I have spent most of my life seeking certainty in whatever form I could find it. I was never one for the sciences, so I found my ‘truths’ in humanities-adjacent fields; psychoanalysis and continental philosophy weaved into something of a worldview, a way that I could ‘figure things out’ and find my footing in the presence of other people’s certainty that they had figured their things out. Because of this, I was always the one who knew what was ‘wrong’ with another person or who could explain someone’s ‘unusual’ behaviour with whatever theory came to my mind first. That need for certainty tended to express itself in a faint moralising, or by telling you whatever idea I felt you wanted to hear. It really didn’t matter; the point was to let you know that I’m the one who knows what’s up (with you). This position made me feel stable, I think, like I wasn’t just floating through space without a clue.
Problem is, whenever someone was frustrated with me, I flew into certainties just as quickly. Either they were a cruel narcissist or I was truly evil. But, when the stakes are that high, I’d find myself locked in an internal battle to prove the former, because how the hell was I supposed to live with being evil? For some reason, the idea that we might just be two people fumbling to articulate our needs frightened me more than the idea that one of us was ‘bad.’
I do not think I am alone in this defensively binary attempt to know what I am experiencing, either. I think whole institutions of knowledge are built on this desire to create a kind of totalising understanding of the world, and our place in it. Friends don’t only need to know exactly what’s going on in their lives; they’ll even tell me what’s going on in mine. I’ve left late-night bars with a completely new life plan, their certainty outweighing mine. Is that how advice works? One person’s certainty in their worldview outweighs the other’s, and so the second is compelled to trust the first? Is there nothing to be said for refusing to know?
On top of that, I’ve made a number of decisions I cannot tell you were absolutely right or absolutely wrong. They were both and neither and, I don’t know, man, life happens. But the harder I searched for certainty, the more convoluted and confused my world became. Or, to put it simply, the more panic attacks I had. I needed to know whether I was doing things right, so every twinge in my body became a sign of failure, which in turn would sow the seeds for the panic attack around the corner. Something’s wrong! Something’s wrong! acting as an internal soundtrack for years of my life, all because I couldn’t know, exactly, what was up.
The only thing that has eased this at all is trying to find some footing in not knowing: my life, the future, who you are or what’s right for you. I’ve come to wonder whether my attempts to know you, or myself, reduce us both to something ‘manageable’, which seems either violent or utterly banal. The moment I decide what’s up with you, I’ve stopped trying to understand you. That all being said, I still catch myself ‘figuring you out’ mid-sentence. But lately, when a friend says they’re exhausted, I try to just let them keep talking. My responses aren’t clever, and they don’t fix anything. But, I don’t know, man, maybe they don’t need to.
Written by Molly Fitz