have shared meals with, supported in major life milestones, and who I have confided in.
I stopped all gossiping in my personal life in 2014.
When you speak poorly of someone, meaning you attribute motives, psychologization, analysis, or even just low level catty name-calling, you have to ask yourself, “Why would I care about this person, then?”
99.999% of people I have met in this life haven’t yet processed the feelings of captivity they lived with growing up: being captive to people who don’t have curiosity about you.
There’s not only active gossip but people who will entertain gossip about you and then not tell you about it.
These people are not loyal to you, meaning, you have misspent your goodwill on them.
As part of my errant venture “into politics” in ~2017, I would say negative things about public-facing people and put videos out on YouTube and established a reputation for myself as a fighter. People used to make memes of me as some kind of combatant, fighting for our freedoms.
This attracted a lot of people to me who would get whatever info about me they could, based on how they could charm me, and then use that info against me when I said something that would pierce their denial. They’d trade in the goodwill I banked into the relationship the moment they thought they could notch up their status over mine to whoever would listen.
What a shit time that could be.
When I retired from politics two years ago, I made it a deliberate policy to stop speaking negatively about people. I’ve mostly succeeded in that. I think Trump’s betrayal of America has drawn the most ire from me but by and large, I have kept my contributions to the world more to that old adage of speaking about things “out there”, as opposed to people. Since I am a person of sterling character, my takes on ideas “out there” absent negativity about other people have done a phenomenal job of bringing good-to-the-core people to me and repelling away the last of the people who were holdovers from earlier stages of maturity I was once in.
Another thing that I think fits in here is that I no longer listen to anyone’s content with any regularity. There is no person whose general, philosophical judgment I place above my own - particularly for my own life and its decisions but even for the broader world stuff. I have taken over completely on this job. This doesn’t mean I don’t have inputs but no one person has a generalized credibility with me that I place above my own.
My whole childhood was desperately seeking my father’s approval and then never getting this. To one degree or another, as an adult, I sought to replay this dynamic and chose figures, both public and private, who would never approve of me. I approve of me. My conscience is good. My health is improving. I am set to produce at a level I’ve never produced anymore. The past two years have been a slog but are turning into a boon!
The gossips are gone.
The disloyal are gone.
The father surrogates are gone.
And in their place, better people are around me now.
Giving up my habit of gossiping personally and privately in 2014 always kept me out of a certain level of chaos and bullshit in the world but unconsciously I was still bringing this low standard into my life by being critical and negative in videos I was putting online. And I was also making myself susceptible to gossip by needing someone else’s approval. I tried to choose the very best people I could perceive but still, I was not choosing myself!
If anyone has guessed that I’m harboring resentment in my personal life, they’d be wrong. That’s why it was so bewildering for me to see some backstabbers still make it somewhat close to me. I’ve made the necessary adjustments now and am set for a big incline. The past two years have been such an enormous clarification process.
I listened to the haters who were able to get smaller footholds in my life. I learned a long time ago to not take it personally, to not get angry with these people. They were teaching me about treachery, after all. They were showing me how I was out of place - where I am less-effective. They were teaching me that I needed to get away from them.
The eye of suspicion was so heavily on me when I was in politics. And I kind of proceeded in this innocent way where personally I wasn’t prone to gossip but then I’d go out and “fight” against others and would get the same accord from others. I don’t have a treacherous bone in my body but I was a big bounty at one point, to prove that I was so.
Now I am not so obliviously innocent and just kind of fighting baddies and hoping for some approval.
Now I am back to where I was from roughly 2014 to 2017: making honest art and wandering where the Muse leads me. This time it will be permanent.
Something that gossips show you when they project onto you is how heavy their consciences are. They’ll say you’re dangerous or toxic, for whatever reason, and then go back to their lives empty of journaling, conscious suffering, long walks, vividly documented dreams, etc.
What a Heartbreak World we live in.
My heart is unbroken!