Relevance
You’re in the car. You’re riding in the car with your father, breezing down the highway. You’re talking. About everything you can think of, really, which is mostly your insecurities, because they’ve been consuming you lately. With school finished for the year, and no friends living nearby, you have far too much time to think, which has never been a good thing for you.
So you’ve been trying to figure out the reasons behind all your nervous habits and all your fears, because understanding a thing is the first step to being able to control it. Which is why you’re telling your dad about how you want to know everything people are thinking, want them to always just tell you upfront so that you don’t worry about it anymore. How you want to learn how to act differently around different people, so you don’t annoy them, or worse, bore them, by going on and on about something they don’t give a damn about.
And you’re starting to panic. You feel claustrophobic, which you’ve only felt once or twice before in your life. You push the sunroof back so you can see the sky, even though you don’t think it will help. You’re taking desperate gulps of air around a growing lump in your throat, but it doesn’t do anything for you. You can’t feel it, the air passing through your windpipe and filling your lunges is completely insubstantial, and so you close your eyes because you are not crying.
Your dad is talking to you. He’s giving you advice, offering you comfort, and everything he says makes such sense. But that’s not particularly helpful or calming, either, because you don’t think you’ll be able to use a word of it. Because no matter what your rational mind says, no matter what it tries to make the rest of you believe, there’s this part of you that won’t. There’s something in you that’s all physical, something low and deep inside, that’s all muscle and bone and blood and not a single conscious thought, and It's wrapped tight around your spine. It keeps you from doing the things your mind wants, the things your mind knows make sense.
It’s this thing in your gut that’s all defective instinct that keeps reminding you of what you can’t do. It keeps telling you you’re paralyzed by fear, that some parts of your psyche just don’t function properly and can’t learn. It is the reason you only have two settings with people: avoid at all costs, or form a life-long bond. It is the reason you tell nearly everyone nearly everything about you, no matter how many times your mind says that it’s an obnoxious habit that no one likes.
You like your mind more than It. Unfortunately, It seems to have control over your motor cortex, your respiratory and cardiovascular systems, and most of all, your subconscious. You want the rationality, the objectivity, the logic of your mind, but you also want to be taller. Some of it is just in your biology, and maybe you never had a choice.
And you don’t always want sheer logic. You also want wit, and cynicism, and eloquence. These aren’t necessarily the hallmarks of a dry, rational mind. You want to be bold. You want to confidently toss out startling honesty in your every sentence, and force people to pause and take notice and say something that matters, instead of the same damn meaningless small talk that you always get. Instead of quietly, nervously agonizing over what they actually think they mean by what they’ve said, you want to tell them, unflinchingly, that you think what they’ve said is crap, that you doubt they’ve really put any thought into it at all. You want to push them until they push back, and it actually starts to matter, and you don't want to be afraid of it anymore. You want this, desperately, and you hate yourself for not achieving it, for being such a coward.
These are the things flying through your head, twisting in your gut, and knotting your throat up. These are the reason that you aren’t really heeding your father’s words, and that the response you give is only for the sake of offering him hope, and leaving you with none, because this has been utterly meaningless.