{"id":104,"date":"2023-04-08T22:48:13","date_gmt":"2023-04-08T14:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ekaterinexia.com\/?p=104"},"modified":"2023-04-09T21:20:37","modified_gmt":"2023-04-09T13:20:37","slug":"the-fallacy-of-like-and-alike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ekaterinexia.com\/?p=104","title":{"rendered":"The fallacy of like and alike"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I woke up at 5:48 this morning, and then was unable to go back to sleep.
For one, because the upstairs had started hammering at something. At first decisive and loud, shifting to an almost apologetic hesitancy when I imagine the thing refused to be politely hammered into place with a quickness as they expected, then briefly back to \u201comg just be hammered and done\u201d loudness before a flurry of fainter clunk-clink-clink-clunks.
For two, and perhaps more this than the former, I\u2019d suddenly lit upon what exactly I am looking for in partnership. Romantic or otherwise.
It\u2019s really too bad \u201cI am thirty-seven, going on thirty-eight\u201d doesn\u2019t fit as well into that well-known song. It\u2019s that extra syllable with the seven, y\u2019see. \u201cI am thirty-six, going on thirty-seven\u201d can almost just be forced into the melody without too much strain.
Anyway.
I have said repeatedly how I wished someone had told me decades earlier how skinfolk ain\u2019t kinfolk and how that extended to other sorts of \u201clike\u201d.
It\u2019s a complicated matter when you\u2019re an immigrant, I think. Or perhaps it\u2019s the brand of immigrant my parents\u2019 generation happened to be.
The sort of immigrant who believed they had to be the absolute best they could be, at everything, because they were \u201cthe face of their country\u201d. All of us, unpaid and exploited ambassadors set adrift in a hostile land.
The sort who clung to their \u201clike\u201d because, again, of that hostility. Where you had to believe there was a safe harbor in that \u201clike\u201d because to believe otherwise was possibly the start of a descent into abject despair.
When you\u2019ve had it drummed into your brain since ever that your safety was in \u201clike and alike\u201d; when you would like to say kindness over all but you\u2019ve been fooled too many times by insincere niceness covering up a deep well of bigotry\u2026
I don\u2019t know; perhaps I am trying to give myself an excuse for why it took me so long to distill everything down to the simplest \u201cI would like to be with someone who enjoys me and my company and who would like to experience life alongside me\u201d.
Someone who is happy to have fun, to go out and see the world, but who is also happy to delve into the fullness of life within the home and silence.
It\u2019s just, more questions, y\u2019know?
Do you really value intelligence that much, or is it that you associate more intelligence with either less bigotry or a better facade for their prejudices? Or perhaps just someone who is better at gaslighting you?
Do you really need to be with someone who shares all your interests, or is it because you need that shared topic of conversation or else you have nothing to talk about?
Do you really enjoy that person\u2019s cutting wit and scathing quips, or is it because all that was directed at a shared enemy and you thought that would forever be the case?
Do you really disdain the \u201cbasic mundaneness\u201d of a gentle and considerate person, or are you just traumatized by all the time you thought someone liked you but actually didn\u2019t? Possibly loathed you in truth, but you didn\u2019t guess at an inkling until far too late?
gestures vaguely at the internets<\/em>
It\u2019s 2023 and everyone can be at everyone else\u2019s throats at the slightest hint of them \u201cnot doing x right\u201d.
Whether x is queerness or it\u2019s disability or it\u2019s how we envision the revolution or how we do our part for the environment (stop buying into capitalism blaming us for global warming when military expenditures drive a hella lot more than your sometimes use of a plastic bag btw) or or or.
But we\u2019ve been divided and conquered and continue to press that colonization upon each other because for some reason it is too hard to hate Bezos or Musk or all the celebrity CEOs we wish we were.
I don\u2019t have answers here, sorry.
Near thirty-eight years in and I still don\u2019t know how to tell if someone really likes me or when they only like the idea of me that is convenient to what they want.
But it\u2019s nice to have all the floating bits of notions coalesce, regardless.
I like strolling around Ikea, just as I love ducking into groceries when I go traveling, just as I am always a soft touch for a cute oversized mug, just as I adored going to a different farmer\u2019s market every day of the week when I lived in Boston, just as I was happy to drive hours up to Ogunquit Beach every weekend of the summer as long as water temperatures were barely tolerable, just as\u2026
All those things, scattered like stars across the night sky, and you think them just stars.
Until someone sees a constellation in you, and names you their love, and decides that their night sky isn\u2019t complete without your stars in it.
They say, find someone who knows how to go through life to go through life with, and yes.
A ten thousand times yes.
Because how can you claim to know, when you\u2019re unable to see the world that is born in a soap bubble, brilliant and precious for those brief seconds before it is no more?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I woke up at 5:48 this morning, and then was unable to go back to sleep.For one, because the upstairs had started hammering at something. At first decisive and loud, shifting to an almost apologetic hesitancy when I imagine the thing refused to be politely hammered into place with a quickness as they expected, then… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ub_ctt_via":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Katja","author_link":"https:\/\/www.ekaterinexia.com\/?author=1"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ekaterinexia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ekaterinexia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ekaterinexia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ekaterinexia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ekaterinexia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ekaterinexia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105,"href":"https:\/\/www.ekaterinexia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions\/105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ekaterinexia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ekaterinexia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ekaterinexia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}