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eric on Aug 22nd 2007 at 4:24 am Random Life Stuff

An Aside: Alienation and Invalidation

I’m not sure if this was the actual reason that I left Berkeley early. And I guess I didn’t actually leave it early. I left it when I had originally planned, but I had kicked around the idea of staying a day or two longer.

I was talking to someone about the earlier part of my trip. I was very much revealing my mind to them. It was something that I hadn’t talked much about since leaving and I really needed to feel like I was being heard and understood. I should have waited until I was around Jeff/Ryan or Jason/Margaret. This was my mistake.

During this conversation, I mentioned that I had felt “alienated.” This was a big thing for me. I hadn’t felt alienated like this in over a decade. It was a shock and I needed to talk to someone away from the situation to get a clear picture of it.

This person’s response to “I felt alienated” was “You can’t feel alienated. Alienation isn’t a feeling. It’s a state of being.”

And maybe that is grammatically true. And if this were 12th grade comp, sure, put that red slash on my paper. But this is ME, your friend, revealing his mind to you. Basically, how fucking dare you?

What this did, and really, the only thing this could do, was it made me feel invalidated. I’m sure I can’t feel that either.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that, unlike them, at least I’m feeling something. I did feel alienated on the first part of my trip. But even worse, when trying to explain it, my opinions and feelings were invalidated and I was basically dismissed. And so I felt alienated again.

Thanks.



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  5. 90 minutes of funk!

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Comment by elisabethNo Gravatar
2007-08-22 10:05:15

as an english teacher i can tell you that i would not have noticed (let alone pointed out- ouch!) this bullshit about alienation as a state and not a feeling.

this is like if someone wrote me a love letter and i corrected their syntax. ew.

i’m so sorry this happened to you!

 

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