You always hurt the ones you love

[azurelunatic]

Every time I get close to Darkside, he shoves me away. Usually gently. Sometimes he hits a sore spot, though. I don't think he knows it when he does things like that -- whenever he sees that he's hurt me, he becomes gentle and careful and brings me back to smiling, if weakly.

But over the phone, he can't see the way my face freezes, he can't read the hurt out of my body language -- he has only silence and tone of voice to tell him that he's said something that was if not the absolute wrong thing to say, something close to that.

After I was able to speak again, I had a long conversation with Votania, shredding his psyche in absentia, hacking out for me the best way to proceed as good friend and clergy. Not shredding. Dissecting. Working from our maps, tracing root causes. She knew horribly little about the subject I'd hoped she'd know more about, so it's up to me.

1. Darkside now has friends who will stay in contact no matter what.


2. Darkside may have a crusty, grumpy exterior that he displays most of the time, and a rocketing fanboy side as well, but he's also capable of exceptional sweetness, mostly when he's with someone he cares about a lot.

Now, to just convince him of these two facts...

Comments

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

Has he consented to this psyche-tinkering, or is it a project of your own?

Sometimes people like being who they believe themselves to be.

[azurelunatic]

A project of my own as yet, but sprung from something he's talked to me about at some length. When he sees my weaknesses, he tries to help and gives me advice. It's my choice whether I follow it or not. I have a responsibility to do the same for him when he tells me of things. This is my background research, my initial outlay of the concept, to see how it fits, as I'll lay it out to him. He has not asked outright for my aid. He has brought the topic up, and brought it up repeatedly enough for me to get a feeling for what's going on and that he is unhappy.

Before too many more days go by, though, there's something of myself that I must tell him. We have a practice of exchanging deep-down-deadly personality secrets, and I've uncovered one of mine that is not only a deep-down-deadly, but one that involves him.

I can't ask him if he wants help with this before I tell him the hangup I've got that I'm trying to get over. After I tell him what I've discovered, will be time to tell him that I'd done some thinking about the things that he revealed to me, things deeper than anything discussed in that post, things that those things are only a symptom of.

As a project of my own, reassuring him that he's an excellent friend and someone I don't want to lose contact with is well within our defined boundaries, and the action of a friend. It's just that most actions as a friend don't have quite the insightful well-planned detail backing them up. Even if he declines to look further into things, loving friendship-support is always in order.