i am wish-to-talk-but-have-no-beginning. oh-my, oh-my, who ate my pie. i am at the top of a mountain, about to fall downhill. it is a day for appreciation and resentment. i feel right now that humans are likable and nice and i want to play with them... but i am no-verbal and slow-verbal and hi-gerbil today.
i can't talk properly to people i like. people in a specific function, are easy-- like store clerks & librarians. polite voice, smile, smile, fake as needed. but chit-chat is so much harder with people i do not hate. feels like lying. and i hate lying. so mostly i am awkward and silent and "quiet."
this is because i don't want to talk about the weather or trade sarcastic insults back and forth. one good thing about garret is that i don't feel embarrassed saying whatever pops into my head, but he doesn't really respond in kind. he just tolerates....
Me: HI! pounce. meow. (accompanied by an actual pounce.)
G: Hi.
Me: make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold! that has been stuck in my head for three days, it keeps singing over and over and i always hated it. we had to sing that in Brownies in 3rd grade, which is like Girl Scouts, but smaller, and i guess more tasty and impish, but we still had to sell cookies, not brownies. Don't you think those are perfectly stupid lyrics? I asked the grown-up which was which. She said the old ones were gold, but i don't think that makes sense. Seems like old goes more with sliver, because that gets tarnish on it if you neglect it, and the song is about not forgetting the old friends you already have. And if BOTH are your friends, then they ought to both be the same thing. One shouldn't be more valuable than the other, and silver can't ever become gold. So no matter how long the new friend stays around, even after 20 years they would just be a chunk of silver, so that's dumb. New friends can become old, so i always thought the line ought to be one's a diamond and the other coal... because coal is valuable and it can become a diamond.
G: i see.
Except, I don't know that he does. I think he just likes to say "i see" a lot. And i know i should be grateful i have someone to pounce on and tell what's on my mind... but i wish i had someone who could pick up the thread of conversation and knot it.
And most of the stuff running through my head is stuff like that-- disjointed, not exactly connected to anything else. The game i like is to say all the random stuff i am thinking, and have the other person say stuff, and then connect things.
I don't know how to play "regular conversation."
1 comment:
I'm very good at faking conversation, except that it exhausts me because i'm going against my nature.
I present my thoughts like i'm describing a scene in great detail, let me finish before you describe yours.
Paint the whole picture, and i feel satisfied. I get more out of it than you will. And then you (other person) speak, but you paint like...two or three little dabs on the canvas, and i'm like 'ummm...okay...nice try, good for you!'
'Oh, sorry, i don't mean to be condescending, i guess we just have different interests'
So in a conversation i spend my efforts trying to get you to paint your picture for me to understand.
That's the autarky speaking. I'm always doing it, but i'm so not used to openly displaying it.
It's like i have my fun, and then make a financial report to my supervisor.
Normal talk is a mis-giving. I give my little gift, a picture of understanding, and you say 'uhuh, i don't get it.'
Then you give me something i can't use like 'my local sport team is doing well...'
That's why i end up explaining all the time to those who will tolerate and even follow me. I become the artist and the art-critic 'see the use of lines here? feel the indentation? this part is so significant!'
At the same time there's a satisfaction in *not* being understood, but nevertheless admired and accepted. "I don't understand, but continue the research!"
And they know i will anyway, because it's so important to me. It's not just answers, it's the way i think and the way my mind works. It surely must be how a gymnast, or a dancer feels at the height of their performance.
But that's only in the fields that interest me. And i suppose i've moved towards only things that interest me, and i've accepted that nobody else is interested. I'm the only one who can feel the universe spinning in my mind, isn't that enough.
I'm lucky to have never been taught this was wrong. I've always felt it was my greatest gift. Not a talent, a real gift that's been given me, something i can enjoy, a game to play because i don't feel just naturally happy like the other children - and i'm not good at sports :)
The height of happiness is to be myself, and finding others with some similarity is great fortune.
I would have thought silver was the old friends, the ones you make when you don't know yourself as well. When you learn to be yourself, become stronger, form boundaries and develop your virtues, then the only new friends you make are gold.
I wrote the beginning of a story about a sense-addict - a man addicted to making sense of things. That's what i see in your words - trying to make sense, when others don't see a problem. Trying to understand and *put right* a saying created by someone else and repeated without question, not because it's true, but...why?
"The game i like is to say all the random stuff i am thinking, and have the other person say stuff, and then connect things."
My game is a little different. Because i'm trying to understand something, i'll 'think aloud' (because it's permitted!) and build it up into the perfect structure of truth and beauty.
The other (trusted) person becomes
part-audience, part-voice-in-my-head, giving feedback and contributing in small ways. Thus, i can only bear to do this with people on a similar wavelength, who will help me on my journey, won't sabotage or demand the spotlight. Colaborateurs, essentially.
To these people, i *enjoy* explaining the brilliance of the thoughts i've just constructed. To them it will never shine as brightly, but they understand to some degree what i'm trying to do. Make sense. work it out.
"Regular conversation" requires so little effort, i wonder why people bother.
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