Finding Out

Part 3 of a 6 part series

Hi! Welcome to The Night Shift, where just about anything is up for discussion. It’s about 2AM as I start this post.

For now, the neighborhood and the furkids are quiet. I have coffee.

Let’s get into it.

This is part of an ongoing series exploring the difference between confusion and being misled—and what it takes to recognize the difference.

Diving right on in..

Finding Out

There’s a moment, in situations like this (for me, it was in person debt collection investigation attempts; I'm not and was not the debtor), when folks keep asking you about things that you have limited (at best) knowledge of (or any knowledge at all), where things stop being vague.

Up until then, it’s a series of small inconsistencies.

A conversation that doesn’t quite add up. An answer that feels..partial. Information that goes in circles, but never quite lands.

Nothing that you can point to, and prove. Just enough to make you pause, yet not enough for you to act upon.

Then something shifts sideways..not dramatically, just enough so that bits start lining up in a way that they hadn’t before. Once you see that shift, you cannot un-see it.

In my case, that didn’t start with a confession..oh no..it started with an outside contact. People asking different questions this time.

At first, you’re given what could have been reasonable, if not especially detailed explanations. (At least I was)

You know, the kind of answers that are designed to settle things down without actually opening anything up.

For awhile, and perhaps longer than you should have, you accept that. (I did)

Because when something doesn’t make sense, most of us don’t immediately jump to, ‘I’m being misled’. We assume that there is context that we may have missed. We give folks the benefit of the doubt.

Here’s the problem with that, when clarity and up front communication isn’t being offered: You keep trying to problem solve for ‘Issue X’ instead of the real problem, which is ‘Issue Y’.

You adjust your expectations around explanations that were never intended to actually explain anything.

Eventually though, more information comes in. That information doesn't come all at once, or even neatly. But enough. Enough information to understand that the situation was different than what had been previously disclosed, and, enough information to understand that the reason you hadn’t been told sooner, or accurately informed, was not accidental.

That’s when something changes. Not when something happens, but when you realize what didn’t happen. What wasn’t said. What wasn’t said clearly. What was allowed to continue, unchecked, while you were not-so-merrily operating without the real picture. As I've said before, it was like being asked to solve Problem X, when ‘the issue’ was actually Problem Y.

That’s a whole different realization. Because confusion can be resolved with a conversation. But being given enough information to stay cooperative, but not enough to be fully informed..that’s a whole different kind of problem.

That’s not an information gap. That’s a decision. And one where, if you had been informed about Issue Y to begin with, a number of things could have been done differently to solve it before it got to the point of strangers asking me about it.

Once you realize that, you start looking at the whole thing in a different light.

At conversations that felt slightly off. At explanations that didn’t quite hold water. At the way certain explanations never got fully answered.

Not in that paranoid kind of way. With a more accurate lens.

There’s a particular kind of clarity that comes with finding out what the hell-o kitty is actually going on around you that you didn’t previously know about. It doesn’t feel clean or precise..it feels like more of a back-handed relief, as it answers questions that you had no idea you should have been asking yourself—’was I actually being told the truth?’

Once you have that answer, whether you like said answer or not, you have something solid to work with, even if it isn’t what you thought it was.

I can work with the truth. I cannot work with a version of reality that was curated for me, to benefit someone else.

For now, this is all. Stay tuned for Part 4.

Talk again soon,

Deb