I want you to know I’m not as inarticulate as you think I am. I just have trouble talking to people. Or around people. I’m thirty-one years old and I’m just starting to realize that I have this problem. That the common denominator of all the things that stress me out – at work, in class, in social settings – is talking to people. It’s not that I don’t like people. I love people. I find them fascinating. And inspiring. Some of them. Many of them intimidate me. Some of them make me wish I were something else, like a dolphin. But for the most part, I love people. I just wish I could talk to them.
When I try to talk to someone, or worse, join a discussion, the wheels of my brain start turning faster than my tongue will move.
Anyway I just think, and some thoughts are profound and some are just pointless. Like Britney Spears gossip. Why is that in there? I don’t need that disrupting some insight I’m having about human interaction and the fragmentation of our society? Why can't I get the insightful and witty thoughts out through my mouth. All that comes out is mumbled gibberish.
This has to be a recent development. I used to be a talker. I have trophies to prove it. In debate, oral interpretation, and oratory. I almost went to Nationals in Oratory. (Christ that’s nerdy, but it’s true. I was in the final round, I got a plaque, it was a proud moment. And bittersweet.) It’s only in recent years that the thought of having to ask a question about a project makes my palms sweat. I was a director, a stage manager for god’s sake. I could communicate clearly, lead a group. So what happened?
Theory 1: 21st century media have shorted out my brain. I can no longer think in a linear fashion. Every thought is punctuated by a footnote, a hyperlink, a picture in a picture. The news crawl. There’s something neurological going on that makes my brain move faster than my mouth.
Theory 2: Smoking weed has shorted out my brain. I’m like the melty girl with the talking dog in the anti-drug commercials. Or the stoner comedy character who forgot to grow up. Marijuana has, as promised in Reefer Madness, damaged my brain and made me anti-social.
Theory 3: Anti-depressants have shorted out my brain. I’ve been on them since I was 18. I’ve tried to stop taking them a few times, but each time my whole life fell apart and I went back on. I asked my psychiatrist why they call these drugs non-addictive when the results of not taking them look a so much like withdrawal. He said the difference is that people don’t resort to anti-social behavior to get the anti-depressants. He has a point, but it doesn’t rule out the possibility that the drugs have fried my brain. .
Theory 4: Everybody feels socially awkward. Possibly for one of these reasons. Possibly for other reasons. But it’s perfectly normal
Theory 5: High school forensics trophies aside, I have always been this way. My boyfriend has told me straight out that I have the same social awkwardness as my father. I’m afraid he’s right. That would explain so many things.
And yet: my father has many interesting friends. They are all wonderful people, an eclectic mix of thinkers and artists and musicians and teachers. When I flew home for his 60th birthday party, I boasted that all of the interesting people in St. Louis would be there. I’ve always wanted to have friends like his. Some days, when I make connections between people, introduce interesting friends to each other, I feel like it could happen.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Ordinary
My biggest fear is that I am ordinary. Christ, even in that so-called confession I sound banal. Who isn’t afraid of being ordinary? Exciting, interesting people, that’s who. It’s all of us boring people who sit around worrying about how boring we are.
I was supposed to be, well, extraordinary. Not even supposed to be, but I WAS. An extraordinary child, and extraordinary student. I had extraordinary hair. I have this vague memory of a song sung by the land of make-believe puppets on Mr. Rogers that made use of the word play of ordinary / extra ordinary / extraordinary. Even as a pre-schooler I loved the word play but apparently failed to absorb the message.
For awhile, all I wanted to be was ordinary. When I was about twelve, I came home and announced that I didn’t want to get A’s anymore, that I wanted to get C’s like everyone else. My parents were mortified and probably couldn’t agree on whether I’d benefit more from pyschotherapy or from boarding school. But I was serious. I was tired of the relentless teasing, of being different. Of being accused of being a goody two shoes and having teachers like me no matter what I did. At heart, I was less of a goody two shoes than half the people accusing me, but I wasn’t cool enough for anyone to care.
I managed it for awhile. Nothing horrendous enough to make a good story, but I did spend junior high with a tough crowd. Got a few C’s and a D. Became sexually rebellious. But the burnouts I idolized were pretty boring. And they were assholes, too. They found stupid gross out racist dead baby jokes amusing but they didn’t get the shaggy dog stories I’d learned from my father. They didn’t get New Yorker cartoons, which I’d been giggling at since I taught myself to read. They didn’t even get the Matt Groening comics that I got in trouble for bringing to class. So I went back to my nerdy friends and lived happily ever after.
Except that twenty years later, I’m just another grown up nerd. Otherwise known as gainfully employed. Everyone I know has the same stories. Some people even have some gruesome family drama thrown in; the worst thing that happened in my house was cartoon violence. My father liked to threaten my mother with a water gun. She might have preferred a real one, which as a pacifist he’d be unlikely to actually fire—there was nothing she hated more than water on her face. She never learned to swim and showered with a washcloth over her eyes. The kind of details that are weird enough to be extraordinarily normal.
