Table of Contents
Content
1. Introduction
What follows is a guide to respecting your friends' communication-related boundaries, during this
time of desperate need for social contact, brought on by the "physical
distancing", "social distancing", and shelter-in-place orders which are supposedly necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The purpose of this article is to explain that non-stop talking (or "monologuing") is not acceptable, even during a time when one is in desperate need of social contact. Taking turns monologuing is better than one person monologuing, but it is still not good enough.
I have written the article below in order to impart a lesson about healthy communication skills. I used to have hopes, dreams, and goals. I do not want my goals - nor who I am as a person - to be entirely subsumed under my need for social contact.
I cannot spend all of my time worrying about other people's problems; I have enough problems of my own. Your friends are the same way.
who kept calling me and asking "What's new?".
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4. First Text Portion,
Written in October 2020
(Background
Text Explaining the Context of These Images)
I don't want to be the guy who doesn't pick up the phone when his friends need
him. Don't make me consider being that guy.
I want to be part of my friends' lives so I can help
them, not to listen to them talk about ghosts and shit.
People doing non-stop talking to me literally triggers
my P.T.S.D..
I was stood over, yelled at, lectured at, and never
allowed to talk or properly explain myself. That is how my father tortured me.
I cannot sit here and fucking listen to people talk about meaningless bullshit
forever.
If we're having a conversation, there has to be a
purpose. Either you want me to help you, or you do not.
I know I'm a good listener, but I cannot listen to
people go on and vent about their problems, especially if they don't want help
or advice. I cannot be that person. Not yet anyway.
I have a life. I work more than 40 hours a week.
Nobody seems to understand that I can't spend all my free time on the phone and
that I can't have people in my house in the half hour before I leave for work.
It slows me down.
I have extreme difficulties setting boundaries,
especially with non-stop talkers. I need help setting up these boundaries, and
if someone is going to try to be my friend, then they need to be helping to set
those boundaries up.
I need more friends, not more problems, not more
people to test my boundaries instead of respecting them.
I am trying to finish a campaign. My child molester is
on the loose. I am extremely busy.
I cannot be a good listener, or even laugh an
appropriate amount in a conversation, if my mind is consumed with the rage and
uncertainty that have resulted from my father remaining a free man after
molesting me as a child and then brainwashing me about it.
I love you guys. But stop fucking calling me.
5. Second Text Portion,
Written in August 2021
(Background Text Explaining the Context of These Images)
My
father used my cell phone essentially as a tracking device.
He
got phones for me and my mom and brother, essentially only so that he could
harangue us for not responding quickly (because he has abandonment issues).
My
father once fired me from my secretary job for him, for leaving my phone at
home by accident.
My
mom would spend up to 45 minutes at a time on the phone when I was a kid. It
was extremely difficult to get her attention during this time.
Parents,
please remember that small children cannot solve their own problems. If you
ignore your kid for a solid hour, they could die. Cover the phone
for five seconds, talk to your child, and find out whether it's an emergency,
or whether it's something that can wait!
When
my mother's phone rings, she instantly sighs or scoffs, gets visibly agitated,
and says "Jeez" or "what now!?". I never want that to be
me.
I
want to live.
I
don't want to be a prisoner of my phone, an inanimate object that we have all
allowed way too much control over us.
I
don't enjoy talking on the phone.
Personally I think it's a useful, but deeply flawed, invention. They
invented that shit 150 years ago, and still haven't even come close to
perfecting the sound quality.
It
is difficult to struggle to hear my friends through crackling. It's also
dehumanizing to have to listen to a roboticized voice. It stresses me out
because it feels like I'm not talking to a human being.
It
feels like my friends and family have been replaced by robots.
I
know it's hard for my friends not to talk to me on the phone, but remember that
e-mails and texts - and talking in person - exist too!
Meeting in person may not be possible when we live far apart, but the
only way to talk voice-to-voice long distance is to put up with crackling and
random call-dropping. Maybe you guys can handle the stress of that, but I
can’t.
Last
year [2020], I spent months and months trying to explain -
to ten different people - that they were calling me too often,
and/or for too long.
In
January 2021, I even made a twenty-minute video for YouTube
[titled "Plea to My Friends and Followers: Stop Calling Me on the
Phone!"], in which I named all of the things I can't do when I'm
talking on the phone.
The
things I can't do while I'm on the phone include:
- eating (because chewing makes noise),
- cooking (makes noise),
- listening to or playing music,
- sleeping,
- cleaning my house (if the objects make noise), and more.
