A sike (a.k.a. "psych" or "syke") is when someone tricks you into believing something that's not true, lets you sit and squirm in the lie for a while, and then when the moment is ripe says, "SIKE". Then you cuss and throw something at them. It's from the 80s.
Sometimes life says "SIKE" to show you something about yourself. Dreams are just big sikes, for example. (Which reminds me, last night I dreamt I was bitten twice by a glowing red poisonous snake, after which I was scurrying around trying to figure out how to get the venom out before I died, and before I missed "Faith, Hope, and Love" class at school.)
But today I got a waking sike that has me thinking about how I react to disappointment:
So this evening, as I am basking in the Renton Walmart experience
( = my idea of sabbath), I text my friend "Pat" and invite him/her to go hear the monks sing later (they're not really monks but they are pious looking men who sing Compline at a cathedral every Sunday night...it's beautiful). Pat texts back, "Sounds really good". "Yay, want me to pick u up at 9?" I reply. I never hear back from Pat but don't think much of it. I show up at Pat's apt at 8:50, though Pat still isn't responding to my texts. I call. No answer. After 15 minutes I give up.
By the time I leave Pat's, disappointment has fully descended upon me. Pat has never kicked me in the teeth, it doesn't make sense. I start wrestling with the disappointment. I am no longer in the mood for monks. I am pissed and impatient for an explanation. Then I immediately scold myself for being pissed and impatient. Geez, it is not a big deal, what is wrong with me? Give Pat some credit; Pat has a good heart. And why am I letting Pat determine my feelings? What am I, dependent on Pat in some unhealthy way? Why am I so needy? I need to be more independent. I've gotta pull myself together and not need people so much, especially Pat. Where the hell did strong Holly go? (enter various reminiscings of myself back in the day when I was the shit---more confident, less self-conscious, etc) I'm tired. I'm hungry. I'm gonna eat that frozen veggie pizza when I get home.
As I unlock the back door of my house I get a text from Pat. "Hey! I forgot I'm busy tonight! Sorry." What?! NOW you tell me? I reply: "Yeah, fun to wait outside your place for 20 min only to get stood up, jerkface!" (ehh, OK, Pat is a boy obviously. Only boys are jerkfaces.) No reply from Pat. I immediately worry that maybe I was too mean or vindictive, on top of dysfunctionally needy. I go to the freezer and can't find my pizza. I live with thieves! I call to Smruti in the next room: "Smruti! Did you 'accidentally' eat my frozen pizza?" "No," she replies kindly. I eat something else.
An hour later Pat calls. "When did you get my text about not going?" he asks. Turns out, Pat's texts were delayed by a couple hours---he actually had been courteous with his backing out. And being goodhearted Pat, he felt bad for the whole incident.
"SIKE," says God.
Looking back, this tweenie drama has presented me with irrefutable evidence of two things: (1) text messaging really is of the devil, the root of all relational demise, and (2) in the wake of disappointment, I spiral into self-contempt and other-contempt. But mostly self-contempt. In what may seem like exaggerated language, here's how I think it went: I felt betrayed by Pat, albeit minorly, which made me feel foolish and ashamed. Hating my shame and my desire to enjoy Pat + monks, I turned on myself for allowing myself to be in a place where I risked being surprised by disappointment. Ultimately I concluded that I need to withdraw from people and to somehow muscle my way out of all my insecurities. Yikes.
I don't think I really grasped how this spiral of self-contempt happens in me until tonight's sike illustrated it so simply. But once I did see my thought pattern, I realized I do it all the time. Self-contempt and self-violence are talked about a lot at school, and I think they are becoming the first big thing I am being confronted with here. It's funny, coming to Mars Hill I fully expected stones to be bulldozed over in me to reveal weird and dark dysfunctions, to expose all the "contemptible" things in me. I invited the bulldozing. It has been startling and unnerving, then, to have instead watched one kind face after another converge only on one peculiar boulder, placing their hands on it, holding their lanterns to it, and finally naming what "contemptible" thing they sense lies under its dark belly: my own self-contempt.
What does one do with such irony except be humbled, smile at being caught, and start listening?
5 comments:
hey love,
i really enjoyed this post.
i found two statements to be most thought provoking:
1) (enter various reminiscings of myself back in the day when I was the shit---more confident, less self-conscious, etc)
2) in the wake of disappointment, I spiral into self-contempt and other contempt
and now i will relate to you in a (pretty selfish) way that i find easiest for me to relate to other people: by talking about myself.
these two statements knock the breath out of me, because as you describe yourself, i find me glaring back at me in what you write. i agree completely with what you say in your first statement...this is how i view myself. a lot. i don't know what happened to the rockstar me i was. instead, i often find myself living inside a weak, sad, confused little being with no self esteem. but to you, holly, i say you ARE the shit. i wish you could feel and see how inspiring and amazing you are to other people. i wish you could see you the way other people do.
okay, number 2. i do this as well, and i suspect that most people who breathe and have a heart do it as well. the most important thing i learned from the weird religion classes i took at my catholic high school is this: anger (and thus contempt) is a secondary emotion. but this is not to say that it is not a valid emotion. maybe you jumped the gun a little on your feelings in this situation (not that i wouldnt have done the exact same thing), but those feelings would have been completely valid had pat actually been brushing you off. i say it is good for you to revel in this feelings so deeply as you do, to explore them so fully, but i also so that i hope you don't feel too badly, because, after all, you are human and you are allowed to feel.
me, when similar situations happen, i panic and then feel like an idiot. i need instant gratification, and that is something i hate about myself. i look forward to telling you many sw-isms when you return to the knox.
love you, you smart, intuitive, beautiful (inside and out) lady.
dang i love you. thanks em. you are sooo the shit!
heya,
this post is superb- risky and wacky both. thanks for wrestling with contempt outloud. believe it or not, that's a good offensive step against the secretive power of shame.
and yes, text messaging as primary mode of contact is satanic.
and on an unimportant side note, i think "sike" is actually "psych", like I psyched you out- made you think you were crazy or used manipulative mind powers, etc. but of course the word now means what it means, regardless of spelling or etymology. don't my preoccupation with spelling cause you shame :)
thanks for the shout out, i'm sorry someone ate your pizza! i hope you continue to be met with kind face after kind face who shine the lantern not in a way that it is so bright that you have to squint and can't see, but in a way that is gentle to your eyes, allows your eyes to adjust to the light, and then allows you to slowly see!
kj: thanks, positive kj feedback is big currency in my world!
yeah, i debated a couple of spellings when i wrote it. being slang, to me it's like "crunk" or "krunk"--all depends on the hood. but i think you are dictionary right. thanks.
smruti: thank you, kind face. yes the lanterns are gentle so far, that's why i said lanterns instead of flashlights : ) and i didn't even really like that pizza so most other moments i would have yelled, "thank you whoever ate my pizza!"
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