the shape of events.

In a new twist, this year I'm talking to people about what's going on in my life. I've always assumed they didn't want to know, or they would somehow feel alienated, but in fact that's how we build relationships. I tweak and frame the stories for each relationship, of course, but besides that, it's important for me to tell the story over and over. As we explain to others, we explain to ourselves, and we internalize the story: pretty important when it's learning to tell the story of your life (and so, yourself) in a different way than you've always known.

In this telling, I need a quick sketch of Angry Biodad's (ABD for short) conduct. He's firing off shotgun shells of bullshit, without regard to any kind of consistency or plausibility, even within a single audience. Denying things which are well-documented, including documents with his signature, or emails he sent a few days previously.

In college, I took a linguistics survey class. The professor was prone to over-sharing about her life in useless (and at least not creepy) ways, but she did say that she enjoyed watching her kids pass through the phases of linguistic and cognitive development. She described one day when she discovered a cookie missing, and confronted the 5-year old.

"Did you eat that cookie?"
[Child pauses to think.]
"You ate it!"

So while dedicated gaslighting is no joke, ABD's level of sophistication is blessedly low. In fact, it looks like this, though unfortunately the movie isn't current enough to use as a reference. Stuff like telling J his fears are irrational, then telling a psychologist he's never told J his fears are irrational.

It is true that men can go far in the world by baldfaced assertion; they can even be elected President instead of the most qualified candidate in history, if that candidate is a woman. It doesn't work nearly as well if you're not rich, though. Lucky for J.