Untangled Code

[trickykitty]

Braid's are amazingly strong and powerful structures.

After unraveling the bulk of the mess that were my previous strands of thought in my head, I'm now working to rebuild them into better and stronger structures. I'm taking those lines of thought and properly braiding them to provide a nice solid foundation for future interactions with people.

One of the first steps in this process is coming to terms with the equations I posted a few days ago:

[sex] NOT = [love]
[flirting] NOT = [emotional connection]
[outgoing] NOT = [flirting]

Imagine all of the relationships you have with all of the people you know lying on a continuum. At one end are casual acquaintances, and at the other end are your strong, close friendships (I'm intentionally ignoring biological family). In between those are various levels of friendships, some closer than others, some a bit more distant. The thing is, I didn't have those middle levels in my head. No mid-level emotions or empathy being detected meant no mid-level friendships being forged and no mid-level interactions really taking place. In my mind, I have been categorizing everyone I know into something akin to only two categories. Either I have thought of you as a casual friend, with little-to-no emotional connections (even though in reality we may have a few), or I have somehow noticed a few connections, and therefore I deemed you to be one of the most important people in my life EVAR.

The worst part is that the main primary feature separating those two categories has really only been my level of attraction to the other person, whether it be on a mental or physical scale. [For the sake of simplicity, understand that you can "flirt" with someone on a mental level by trying to come off as intelligent, witty, or funny, and a really amazing conversation/evening spent with someone can be just as much of a dopamine high as "sex".] My interactions with friends and acquaintances have revolved most significantly around me determining what level of flirting I should be conducting based on my level of physical or mental attraction to them and their level of reciprocation. This is the result of those faulty equations. With sex=love and flirting=emotional connection ringing true in my mind, I have been essentially conducting "interviews" for who gets to be on top in my "love" book. If you weren't really responding favorably or I otherwise wasn't interested, I placed you in the acquaintance category. If you were responding well, then oh look, I must have made a connection with you, and therefore you get to jump to the other end of the relationship spectrum - which means now you and I have become the bestest best friends in the world, which also translated to me thinking I was the most special person ever in your eyes.

I'm special all right. Heh.

I've been knocking down all of the bad structures, which in this case leaves me with exactly what I started with - an unpopulated relationship continuum. A line with two points, one at each end, and all of my friends assigned to one of these two points. The goal now is to correctly populate that line as it should be, but without any additional points along that continuum, where do I move the friends to?

So, I'm starting at the bottom. I've kept just a minute few friends at the top of the continuum who have been instrumental in helping me along this journey*, and I've moved everyone else back to the acquaintance point, along with myself. I mean, if you think about it, I'm getting reacquainted with myself. Myself and I have been warring enemies and now we've made peace with each other, but I don't really have a good foundation for this more comprehensive and complete self yet. As far as I'm concerned, I'm almost a stranger.

As I get to know myself and certain other friends using the new, untangled rules, equations, and new-found emotional concepts, I'm working to properly braid those concepts together and tie them off at well-defined points along that continuum. Each point is a new stop that wasn't there before. Some friends will be moved forward and brought up to that stop in my mind, while others will stay behind in the lessor acquaintance levels.

Eventually, the braid will cover the entire continuum, and I'll end up on top.

*Those friends that are currently starting at the top of my continuum list may or may not stay there. It's just a way for me to give baseline comparisons as I gradually get myself closer and closer to that top point. Ultimately, I should end up on top, as I should be my bestest best friend in the whole world, second to none.