Rambling: I don't want to talk about it
Ramble
"I don't want to talk about it." An ironic sentiment coming from me. Goodtexan can tell you, I talk and I talk - in conversation, I dissect a thought - I jump back to a thread left unexplored 10 minutes ago and link it up to the current thread. I have this multilayered outline that blossoms to life in conversation. And the outline is living - it changes and adapts as the others in a conversation say their piece.
A good conversation to me, is like good sex to many other people.
To me, conversation, or following a thought verbally, (or as some would say, with some justification - rambling) is like this picture of an ice cube.
That two dimensional image of an ice cube. Cause I don't, I never have seen anything in three dimensions. I'm aware of three dimensions, thanks to the sense of touch - but I don't know, I can never understand three dimensions in the sense of sight. (Nor sound, but that was not since birth, so we'll just bypass that here.)
I'm not blind, but I'm not sighted like the rest of humanity. I'm handicapped, or differently-abled if you want to be pc about it. My thoughts, my ability to reason race through a complex outline like a picture of an ice cube. I fear my intelligence and creativity and brain function are - limited because I can't take them to the next dimension - because I don't understand it.
What would I be, what would I be like, if I could think not via a living changing kind of outline, but if I could attach thoughts and threads of thoughts to a crystalline structure? For that matter what the hell is a crystalline structure. I can feel more than two dimensions, but in many everyday ways - I'm like the blind person who knows there are rainbows, but can only wish they could experience one.
Still, that is all digression. The point is that I talk. I talk *alot*.
I don't want to talk about it.
Recently, I noted in this journal that something bad was going on in my life. I define bad as something that makes me want to cry. And several people let me know that they were available to talk about it, or called me to talk about it.
I appreciated that. Very much so.
But, I don't want to talk about it.
I never want to talk about bad things. It's hard to get me to stop talking about everything else - about things that make me angry, about things that make me excited, about things that make me joyful, about love, about hate, about indifference... But if it is a sad thing, or something that I am helpless to affect - I don't want to talk about it.
Goodtexan may be the exception that proves the rule - I will and do talk about those things with him - but not easily, usually under some loving pressure. Because he knows I need to say something, or figure something out in my best way of doing so - through conversation. But even with him, usually, in ordinary circumstances, what I want and what I need is just to let him know and have him recognize the sad thing.
I work through these sad, hard, helpless things in silence. It's not denial, it's not repression, I do work through them - it's just silent. Unfortunately for goodtexan, it's only silent when they are real time, in the present. Once the worst of it is past, he has to go through the experience of my endless rambling conversation. (well, rambling to him - a living outline to me ;-))
I never realized this before. And it probably says a whole lot about me and my relationships with others. I'm a good (some thing great) listener - but truly, when it is listening to someone talk about something bad - I sit there in a state of (unspoken) 'otherness'. Part of me is shocked, amazed, embarrassed, alienated, something like a combination of those anyway, that this person I'm listening to could ever TALK about such things.
Oh, I can see where and how I got this way through my heritage - NOTHING unpleasant was ever openly talked about in my family. (Now taking passive aggressive pot shots at unpleasant things/people/situations - that was fair game.) But I think it's more than that. Sad things, helpless situations, things that cause the feeling that I want to cry: I just never figured out how talking about them would help. No, more than that, talking about them only makes me feel worse. Horrible in fact.
Unless you are goodtexan, you won't find me crying on your shoulder. I don't want to talk about it. Whatever awful, sad, helpless thing might be happening in my life, I'm probably going to tell my friends it is there, and then want at most limited mention of it, unless I bring it up. And if I do, it will be at the other end of the problem, when it's gone, resolved, or I've become resigned to it in a healthy manner.
And, please don't take it personally. I don't even want to cry on goodtexan's shoulder - just sometimes I have to.
And yes, I thank the heavens every day, probably every waking hour of every day, that I found him. Cause I can't imagine anyone else would ever put up with my shit. And because that's a visa versa situation - ( I don't even think his shit is shit!)