Here's What Happened Next

I backslid.

Yes, I stayed in the fellowship. I stayed because I began to realize that me staying meant more to the coordinator than me going meant to me.

The coordinator and I were scheduled to meet on Wednesday because, as she put it, "it's really important that we meet about this." That meant the first half of the week was spent obsessing and ranting and obsessing and weighing the pros and cons and obsessing just a little bit more for good measure -- which you all witnessed. After much consultation with the comments in my earlier posts, much commenting in the comments, reading and re-reading supportive e-mails from my fellow fellows, and a visit with my analyst (I'm so Woody Allen in the '70s), I came to the conclusion that the more politic decision would be to stay and the more healthy decision would be to go.

Don't you hate when those two are at odds?

Right up until about two minutes before our meeting on Wednesday, I knew that I really really wanted to quit. I could survive staying; but every fiber of my being wanted to quit. I mean every fiber down to my bones. Then, I got her message.

She couldn't make our meeting because of a sick child, so she left a message on my voice mail at work. "It's really really important that we meet about this," she repeated, including the repeated "really." "We need to discuss the obligations and responsibilities of committing to the fellowship, and the consequences of leaving it."

Reasonable enough; but five days after I quit, and now she wants to discuss obligations, responsibilities, and consequences?

She didn't outline the consequences. I have no idea what they might be. I have no idea if she has any power to make these consequences happen. "Consequences" has an unknown value. Another unknown value is the extent of provincialism at this college. This could be one of those places where someone could win a Nobel Peace Prize but still be shot at home because they were part of the wrong faction in local politics. This provincialism could also be different from campus to campus, administrator to administrator, and person to person. Experience made me choose to err on the side of caution.

I may not have known the extent of "consequences" or levels of provincialism, but I did know that she was willing to pursue them in order to keep me in this fellowship. You see, she had a problem, and that problem was willing to go away quietly while also taking the blame upon itself; but she still seemed willing to pursue consequences for that quietly retreating, self-blaming problem.

In other words, this meant so much more to her than it did to me.

I was going to lose whether I stayed or left. Heck, I had already lost. I just had to gauge the level of damage, to decide which was less of a loss. Staying was less of a loss.

Then, things got weird.

I told her that I would stay, and she went back to her "opportunity for growth" and "learning to use the appropriate language in the appropriate setting" talking points. Seriously, she used the same phrases and same tactics as she had in our other conversations.

"Look," I said to her, "I cannot promise to change as much as you need me to, in the amount of time that you need me to. I cannot promise results."

This distressed her. "Can you at least promise to try really really hard?" she asked, almost begging.

"This is how I am and this is how I've always been," I said. "I can promise to try, but I still can't promise results."

At that point, she said that I should go to her with any problems that I have before I mention them to anyone else. She would then determine if those problems could be discussed openly, and she would determine the language that I could use in discussing them. She would also helpfully send me links to professional development courses on expression in professional and online environments. I am not making this up, and I'm not exaggerating (I don't think!).

You would think that I would become incensed. That I would perhaps want to demonstrate just how "unprofessional" and "inappropriate" and "strong" my language could become if I put my mind to it. That I would want to show her that she hadn't seen anything yet. That I would become tempted to exhibit my considerable skills in profanity since I was being condemned for my language anyway. That I would hang up on her, or inform her that some "other people" might consider her plan an infringement on free speech or classify it as censorship. You would think.

Instead, I laughed. Not out loud, but to myself.

Then, I felt myself split, and half of myself rise up, turn around and look at the other half. That floating half said, "promise her anything, it doesn't matter."

"Promise to bring her all of your problems," I told myself. "Promise to turn to her for guidance in expression. Promise to change. Promise the desired results. Promise her whatever she wants. Then, do what you are going to do."

"What you are going to do is not invest yourself," I told myself. "You are going to show up for the seminars. You are going to do your project and make your presentation. You are going to grin and nod and fly under the radar. You are going to have the appearance of having no problems because you won't have any. You won't invest yourself any more than necessary."

"Let her believe that you have no problems," I told myself. "Let her believe that you are reformed. Let her think that she was the cause of the reform. Let her be proud of you because you are a testament to her managerial skills.

"This all matters to her, so let her think she has it," I told myself. "None of it matters to you, so save your energy and put it elsewhere."

That's what I told myself, and I laughed.

I kept laughing, too, when later that evening one of the other fellows caught up on his e-mail, read my apology, and issued his own statement. He defended my right to an opinion and pointed out the hypocrisy of a seminar about social justice refusing to hear criticism from one of its participants. He had nothing to gain from this, and could easily have been lumped with me as a "trouble maker." I was humbled at his support.

The coordinator went into high panic. No sooner had I read his message than hers dropped into my inbox. She had to reassure everyone that I was not leaving, the fellowship program was not threatened (quite a different tale than she told me), and that we should all remember who might be listening when we aired our opinions in an online forum or hit "rely all" to an e-mail. She noted that she had excluded administrators from her own message.

I about fell out of my chair laughing at that point.

Still, I approached the next meeting of the fellowship with some trepidation. Five people had shown me support, one of those publicly. That left nine more (I think I mistakenly numbered the fellows at 25 before) who could potentially be the ones whom I had insulted, disrespected, and intimidated.

I don't think I have been so popular in my life. Before the seminar began, the others came up to me, asking, "what happened? What did you say? Who complained?" I began to wonder if they thought I had called someone a stupid motherfucker to their face because they all clearly expected a juicy story. "That's all?" they asked, a bit disappointed, when I told them that they had read it all.

At my last count, over half of the fellows had approached me either in person on in e-mail to say that they had no problem with what I said, that they had agreed with me in some, if not all points, and that they thought my comments had contributed to the conversation, not destroyed it. One is a good friend of my chair, and she talked with him about the situation. He came to me today and told me that he was supportive.

So, wow! Who knew?

We have another meeting on Thursday, at which we are supposed to create the "ground rules" for the wiki that will replace the blog/discussion board that I had allegedly abused and defiled. I'm not sure what will happen or what I will discover.

Meanwhile, I have had to re-learn for the fifty-billionth time that a woman can be liked or she can speak with authority, she usually can't do both. I want to devote another blog post to this subject. For the moment, I will say that I was raised to be liked. That is, I was raised to ensure that everyone liked me at all times, which meant that most of my own desires, opinions, sense of self and self-preservation all had to be set aside in order to make people like me. That hollows a person out. Yet, I must sometimes speak with authority. I sometimes can't help but speak with authority, but I don't trust that in myself. In fact, I fear it. When those two impulses conflict -- to speak with authority and to try to be liked -- I become disturbed.

I have also had reinforced my theory that high school is actually a very good training ground for life because so many people continue to behave as if they are in high school for decades after graduation.

Finally -- for now -- I am amazed at how many people have been through similar or worse and more blatant experiences and how this has engendered sympathy in so many. I feel sympathy in return. I hate that so many people have had to go through this type of crap to recognize it, but I'm glad that they recognize it and rebel rather than accept it and willingly comply.

There is probably more to wring out of this, but not right now. This is enough for the moment.