semantic precision
For better or for worse, I have always been praised for being articulate. My own belief in this capacity of mine has dulled over time, as brain injury, trauma, and late-late-stage capitalism have left me in a near-constant state of confusion. The inside of my skull is an incredibly loud place to be —devoid of imagery; cluttered with words and phrases.
Imagine you open a used bag of magnetic poetry pieces. You don’t know what you’ve ended up with, or what words might be in there. It could be the standard magnetic poetry set, or maybe you ended up with a mix of Halloween-themed and NASCAR-themed pieces. Complete luck of the draw. You are told to shake the bag, take out twenty words at random, and use them to clearly communicate an idea. Any idea, as long as the meaning is clear.
That is often what it feels like to be inside of my head.
Whether or not this has anything to do with being articulate, I can tell you that despite the chaotic internal landscape, since sometime in my early 20s, I have put an incredible amount of effort into semantic precision. I have approached this practice while directing my attention and energy away from the condescending white supremacist glorification of the written word, and towards the truth and legacy of storytelling.
The Four Agreements, the work of Don Miguel Ruiz, first inspired this effort with the first of the four agreements he describes in his “practical guide to personal freedom…”
Be Impeccable With Your Word
Ruiz breaks down the word “impeccable” to mean without sin, and defines a sin as anything you do which goes against yourself. I forget how old I was the first time I read this, but it immediately struck me.
What would it mean for me to speak and write without sin? I would soon find life much more difficult, in the way that so often happens when you learn something that you cannot unlearn. The process of selecting my words became laborious. In the times that I lost my intentionality, and I spewed the unfiltered clutter of my mind out of my mouth or onto a page, I was incredibly hard on myself. It wouldn’t take long to realize that perfectionism in this practice was not to be entertained. However, I still consider this root inspiration often, and allow it to inform my practice of semantic precision for the sake of miscommunication mitigation. I believe that clear is kind, and I know the intensity that surfaces in my body in the absence of clarity.
The way that highly effective emotionally manipulative people are able to twist meaning is nothing short of an art form. In many ways, it is the scientific art of dissecting semantic precision.
Sometimes it felt as if M would slice each word I chose, put its semantic cross-section under a microscope lens, and search in a context-less vacuum for anything that could be twisted in meaning.
A large part of what drove my fear of M, even when we were together, was their predisposition to this artistic medium, particularly in the realm of spoken word. As I have described, there was a constant feeling of urgency when I was in their presence, particularly if we were in dialogue. I believe that at least some portion of this urgency was calculated — introduced to rush communication and create space for them between words to squeeze the scalpel in.
A scalpel, ironically, is typically wielded with precision. Theirs, however, was used as leverage to pry, and jab; pry, and jab. Unfortunately, I had offered them a blueprint to my psychic anatomy early in our relationship, as I built intimacy with them as my partner. And so, despite their lack of precision, they knew exactly where to wedge doubt. They knew exactly how to break me.