The Danger of Bottling-Up Our Bed-Shitting Tendencies
What do we do when we know deep down we are something we don’t want to be, a bed-shitter for example, and we want to hide this fact from others and ourselves? Ironically enough, we rely on bullshit. But all the ploys we use to cover up the embarrassment and humiliation resulting from our shitting the bed only make our condition worse. In other words, the more we try to bottle up our bed-shitting tendencies the more likely we are to shit the bed.
I’m still a bed-shitter. Just a few months ago, I bought a CD burner for my Apple computer. I know a couple, Dave and Amy, whom I don’t see much because they live several hundred miles away. I used to burn them CD mixes, which they liked very much, but I had stopped doing it for several years. Then I got a new computer, a new CD burner, and noticed I had accumulated a lot of music on iTunes. I thought I’d make them the perfect CD mix, and I sent it to them. Then I sent another, and another, and another. I would have stopped at a half dozen, but then I realized that some were defective. The cheap CD burner I had purchased was making the last 5 songs have skips on them. I made duplicates at a slower burning speed and sent them to Dave and Amy as well. All in all, I think I sent them about a dozen CDs over a two-week period. After being inundated with these CDs, Amy sent me a text: “What’s going on, dude? Are you planning on leaving Planet Earth?” And then another text: “Dave says you’ve gone crazy.”
I realized in that moment that I had shit the bed. The burning of the CDs was about loneliness, showing off my amazing musical tastes, and reaching out for connection. I realized that what I had done was rude and selfish, burdening friends with the responsibility of listening to several hours of music. I realized that what I had done was not a nice thing to do at all. It was creepy. It was an asshole move: To make people CDs is to oblige them to listen to your music. It is an attempt to control others. People who want to control others at this level are out of control. They are people who shit the bed.
It occurred to me that my overwhelming Dave and Amy with all those CDs must have been as joyful for them as receiving a barrage of threatening letters from a sociopathic stalker.
Realizing what I had done, I went into a deep depression. I was overcome by shame. I feared my friendship with Dave and Amy, one that is thirty-five years old, may have been jeopardized. At one point I thought I should explain myself to Dave and Amy: how my new CD burner was making defective CDs with skips, and that I should have given the CDs a trial listen before sending them off and making duplicates of them, but these explanations sounded lame, so I did nothing. I haven’t sent them a CD since. I don’t want them to think a madman is stalking them.
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