history

Table of Contents
1. Emotional vs. Intellectual History
2. Reflections on Narrative Theory
3. Intellectual Friendships
4. Control
5. Half Person
6. Conclusion
7. Afterward

1. Next week, I'm sharing my story at my church. Last night when I was on a long car ride, I was thinking about what I was going to talk about. I realized that what I was thinking of talking about was really only one half of my story, or one half of my life experience, and I noticed that what I was thinking of talking about was mainly my intellectual history, and that there was little or nothing to do with my emotional history.

2. But that absence fits in with how I tell my story on a daily basis, the image of myself that I create rather consciously or not by what aspects of my life I choose to talk about. And I don't mean that to sound sinister, or like I'm trying to manipulate people by showing them something other than the truth. But there is no way to completely render your life to others, or even to yourselves, and picking and choosing what to repeat is something that everyone does every day with or without sinister intentions.

3. Anyway, all that to say that I have what I would call "intellectual friendships," which sounds much more snooty than it did in my head. It basically is just friendships where I don't talk about my more visceral side or what I'm dealing with on an emotional level, unless it's what I'm going through on an emotional level because of intellectual or theoretical problems, something like that. Similarly, I don't really talk to my friends about trouble that I'm having with other people, relational trouble, and I don't usually talk about experiences in the past when I was going through relational or emotional problems.

I realize the existence of these intellectual friendships most powerfully when I actually do talk about something and my friends are shocked because either they had no idea or they're just shocked that I experience certain emotions. I guess that's funny, but it also makes me a little sad, like it makes me sad how little fun I have with a lot of my friends here.

4. One of the reasons I don't talk about these things is that something in me is embarrassed by being out of control. I don't know how to explain this properly, but I'll give it a go. I'm not a control freak, I very rarely try to control the outcome of situations, but I do have a lot of resentment when forces are acting on me that I can't control. I think that is how I think of emotions, as a force that is acting on me that I have no control over me, that I don't ask for, and that has a major influence on my actions. Funny enough, the emotions I'm thinking of aren't really "negative emotions" like hate or anger, I feel like I have much more rational control over those than I do over "positive emotions" like happiness or excitement or just having a crush on someone. It's easier for me to talk about how I used to hate people than to talk about good times that I've had. Some of the times in my life that I'm the most embarassed of are the times that I was most excited or most happy, because when I look back it just seems empty in a lot of cases. And I feel like it shouldn't be that way, and there's something very sad for me about being able to write that and know that it's true.

5. What's funny for me is that I've never been an unemotional person. I'm not an ogre or a caveman. Maybe it's just normal human experience, but I feel hyper-emotional: crying isn't an unusual experience for me, I used to listen to Dashboard Confessional, I often feel like throwing things at people, etc. I feel like half a person. Not in the sense that I have no emotions, but that half of me is relatively unknown. Not completely unknown, because there are friends that I talk to about all of this, but they're typically people that are removed from whatever situation I'm involved in.

6. I need to tell more sides of my story, and everyone I'm involved with will benefit from that, including me. I do think, though, that it would be a mistake for me to go around intentionally bringing up things that I feel embarassed about to try to live up to this principle that I've created for myself. I don't think that's healthy. It has a lot more to do with me having faith in other people and trusting the relationships that I have with them, and trusting that they actually care enough to listen. I also think there are frequent moments in my life when I think of something that I'm going through or that happened at some other point in my life, and I choose not to bring those up. Sometimes that's good, but not always.

7. I've been realizing this whole year that it's really critical for me to have faith in my relationships, in a very similar way to how I need to have faith in God for that relationship to function, where faith is trusting that God actually does care about me, or maybe that he just likes me on a personal level.