Sure, bad things happen to everyone. But around here things get ridiculously bad. Comically bad, like we're living in a sitcom. People who are around me sometimes notice it too, that patterns start to emerge, and it's obvious something else is going on, like a curse. I'm trying to figure it all out.
Miscommunication of Intent. You're driving alone. Traffic is thick, you do your usual lane change, you got into a space plenty wide for your car. But the white Escalade behind you seems to disagree. Because he's right on your bumper now, flailing his arms like he's just so mad you got in his way. Miles go by. He's following you as if trying to run you off the road. Now, you're sure you left him plenty of space. What's his deal? Now he's sped up next to you and he's hurling empty bottles at your face. At 65 miles per hour. Better roll up your window. The next one bounces off the glass. Just road rage, right? Wrong place, wrong time. Guy had a bad day? You would speed up to get away from him but someone's in your way. So you slow down, and when you do, the person behind you slams on their brakes and honks. At you! CAn they not see what's going on? The Escalade slows down to follow you. So to escape the situation you do a last-minute exit onto a street you're not familiar with. It's okay, you say, here's a grocery store and I had to stop for laundry soap anyways. And Escalade is gone! (all this really happened)
Now you're trying to park your car. Someone takes the spot you eyeballed originally so now you have to drive past the entrance to the store and find another aisle. No big deal, but people keep walking in front of your car. They're pedestrians, so you have to wait for them. But as soon as one crosses, another crosses from the other side. Again ... and again, eight, nine, ten, you could have sworn there were no pedestrians when you turned to go though this way. Why such a surge? So you start forcing the nose of your car across gently, and a whole family of six walks right in front of you without even looking. One of them is a big fat kid walking backwards without watching, he slams into your car hard enough to leave a dent with his shoe. Then he turns around and looks at you like you.... hit him. Says something to his parents you can't hear, now all six are standing there looking at you. Standing in your way, of course.
You've had it. You throw your shifter in reverse and start backing up, but stop!!. A delivery truck has just parked behind you and has thrown his flashers on. You almost backed right into him! And he lets you know this with his deafening foghorn. So, okay, now you gently push a sharp u-turn through a new crowd of angry pedestrians, to go back towards the section of parking lot you just came from, because you just want to leave the pressure-cooker of stress you just found yourself in. And finally, you park. And just as you get out and walk around your car to see if the fat kid kicked a dent in your fender, an old man who's just parked his Buick next to you flings his door open and blocks your view of your own fender. So you wait. You have to because on the other side is overgrown trees so you can't get around. He gets his cane out, as if he's about to get out of his car. But he doesn't. He just sits there. For one, entire, full, minute, you stand there waiting for a viewing of your own fender. You wait in amazement. How did your day get so bad? He smiles and says, wonderful day, isn't it? Just as you start to feign a polite response, a car alarm goes off nearby and you almost defecate in your pants.
You storm into the store for laundry soap. The store's not too crowded but everyone seems to be in your way, and appearantly, half of them seem to think the same about you being in their way. Excuse me, pardon me. Oh sorry, didn't see you there. As soon as you get to the cleaning aisle, which unlike the next aisle over, is crowded beyond penetration, a crowd of teenagers wanders in front of your laundry soap just as you approach it. And they stop there, checking their cell phones and flirting with each other. So you wait, but they don't move, so you try to squeeze through them, but you can't. So you say, excuse me, pardon me. One by one they're startled by you and they move. Then there's your soap. Just as you reach for it, a store employee in a hurry jogs right in front of you and sends your laundry-soap-grabbing hand flailing into someone's face. They're not happy.
Close your eyes, regain your sanity. Because you feel your red-hot frustration turning into unrestrained rage. And just as you swear to yourself you will strangle the next person who gets in your way or accuses you of being in theirs, you hear, excuse me sir!! You open your eyes, a 400-lb woman with a shopping cart has been standing in the aisle waiting for you to move out of the way of her laundry soap.
