Blocked

I keep long lists of words and phrases that I find notable, usually for the many ways they can be read and understood, interpreted and explored. I don’t just keep one list; I’m not that organized or focused. I have lists everywhere: on scraps of paper tucked in books, written IN books, in notebooks, on my phone, in my head.

“Blocked” is a word that came into a somewhat new meaning with the rise of social media, at a time, 2006-2008ish, when I was raising my children but also teaching but also broke somehow, stretched in a way that seems impossibly difficult. I look back and think “how did I not go to pieces?” but then realize that I did…ten years later.

Suddenly, with social media, and smart phones, people could have access to you, and likewise, and you were somewhat in control of how much and what kind of access, but before long, of course, that access got invasive and weird and you began to have a different kind of control: you could block people from being able to contact you, in more than just an “I’m not responding to you” way, such as in those early arguments with strangers on Facebook or Twitter before we saw how pointless it was and just stopped engaging. Blocking someone became a message on its own, and a way to keep your notifications clear of trolls. It also became a weapon in our more personal relationships.

With the phenomenon of estrangement, “blocking” someone digitally establishes a boundary, sort of, whereas if someone tries to contact you despite being “blocked,” they are providing you with further justification that their exile is deserved. The rules vary from situation to situation, are vague, open to interpretation and change, but in many cases, there is no weathering, no erosion, no path slowly opening up. The path is blocked permanently, if metaphorically, until the person doing the blocking decides otherwise, and that is, to me, where it feels fake. It’s conjured, an attempt to assert control, suspending a situation without resolving it (in the case of harassment and abuse, of course, blocking is entirely appropriate). Physical obstructions, on the other hand, invite change over time; the detour becomes the way, the journey adapts.

A digital block’s artificiality, where there was an actual relationship, doesn't make it not real, though; it’s a real statement, a real…something. But it blurs and even feeds the problem rather than solving it. It’s a wound that festers. Maybe it gets sealed off, but it never heals, not really.

It’s been over a year now since I ceased contact with a former longtime (several decades) friend, and she with me. The details are somewhat explored in a post from early in this newsletter’s existence:

“I don’t know what’s going to happen with my friend who is upset by the way I characterized the end of the group. I am feeling the conflict we are having deep in that cellar, deep in that place of myself that I thought was untouchable, that place I wanted to keep untouchable, what Marcus Aurelius calls “the inner citadel” – but I think I am learning that the inner citadel isn’t a place to be protected; it’s what protects me and helps me remember who I am.”

I’ve done all I think I can to accept responsibility for what I contributed to the end of that friendship. I’d blown up my life in a very messy way and had to spend a long time repairing the damage where I could. I was also dealing with the impact from things that were out of my control and for a while, I simply didn’t have the resources, emotional and otherwise, that this person needed from me.

Looking back, I don’t think anything could have been done, especially not after this one specific event: we were texting on WhatsApp and she asked for a “break” in the conversation, which I honored. But she blocked me anyway, something she knew would be very specifically painful, because I had told her it was. It wasn’t just that she’d blocked me; it’s that she knew how very deeply it would hurt. She later apologized and said she “regretted” it, but this was probably the 20th time she’d done and said something similar, and I found myself understanding, perhaps for the very first time, what it feels like when you can’t even choose to trust someone anymore, not even if you want to: there’s just nothing left.

It’s quite possible that I also did something, or things, she thought egregious and beyond forgetting, but over the years, I’d watched her discard almost all of her long-term friendships. She seemed to have tests that people had to keep passing in order to stay in her life, and I guess I knew it was just a matter of time before I failed one, too.

“Blocking” people on social media, on your phone, on email, doesn’t do anything practical unless you’re dealing with actual harassment. I have one person blocked for this reason; she is unstable, unwell, and unable to leave me alone of her own volition. There are people in my past I’m not interested in talking to or engaging with in any way, but until they give me a reason to block them, blocking them preemptively would be a form of engagement, a statement, a cry for attention. It doesn’t take the place of actual, thoughtful, well-considered, healthy boundaries…

…which are not always easy to establish, especially if you’ve spent your life trying to make other people happy, if you didn’t individuate well from your parents, if you’ve experienced any kind of trauma, childhood or otherwise, if you were ever in an unhealthy or abusive relationship, if you struggle with mental or physical illness, if you’ve experienced loss and the subsequent grief, if you are simply a person doing the best you can to try to find your place in the world and be happy. Healthy boundaries are hard to both establish and maintain, but they are load-bearing structures that get stronger when tested. They breathe, sway in the wind even; they are not brittle, or hollow, or false.

When Nate and I were on R&R this past month, I went back to the college where I teach, where I’ll be returning this fall, because our youngest child graduated from the very same school. I’ll be honest: it wasn’t easy. But I’m not the same person who left there two years ago, and it’s not, thank goodness, the same place (hat tip Heraclitus). With that initial visit over, re-entry is a little clearer, a little less nauseating to contemplate. What will get me through, what has always gotten me through, is the teaching itself. I can’t wait for the first day of classes, to meet my new students, to learn about and from them, and head off on a new adventure together. So much has changed in the world since I last got to be in a classroom and I’m curious to hear what they have to say about it all.

Being on campus was a huge test of the boundaries I’ve worked hard on: would I let it rattle me, would my blood pressure skyrocket the way it did a year ago, or would I be able to occupy that space the way I have for the last 25 years, as a dedicated professional, one of the reasons it functions well as an institution of higher learning?

It wasn’t great, but it was fine. And fine is all I need it to be. I needed to look it in the face and see it for what it is. It’s just a set of buildings, filled, for the most part, with people who have good intentions.

I know that I have more to give, that what I have left for teaching will add value to the college. They know this too, which is how we’ve ended up where we are together, in a new understanding of our relationship. This understanding only, and I mean only, came about because I let myself get beaten all the way down to my “inner citadel,” and it held.

Sometimes, we think we know where our boundaries are, and sometimes, they present themselves to us as objective truth.

Sometimes, when the path you’ve always traveled is blocked, there’s a reason.