A peripatetic list of words I've looked up #10.

metonymy — a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (as “crown” in “lands belonging to the crown”).

metalepsis — a figure of speech consisting in the substitution by metonymy of one figurative sense for another.

At least according to Merriam-Webster.

I first found these, I believe, in Joseph Culler’s On Deconstruction, in which he defines metalepsis slightly differently: “the substitution of cause for effect”. Culler was, it seems, writing of a rhetorical strategy, though I recorded the definition precisely as “the substitution of cause for effect” and eventually forgot that the word wasn’t really meant to apply outside the hermetic world of academia.

What the world really needs is a good word that describes the ways we do this in daily life: something to describe the psychological & spiritual metalepsis which the inevitable result of living a life in which it is impossible to be totally certain that other people are what they say or say what they mean or any of that stuff — I’m not talking about paranoia, but something closer to solipsism; when living entirely in one’s own head, it can be easy to assume that one’s own existence is, in fact, the ultimate point at which all actions begin — both yours, and those of others.

I get caught up in situations like this with women fairly regularly. I suppose that the difficulty, to some degree, is my tendency to get caught up with women who are already seeing other people: I sleep with one of these women, her relationship goes into freefall, I assume that I am the cause of the relationship freefall — though, in reality, I’m not the disease, I’m the symptom. Not the cause. The effect.

Why does this happen? Feh — let’s take that out of the passive voice. Why do I do this? Well, there’s something about the allure of the unavailable, certainly. And the psychological process is, I think, a natural result of being a loner and a bit of a narcissist, so I end up in these feedback loops in which I convince myself that I am as at the center of someone else’s thoughts as they are at the center of mine. But why do I habitually get involved with, to be artless about it, girls who have boyfriends? Habitually? Is it possible that there’s part of me that likes pining over someone unavailable, and the subsequent heartbreak when they break it off with their significant others but don’t fall into my arms? It’s happened enough that you might think so.

I can tell you form very recent experience that it doesn’t feel good. There’s nothing romantic about finding out that someone doesn’t like you as much as you like them. There’s nothing rewarding, or generative, or pretty, about it. It’s a soul-crushing experience, and depending on how hard to fell for the other person, it can take a very long time to recover from. You can find yourself unshaven, long-haired, skin cracked because you’re taking four showers a day*, thinner you ought to be, your lungs broken from cigarettes, your eyes swollen with booze, alienating your friends, missing out on other possible lovers, and so on and so forth.

* For in the shower, nobody can find you. They’re not even allowed to look.

I think I do it, however, because it keeps me alone, and there’s something I like about being alone. Sure, it’s boring, but it’s also private. Nobody around to bother you. I don’t like to be bothered. Could it be that my bad romantic decisions come from the same place in my psyche that drives me to ignore phone calls and spend entire weekends reading? I never really thought about it like that before, I suspect it’s true.