Re: The Kingdom of Thorns
christ. i hate so much situations where i go in feeling like i have a perfectly reasonable and valid suggestion/complaint/idea/request for change and end up coming out feeling like i've been being unreasonable, selfish, and like the thing i brought up was pointless in the first place. that's what's going on right now. the thing i brought up wasn't even for /me/. it was to highlight someone /else's/ work. but i came out of the conversation appologizing for the selfishness i was demonstrating.
it feels... i mean, i know "gaslighting" isn't the right word here. but it feels a lot like stuff with Tall Blue Man where i'd come in thinking i have this really legitimate point, and then we talk, and i end up really confused, and come out feeling uncertain, and insecure, and doubting that the thing was worth bringing up at all. like this conviction i come in with is twisted all around, and becomes something completely unreasonable.
right now, i'm wondering why i thought this even mattered, or was worth bringing up, much less bringing up more than once. it's fine, the creator says its fine, he isn't asking for anything else, we're releasing his product with enough attention, why was it even bothering me that we did it this way?
there's that particular kind of Guy Approach where they lay out what you said in this rational, logical way, but it somehow makes what you said sound so ridiculous and silly and trivial. and i end up feeling so /silly/ for it even mattering. where when you start, it feels important, like you're doing something Good or Helpful or Right, but at the end it just looks like this tiny, stupid thing that you were just blowing out of proportion and why do you care.
and this probably is one of those things????
i think in a lot of cases, it's not the /thing itself/. it's that there's so much more /around/ the thing. it's not that he put your fancy knife in the dishwasher. it's that he didn't listen to anything you said, and doesn't take care of your property, and uses your things without asking and then ruins them. but when you're done talking, you feel like an idiot, because it's just a knife and it didn't actually do any damage.