Welcome to day-to-day life under the "cock-a-block" curse. It was given than name with help from my wife who after a very long road trip witnessed with her own eyes in 2006 that this was my real life daily hell. No one story is ever big enough to say "something's off" .... it's always just an endless string of little things. Like that. It goes on, hour after hour, usually not that bad but sometimes pretty bad. Similar things keep happening, again, and again, not always in traffic. I just seemed to always be in everyone's way, inadvertently. Or they seemed to always be in mine. Every day was frustration. And it went on for years, though it didn't seem to happen before 2001. Seems like 2001 someone put a powerful curse on me. That crossed my intent with the intent of everyone else on the planet. In traffic, at home, at work. Every day was a battle. Some days people seemed to jump out of their way just to block my path. I realised whether it's me or them that's the obstacle, it's the same energetic construct: conflict of intent. On one side is me, and on the other side is the rest of the world, and every day is hell, some days more some days less.
If you're walking down a sidewalk and stop to check your phone, you may not realise you're actually blocking someone trying to come through a door with a heavy stack of boxes. It may just feel natural and you do it without thinking. But if you're the one with the boxes, it's infuriating and it's hard to assume that it's unintentional. Especially if it happens thirty times a day, day after day. After a few years you settle into the nauseating feeling that the world is out to get you. I have to keep reminding myself that it's not intentional. One thing I noticed is whenever I'm isolated for a few days, like going a whole weekend without leaving the house, I go out again on Monday and this phenomenon is powerful as hell. It can be scary and dangerous. Likewise the more time I spend out and about, like at work, then by friday it's hardly noticable.
Or it even starts working backwards. The other day driving home I noticed traffic was thick but was strangely parting for me like a crowd parting for a king. Just the opposite of the "cock-a-block" hell I'm usually in. So I guess it can work both ways.
I'm speculating whether this curse has to do with keeping me isolated, homebound. Because setting my intent "outwards" into the world always is met with friction. But setting my intent "homewards" is always smooth sailing. Whether it's a minute-by-minute thing or day-to-day, it would explain why fridays are so much smoother than mondays at my job regarding conflicts, and also why driving away from home is always hell compared to driving back, regardless of traffic.
Emotional Miscommunication. I can be in a great mood, whistling and smiling. But if I turn and say "hello" to someone they jump like I just bit their head off. On my best of days people outright avoid me, even strangers on the sidewalk, when they don't even know me and haven't even made eye contact. As if my good moods are broadcasting negative emotional energy from my aura. Likewise if I'm in a bad mood people seem attracted to me. I can be red in the face with anger, going out of my way to avoid people, swearing and even throwing things. And people will be hunting me down several at a time, just to chit chat, tell jokes or just bask in my aura. It's infuriating and feels very isolating, being energetically conflicted with the world to such an extreme. I don't know when that started. It may be life-long.
Even worse about people getting good vibes from me being in a bad mood, It's absolutely impossible for me to communicate anger to someone at all. Maybe true for other emotions, but anger is the easiest energy to see bouncing around in conversation, especially my own. When I'm angry and I try to speak out, I can actually feel my own negative energy being reflected back at my face. Like I'm wearing a bucket on my head. That's what it feels like, and appearantly that's also how I come across. Instead of being taken aback, people look at me relaxed and curious. Maybe that bucket or barrier is there all the time, and whatever I send out gets reflected back, and whatever people pick up on is actually not from me at all. Like a reversal, a flip-flop. Examples:
- If I've been wrongly accused of doing something, and I'm pointing out some easy proof that it wasn't my fault, instead of seeming confident I come across like I'm guilty and lying.
-Likewise if I'm lying to cover up something bad that I did, I come across as confident and honest.
- If I'm telling a story about something important that happened sometimes people laugh like they're assuming I'm making a joke.
- Likewise sometimes if I'm making a comment as a joke people stop and seriously reply to it. "just kidding" is something I always have to follow up with to clarify.
