My family was mired in the disease of
alcoholism. Everyone had a role:
·
Daddy
drank every day, embarrassed the family in public on a regular basis, got
arrested for driving while intoxicated several times, and injured people in drunk
driving accidents.
·
Mamma
yelled, cursed, and blamed—daily.
·
My
older sisters? Nancy was a care-taker and Susan was pegged early as the overly
emotional troublemaker. None of those labels were fair.
·
And
me? I was the comic relief. The entertainment. The one who tried to make
everyone laugh as a distraction from the drunk elephant in the living room. The
one who wanted everyone to get along and be happy so that there was no more crying
in the house.
Why the heck am I starting out this essay with
a description of family dynamics? On a blog post about a social media
experiment of how differently groups of Americans viewed U.S. President Donald
Trump’s recent press conference? Well, hang in there, because we’re about to go
deep.
Day
One
Day One of the Social Media Experiment
involved an invitation for those who identified as conservative in my Facebook
feed to share what they saw in the press conference. I wanted to know, because what I saw upset me.
Made me lose sleep. Maybe my view was skewed. Maybe not. But I truly wanted to know what others thought. And then I respectfully asked anyone else who wanted to
follow the conversation to comment with a period.
I’ve never seen so many periods in
my life.
It was cool to see who was reading, but it was my experiment. I really wanted to know—uninterrupted
by today’s constant online debating that typically ends in name-calling with no
real result—what folks different from me saw.
Folks
different from me.
You see, there’s a reason I don’t see
things the way others see them. I’m not them. I figure that there’s a reason we
all have different fingerprints. We’re supposed
to be different.
It was indeed an eye-opening experience.
First, many people posted a period, and were silent THE ENTIRE DAY. I’d never
been more proud of my peeps. And, second, the folks who commented did so, I
felt, authentically. Some strayed from the press conference itself to talk
about their perception of the president, but for me that was O.K. because again
it gave me a peek into their view.
There were nuggets of insights, but the comments
that struck me most were, of course, the personal stories—the ones in which
folks different than me shared something that I could relate to as being
tragic:
·
One
woman lost an 11-year friendship over the election. This has caused her so much
pain. (I could relate: I know many people on all sides who have grieved this deep
pain since the election.)
·
Two
neighbors who had Trump signs in their yards took them down immediately after
the election for fear of reprisal. (I could relate. I supported Hillary
Clinton, and was a part of that whole Pantsuit Nation thingy for a
while, but you know what? I never put a Clinton bumper sticker on my car or a
sign in my yard because of fear. I didn’t want strangers giving me shit.)
·
A
man who had a Trump bumper sticker on his truck came to his vehicle one day to
find the bumper sticker ripped off and “Nazi” etched into the driver’s side
door. (My jaw dropped. I know this man, and yet I had no idea this happened. He
never said anything before now. And I felt so sad.)
·
One
woman was told that she and her children deserved to be shot by a mass gunman. (I felt horrified. This
one really got to me.)
What I found fascinating and equally
heartbreaking was that if I replaced the political label, I and I'd bet a plethora of folks
from all sides could list off similar tragic incidents.
Throughout the 260-plus comments, there was
only one time in which someone on the post broke the rules of no commenting
from the other side, and it was a drunk college student who didn’t read the
rules before going on the typical “You’re stupid for…” rant. (Now sober, he has
promised me and the others, as an amends, to pump out 50 pushups for each ugly
comment he made. I plan to put it on Facebook Live.)
At the end of the day, I was actually
feeling happy and hopeful. I felt as if it was possible for people of different
walks of life to listen to one another. Harmony of life is important to me, because,
like I said at the beginning, I’m conditioned to want everyone to get along.
Because I HATE CONFLICT.
And thus, Day Two was hell.
Day
Two
On Day Two, I posted a news article from
Wired about how differently folks viewed the press conference. It was as if
Wired read my post the day before and handed me this story on a platter. The
article spoke to the wide chasm of perception and how people could have such
different views on one event. It was fascinating. Exactly what I’d witnessed
since way before the election.
On Day Two the rules were simple. Anyone
could participate. There was only one disclaimer: Be nice if you comment.
Throughout most of the day, the debate was
logical and respectful. Yet I began to feel a rising level of discomfort. I
know now that it felt a lot like when Daddy would come home from work drunk
and Mamma would begin her blood-pressure-rising rant. I wanted everyone to be
nice, and some weren’t. I wanted everyone to be respectful, and some weren’t.
As the day progressed to evening (when maybe alcohol was consumed?), the tone
turned sour and quickly digressed into a merry-go-round of “how could you
possible believe…” and “you must think I’m an idiot” to “if I’m attacked, I
will defend myself.”
My stomach was in knots, just like when I
was a kid. I wanted everyone to stop fighting. I wanted everyone to get along.
All of a sudden, the Social Media Experiment became a rerun of my family’s
nightly drama, and I was miserable.
What’s fascinating is how others saw the
day:
·
One
woman thought the debate was pretty good—much nicer than what she’s seen. (And
I thought, “Oh, my God, I guess I don’t know how bad these type of discussions
can get.”)
·
One
man wrote that he actually enjoyed the banter. (Banter. Huh. That’s not how I saw it AT ALL. The least little
disagreement was so hard for me to read.)
·
Another
man wrote, “Cathy, you don’t have nice friends,” and another, in a private
message, wrote that he felt disrespected, and that he was done listening to or
trying to reason with the other side. (I felt that my Facebook friends were a
reflection of me, and that I was coming up short.)
Suddenly, I realized that I DID THIS TO
MYSELF. I heard two things:
·
My
brother-in-law’s constant question, “Well, what did you expect?”
·
My
ving tsun kung fu sifu’s advice: “Never expect. Never compare.”
Dammit, I did it again: I had an expectation. I expected that all
people could—and should—get along. I expected that somehow I could fix people,
places, and things. That I could make everything better. That I could steer
conversations to a more positive tone and convince all sides to work together.
How
egotistical, delusional, and controlling of me.
There I was the next morning, feeling
defeated just like the many mornings as a kid when I realized I hadn’t been
able to stop Daddy from getting drunk the night before and that I couldn’t do
anything to keep my Mamma and sisters from being pissed.
And today, I see that I have a lot of personal
work to do, and how differently others see a press conference should be the least
of my worries.
I have to stop trying to fix people and things.
I have to stop trying to think I can help people find common ground. Some
people don’t want that. Daddy didn’t want my help. Mamma didn’t want it. And
neither do most of the fine folks on social media.
So to all who participated in the Social
Media Experiment, I offer a humble apology—and a sincere thanks. I didn’t know
that this was all about me all along and that I had a hard lesson to learn. I’m
sorry that I had to drag you into this. If you got something out of it—terrific.
If in the end you felt hopeful—awesome. If your previous beliefs that "people on the other
side are still schmucks" was reaffirmed, well, I guess that’s just the way it is
and will have to be.
As for me, I realize I still have a LOT of
personal work to do—that the insidious family disease of alcoholism is still in my
fucking DNA.
And that I should get
my butt to an Al-Anon meeting as soon as possible.
