The Quantum Physics of Accountability: Why Some People Refuse to Collapse the Waveform
By Michael Kelman Portney
Some truths don’t land softly. They don’t whisper. They don’t ask for permission. They just are. But for some people, even the most obvious realities hover like uncollapsed waveforms—indeterminate, suspended, untouchable.
Why?
Because the second you acknowledge a truth, it becomes real. It settles. It materializes into consequence.
This is the quantum physics of accountability.
Superposition and Denial: The Emotional Schrödinger's Cat
In quantum mechanics, a particle exists in all possible states until observed. It's both here and there, alive and dead, true and false. Sound familiar?
That's what denial is. A psychological superposition. A refusal to observe the truth, because the moment you do, the fantasy dies.
So they keep it floating: maybe you’re unstable, maybe you’re faking it, maybe you're exaggerating.
But maybe not.
And so long as they don’t look directly at the truth, it doesn’t have to exist. They never collapse the waveform—because collapsing it means taking responsibility.
The most devastating feature of this tactic is that it requires no evidence, no honesty, no engagement. It weaponizes passivity. To avoid confronting something painful, all they have to do is nothing.
Collapse Demands Consequence
You say: "This happened." They say: "We can't be sure."
You show the data, the diagnosis, the scars. They squint at it like a blurry old Polaroid.
Because if they admit it's real? If they collapse the waveform?
Then someone has to be wrong.
Then someone has to be sorry.
Then someone has to change.
Much easier to keep it quantum.
The longer a person or a group refuses to acknowledge a truth, the more they become emotionally invested in the fantasy. It doesn’t matter if the real version is healthier, more accurate, more human. It only matters that it doesn’t upset the control system.
So they preserve ambiguity like it’s a sacred text. They will build whole temples of silence just to avoid a single sentence: I see you. I was wrong.
Reality is Dangerous to the Narrator
See, in family systems, power often comes from narrative control. If you define the story, you control the roles. The moment your reality solidifies into something independent, coherent, and visible to others?
You're no longer the character they wrote. You're the witness.
So what do they do?
They stall. They dodge. They hit you with gaslight smog grenades like:
"You're being dramatic."
"Why are you bringing that up again?"
"You're impossible to talk to."
These aren't conversation enders. They're waveform preservatives.
By keeping you in the role of the unreliable narrator, they maintain their delusions. By keeping everything in flux, they get to continue as they always have. No edits. No confrontations. No mirrors.
And when you push? When you name it? They make you the threat. Not because you’re dangerous—but because you’re disrupting the system they need to stay intact.
The Currency of Uncertainty
If they can keep you in a state of doubt—about your memory, your diagnosis, your sanity, your voice—then they never have to reckon with their own.
They trade in uncertainty. They bet on the emotional quantum foam of your exhaustion.
They'd rather you doubt yourself than risk confirming your truth. Because your truth might mean they have to do something they've never done:
Account. For. Themselves.
And accountability is expensive. It costs reputation. It costs ego. It might cost the illusion of a clean conscience.
So instead of facing that cost, they let ambiguity do the dirty work. You wander in circles while they pretend the maze doesn’t exist.
The Weaponization of the Unobserved
They let your pain hang in the air like a theory. They nod, sometimes. But they don’t name it. They don’t echo it. They don’t collapse it.
Because once a truth is spoken, it’s shared. Once it’s shared, it has weight.
And if they carry none of the weight? Then you carry all of it.
This is emotional gravity theft. It’s a kind of psychic theft of authorship.
If they can keep the event or the diagnosis or the betrayal in a liminal zone, then they’re not the villain. They’re the skeptic. The bystander. The responsible one who "doesn’t jump to conclusions."
But it’s not skepticism. It’s strategic indecision.
Collapse Is a Choice—and a Threat
When you collapse the waveform on your own—when you say, "I’m autistic," or "That was abuse," or "I know what happened" — you become dangerous to people who needed you to stay hypothetical.
Your certainty triggers their dissonance. Your voice destabilizes their power.
You become radioactive. Not because you’re toxic, but because you emit a truth that burns holes in their paper-thin universe.
They’ll call you obsessed, angry, damaged. They’ll treat your clarity like a weapon, when in fact it’s a shield. You’re protecting yourself from erasure.
You Can't Force Collapse—But You Can Refuse to Float
Here’s the hard truth: you can’t force anyone to collapse a waveform they’re committed to avoiding. You can’t drag someone into clarity who depends on the fog to survive.
But you can collapse your own.
You can say:
"This is my truth."
"This is my boundary."
"This is what happened."
And you can stop waiting for co-signatures.
You can stop looping the evidence for the courtroom that never convenes.
You can say: "I observed it. I named it. That’s enough."
Let Them Hover. You Land.
They want to keep the narrative quantum forever.
Keep every role reversible.
Every sin deniable.
Every harm theoretical.
Let them.
While they float in superposition, you build mass. You root in reality. You stack proof, pain, power, and progress until you're undeniable. Until you have gravitational pull.
Until your truth doesn't need to be debated. Because it's standing. Breathing. Documented. Living.
Let them chase the safety of the maybe. You embrace the clarity of the was. Of the is. Of the I said so, and I stand by it.
You don’t need them to collapse with you. You only need to collapse for yourself.
The Quantum Ends With You
There is no peace in ambiguity. No love in permanent uncertainty. If someone refuses to observe the truth, they are refusing you.
So stop begging to be seen.
Look in the mirror. Say what happened.
Let the waveform collapse.
And walk out of the lab like it already has.
You are the observer now. You are the force of observation. You are the data that no longer needs debate.
And that’s how you reclaim your timeline.
Note: This essay uses metaphors from quantum physics as philosophical tools for emotional insight. For actual quantum mechanics, consult a physicist, like my dad. For gaslighting, denial, and accountability dodging, also see me dad— but if you don't want to be on the business end of manipulation, you want to break it down, collapse the wave, and reject garbage at the rim while wagging your finger like Dikembe Mutombo, you already know who to call.