Conceptual Miscommunication Phenomenon. On top of that, communcation is usually impossible with everyone in and of itself. Because usually I'm tongue-tied, I've learned through many painful social situations, that everything I say has to be consciously put through all kinds of cultural and social filters. Because sometimes no matter what comes out of my mouth, it's the absolute wrong thing to say. And my wife knows how I do this even better than I do, I'll be completely silent throughout an entire dinner party, silently struggling for hours in a cold sweat to think of something to say that's not offensive or embarassing somehow. And the one time I do manage to open my mouth, later I realise it was awkward and could have been very easily mistaken as something destructive. Or too much time has passed and while I was making sure I should say it, conversation has moved to a different subject. Or I worded something funny. She usually tells me about it later. So usually I just keep my mouth shut as much as possible. People at work sometimes try to prod me to talk or find ways to involve me in conversation, but after a while they learn to give up. I'm fine with being a loner but some people are not fine with it. Some people seem bothered that I'm so quiet. One guy in particular, yesterday I finally found something to chit chat with him about and it was revealed something really personal and traumatic for him and his family worked out fine with me, so conversation ended there and now the guy probably hates me even more. It's like I"m cursed with a mouth that every time it opens finds destruction and negativity and I can never over-ride it. And sometimes, like with the guy at work, it's a psychic thing where there's no way I could know beforehand what not to say but somehow I find it.
Same with writing. No matter how many times I proofread something the final product always is riddled with mistakes and bad choices of words. And the more this happens, the longer I spend the next time obsessively proofreading. Now it's to the point where I can spend hours typing two sentences of an email. As if I'm battling a part of my own brain that's trying to offend the other person through hidden meanings, or trying to miscommunicate or avoid a certain subject. Except when I'm posting here, since I know no one will read this then the words just flow effortlessly. It's the only chance I ever get to express myself without interference. My wife laughs at how I'll re-write emails over and over and over again. Until eventually I just give up or only send two or three lines. What she doesn't understand is that it's usually necessary. Then I proofread what I sent again, and again, and then again the next day. Because sometimes after the tenth time I realise I miscommunicated something and when I get a reply I'm embarassed that the other person was completely derailed and didn't understand a single idea I was trying to communicate. I didn't notice this happening until just about eight years ago. But then I found some old emails from before this started happening, and I just sank in my chair of embarassment, over how offensive or incriminating or just non-nonsensical they all were. Like what I'd say would rely heavily on intonations in words when obviously that's impossible except through verbal speech. And without that component there it made no sense or was destructive somehow.
Another aspect of miscommunication, is no matter how clearly or loudly I write or speak, people sometimes don't seem to understand a thing I say. Likewise, I can hear someone speaking english and try hard to understand the meaning of their words, but it just comes across as jibberish. It's maddening, also the reason I hate going to Subway. Because it seems to happen worse when I'm asking for something. Screw the sandwich, Subway for me is a pressure-cooker of stress over miscommunication. Must be life-long becuase it's been that way since I was a kid ordering food at restaurants. Besides the embarassment I end up with a pizze covered in mayonaisse, instead of what I ordered. For this reason I avoid all people, especially the service industry. Or if possible I communicate through email so I can at least proofread. But making requests of a stranger has always been impossible, I'll pass up a free hot meal for a bag of chips from a vending machine, if getting the hot meal means a human being will be spooning food onto my plate. But avoiding people isn't always possible, especially at work. So my boss will be laying be out on a task, and I"m nodding that I understand. When truth is I'm standing there memorizing the sounds from his mouth so that after he leaves I can replay his voice in my head and hopefully make sense of it. That's how bad it is. And that's the extent that I've had to adapt. Just ask him, he's worked with me enough to learn that the important things need to be repeated twice, so that I can memorize it, repeat it to myself later and then translate. That's the receiving end. On the giving end, I've noticed the degree to which someone can't understand me depends on how badly I want the thing I'm asking them for. The more I want it, the less they habla anglais.
Conclusion. After the forty-or so times I've revised this post it's obvious these are all manifestations of the same thing. Some kind of energetic mirror or barrier that exists in many different dimensions all around me and flip-flops everything. Intent, emotion, ideas, I wonder what else. I'm so tired of living this way. No matter how long this has been going on I've always known this is not the way to live. I hope this gets resolved soon.