I
can’t eat or sleep if I’m talking to you all of the time!
I am
sick of waking up to phone calls, and then waiting for my friends to stop
talking to me on the phone so that I can start my day.
Talking about your problems on the phone, is not the same thing as solving your
problems.
The
more you call me to talk about your problems, the more powerless I feel,
because I literally cannot do anything about them (besides give advice that I'm
not sure whether you'll take or appreciate).
Also, when talking on the phone, it is customary to let the other person
talk at least 10% of the time. This is a joke, of course; 50% is the ideal.
Equal conversations should be 50/50.
If
I'm not talking – or if I slip to far below that 50% threshold – then it's not
always because I have nothing to say.
It's
mostly because I have learned to deal with my problems - and
call the people who can solve them - instead of just going on talking about
them for a half hour, or an hour, or multiple hours at a time.
Another reason why I’m not talking, might be that I don’t feel like I
will be heard, because as soon as I stop talking, you will start talking. And
for minutes and minutes, before I have another chance to speak.
Also, me pausing for half a second, should not be
confused with an invitation for you to speak for another solid twenty minutes.
I
don’t know why nobody ever told you this, but it is not an
equal conversation when you speak for twenty minutes, and then I say “Yeah?”,
and then you speak for another twenty solid minutes. That is not
polite.
I
have tried as hard as I can to be polite about this. But it seems that the more
polite I am, the less my friends get the hint.
I am
sorry that some people will feel personally called-out by this post. But I have
tried to explain this over and over and over again:
I
am trying to put my rapist/father in prison. There is no such thing as “free
time” for me. Say “call me when you have some free time” all you wish;
saying this does not cause me to have more free time.
If I
stopped calling to you – and/or broke up with you – then it is because
I don’t enjoy talking with you as much as you think I do! Take the
hint!
The
more time you talk about your problems (which I cannot solve), the more I think
about the things I am not doing to write about what my father
did to me. The more you talk, the more I am silently stressing-out about things
I need to do around the house, and out of the house at businesses, in order to
move my life forward and solve my problems.
If
you do not understand the concept of “moving one’s life forward”, then I am
sorry, but I am not going to be able to explain it to you. If you think that I
can easily put my other needs aside in order to talk to you, then I am sorry,
but I am not going to stop sleeping, and eating, and cooking, and cleaning, and
showering, and going to the bathroom, in order to make you happy.
I
cannot be of any use to my friends, if I am not solving my problems. I cannot
solve my problems if I am listening to my friends talk on the phone every
single “free” moment I have.
Just
because I have a free moment here and there, that doesn’t necessarily mean that
I want to spend that moment listening to my friends talk.
If I
don’t sleep and cook and eat and clean and shower and use the restroom when I
need to, then it messes with the flow of my day. If the flow of my day is
impeded, then I risk failing to show up to work on time. If I fail to show up
to work on time, I could be fired.
If I
am fired from my job, then I will miss paying my bills. Then – if I don’t get a
new job in time - I could get behind on utilities, and lose my apartment, and
end up on the street or having to live with friends or family. That option is,
to me, not worth it. I would like to stay housed, through my own
power and my own work.
I
will not completely re-prioritize and re-schedule my life in order to listen to
you talk on the phone. I was homeless once; I am not going to be homeless again
solely to make you feel heard. Go find a second person who wants to listen to
you talk.
I
already devoted hundreds of hours listening to ten of my
friends talk – and dozens of hours begging them to stop calling me so much
– all throughout last year [2020].
I
have had enough.
I
know that many of my friends need help, and need someone to listen to them. But
I cannot bear the burden of being the only friend who will listen
to ten of my friends.
I
want to be supportive. And I want you to have friends. That’s “friends”, plural! Please
find a second friend, or I will have no choice but to leave you with no
friends at all!
If
that happens, you will have brought it upon yourselves.
I
love my friends. But if you love someone, let them go!
Introduction written on September 3rd, 2021
Edited and Expanded on September 7th, 2021
Published on September 3rd, 2021
First image based on an
image I created in mid-2021
Second image created in
late 2020 or early 2021
First text portion originally written as a Facebook post,
originally published to Facebook in October 2020
Edited and expanded on September 3rd, 2021
Published to this blog on September 3rd, 2021
Second text portion originally written as a Facebook post,
titled “I HATE FUCKING TALKING ON THE PHONE”,
originally published to Facebook on August 28th, 2021
Edited and expanded on September 3rd, 2021
Published to this blog on September 3rd, 2021
Order of texts reversed on September 7th, 2021
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