How to manipulate me

First, make sure I care what you think

It is December 2020 and my brother is dying. He’s been declining for awhile now, but we’re in the final stages, and he’s at home with his partner and our mom as often as she can be there. I’m glad that he is surrounded by love and has the entirety of our mother’s attention. It’s what he’s wanted (and probably needed most) all of his life, and seeing as he’s dying, shouldn’t he get to have that?

I am not there, will not be there, because my feelings about my brother, who is dying in his early fifties of liver failure following decades of using and abusing drugs, alcohol, and people (including me any time it suited him) are thorny and complex. I know he is dying a painful death. I am sad for that, as I would be for the agonizing death of any other human. But it also feels like cause and effect writ large, and like a tiny hint of justice, if I’m honest.

When he dies finally, I will feel relief most of all. Eventually, years later, I’ll feel grief, but that will take a long time, and we’re not there yet. Now, I’m just trying to care for my family through a pandemic and periodically getting updates about his condition from my mom, which I receive with as much grace as I can. It’s not much, I know, but I can’t manufacture the grief and solidarity she seems to be looking for out of the raw materials of our family history.

In the midst of all this, I get an email in my inbox. It’s not written to me. It’s from an old friend of our parents, a guy I’ve known all my life. It’s addressed to my brother, but I am clearly cc’d. He is writing to tell my brother how proud he is of him, how he has developed into such a good man.

At first read, I’m just confused. It’s not addressed to me, has nothing to do with me, so why have I been included? Then I am pissed, because this man and I have been connected online for years. Years where I have written, openly and in detail, about the abuse I suffered at my brother’s hand starting when I was in pre-school.

I feel erased and betrayed. I reply to him, leaving my brother out because he doesn’t need to read this bit and I never wanted to be in this conversation anyway, and ask him why he included me. I tell him that he has shared my contact information, information that I have carefully controlled for years in order to limit my brother’s access to me, without my consent. He writes back, not to ask me anything about myself, only to tell me that my brother is dying, that he is my brother, as if that is information I didn’t know. As if that is enough of an answer for violating my privacy and dragging me into a conversation I didn’t consent to during an incredibly emotionally complicated period, while ignoring the reality of my life and who my brother was in it.

I know he is trying to manipulate me, to shame me into participating in some performance of grief that he feels is appropriate, but it’s backfiring spectacularly because all I feel is rage. I fire back, noting that he isn’t telling me anything I don’t already know, and insist it was wrong for him to rope me into all of this. He gets to have whatever conversations with my brother he wants, I tell him, feel whatever he feels, but he doesn’t get to tell me what to do, how to feel, or how to express myself. He isn’t my father, who is long dead by now, and my father had no right to violate my privacy or tell me what to do either.

I never hear from him again, this man I’ve known all my life, but I have only a lingering disappointment and no regret. Because I don’t care what he thinks of me, ultimately. And I won’t be manipulated or shamed into performing emotions for anyone else’s comfort, or to meet anyone else’s standards of appropriateness. I’m a grown woman, not a circus animal.

Photo by Kevin Jarrett on Unsplash

I was reminded of all this in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination this week. Not because I expressed any particular response and got remonstrated for it. I’ve got nothing to say about Kirk specifically, because I’m leaning into the old lesson: “if you can’t say something nice…” Also, the folks who know me, who I actually care about the perspective of, already know I value human life and abhor political violence. They don’t need me to prove it by doing a public dance about how sad it all is.

It’s not for me to judge the sincerity of anyone’s emotional expression. But I had to stay offline for most of the last few days to keep that top of mind, because it sure felt like a lot of trained monkeys jumping through emotional hoops and social manipulation parading as mourning (The New York Times declares, America mourns Charlie Kirk!), especially within my bubble of left-wing folks who tend to be attached to being perceived as the good guys.

If we generally and sincerely abhor violence and recognize that about each other, then who are we asserting all of this for? And when we turn on folks who try to express complex feelings about it all, disavowing or badgering them for daring not to perform the good guy party line with us, who does our moralizing serve?

I understand how social media works, the ways the algorithm sorts for the content that will most inflame and activate us. It manipulates us and encourages us to manipulate each other to get in line like lemmings, convincing us of our righteousness even as we plunge into self-referential, meaningless action.

I spent years participating uncritically in it all— piling on to prove that I knew what was up, ashamed when I shared the wrong meme or link, posed uncomfortable questions, or had no quick and pithy answers when I was challenged. All of which simply left me feeling ungrounded, disconnected, and unsure what I actually thought about much of anything.

I try really hard these days not to feed that beast, only posting when I have something to say that feels like it authentically rises up out of me, or amplifying the voices of folks offering substantive critique and analysis. Maybe the occasional funny meme, recipe, or kid milestone, because my inner thirteen-year old is alive and well and I tell myself I will still maybe cook instead of shoving easy food in my mouth over the sink. Also, my kids are stupendous.

But I don’t offer hot takes anymore. I don’t add my voice to the chorus of outrage or finger-pointing or emotional performance of the day because it doesn’t change anything, help anyone, or lessen my personal burdens. It just leaves me feeling utilized as a blunt tool in someone else’s toolbox, a trained seal hungry for the next treat. Except the seal-trainers aren’t anyone I care about. So, why am I dancing for them?

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XO, Asha