but it's also about a lot of other things i would struggle to name because i am blessed, Blessed, with having spent something like three years Out of this world of constant suspicion and In the world of the living
i do not wish to speak badly of the wilderness. it is an enchanting, strange place full of wonder. but one must not wander into it without a plan, if one wants to find themselves back in civilisation at the end
oh, relatedly: do you experience this fear when you can't tell what group someone falls into? i probably also had that before. i think this is also bad. a healthy mind can't only engage with that which it thinks it already understands
i think i can only really describe it with one of those visual metaphors. that it is like the doors are closing in the mind and there is an attempt to limit one's vision so one cannot perceive all of the person. i look towards the person like a small and terrified creature.
i don't mean even that the person is tedious, or annoying, or whatever.
i mean something i don't have a straightforward word for: psychologically threatening. a kind of terror that i must not allow their words to reach me.
this also isn't just or even primarily about politics
i also do not mean threatening in the sense of obviously politically hostile. if someone pops up and their entire thing appears to be "i want [the likes of you] dead" then, obviously, i'm not particularly inclined to want to deal with them, even if the conversation is cordial
i do not mean threatening in a purely practical sense. if the likes of Ch*ya R*ich*k were to appear in my mentions, i would backpedal as hard and fast out of that as i possibly could, because interacting with them means people are about to send death threats to your house
but also an unwillingness to even fully understand what they're trying to say, like the content itself is somehow potentially toxic and you're in the same room and aren't wearing a mask
if someone seems superficially to have a lot of similarities in what you believe, but you suspect them to Secretly be the Other, does that make them threatening?
by threatening i mean. a kind of discomfort with engaging with what they've written. an unwillingness to interact
i assume this must be a common experience but i do not have a name for it, but it's like...
when you see someone make a point you think you agree with
and then you check their profile, and they seem to be of a Different (e.g.) political persuasion
are they... threatening?
Trans woman, bisexual, someone's fiancΓ©e, forever a programmer, poly, and former total mess