In my twenties, I thought I had some interesting stories to tell. Before I realized that every middle class smarty pants went backpacking in Europe and felt transformed by it and had crazy sexual adventures with itinerant musicians. Hell, nowadays kids backpack through southeast asia and Africa and roll their eyes at how people once thought Europe was eye-opening. Boring.
Tattoos? Grandmas compliment mine and tell me about the ones they just got. Piercings? The ones I still have look ridiculous on my flabby body. Shaved head? It grew back. Polyamory? Not what it was cracked up to be. Being really fucking smart? If I were really as fucking smart as I thought I was, I’d have done something extraordinary by now. I’m only smart enough that no one wants to play board games with me, and that I'm constantly aggravated by people who aren’t so smart--but not smart enough to write a novel or invent something useful or win a nobel prize. I can’t even win an ignoble prize. The best I do is the occasional random drawing at the office Christmas party.
Still, maybe there’s hope. Maybe I’ll become famous for being ordinary, be an inspiration to ordinary people everywh—shit! Another story that sounds way too familiar.
I was supposed to be, well, extraordinary. Not even supposed to be, but I WAS. An extraordinary child, and extraordinary student. I had extraordinary hair. I have this vague memory of a song sung by the land of make-believe puppets on Mr. Rogers that made use of the word play of ordinary / extra ordinary / extraordinary. Even as a pre-schooler I loved the word play but apparently failed to absorb the message.
For awhile, all I wanted to be was ordinary. When I was about twelve, I came home and announced that I didn’t want to get A’s anymore, that I wanted to get C’s like everyone else. My parents were mortified and probably couldn’t agree on whether I’d benefit more from pyschotherapy or from boarding school. But I was serious. I was tired of the relentless teasing, of being different. Of being accused of being a goody two shoes and having teachers like me no matter what I did. At heart, I was less of a goody two shoes than half the people accusing me, but I wasn’t cool enough for anyone to care.
I managed it for awhile. Nothing horrendous enough to make a good story, but I did spend junior high with a tough crowd. Got a few C’s and a D. Became sexually rebellious. But the burnouts I idolized were pretty boring. And they were assholes, too. They found stupid gross out racist dead baby jokes amusing but they didn’t get the shaggy dog stories I’d learned from my father. They didn’t get New Yorker cartoons, which I’d been giggling at since I taught myself to read. They didn’t even get the Matt Groening comics that I got in trouble for bringing to class. So I went back to my nerdy friends and lived happily ever after.
Except that twenty years later, I’m just another grown up nerd. Otherwise known as gainfully employed. Everyone I know has the same stories. Some people even have some gruesome family drama thrown in; the worst thing that happened in my house was cartoon violence. My father liked to threaten my mother with a water gun. She might have preferred a real one, which as a pacifist he’d be unlikely to actually fire—there was nothing she hated more than water on her face. She never learned to swim and showered with a washcloth over her eyes. The kind of details that are weird enough to be extraordinarily normal.
In my twenties, I thought I had some interesting stories to tell. Before I realized that every middle class smarty pants went backpacking in Europe and felt transformed by it and had crazy sexual adventures with itinerant musicians. Hell, nowadays kids backpack through southeast asia and Africa and roll their eyes at how people once thought Europe was eye-opening. Boring.
Tattoos? Grandmas compliment mine and tell me about the ones they just got. Piercings? The ones I still have look ridiculous on my flabby body. Shaved head? It grew back. Polyamory? Not what it was cracked up to be. Being really fucking smart? If I were really as fucking smart as I thought I was, I’d have done something extraordinary by now. I’m only smart enough that no one wants to play board games with me, and that I'm constantly aggravated by people who aren’t so smart--but not smart enough to write a novel or invent something useful or win a nobel prize. I can’t even win an ignoble prize. The best I do is the occasional random drawing at the office Christmas party.
Still, maybe there’s hope. Maybe I’ll become famous for being ordinary, be an inspiration to ordinary people everywh—shit! Another story that sounds way too familiar.
Friday, December 21, 2007
The Fruitcake of Fashion
Getting dressed is often the biggest challenge of my day. I drastically change sizes every few years, so only about one-third of what’s in my closet fits at any given moment. I can’t bear to discard anything, so I frequently put on clothes only to find an unacceptable stain or hole. Inexplicably, I take the offending item off and put it back in the closet. I have few pairs of pants, because I only like to buy them if they fit my five-foot-nothing frame without needing to be altered. To compensate, I have plenty of skirts, but if I’ve forgotten to shave my legs the short ones are ruled out.
The past week has added another hitch to my daily dilemma: office holiday parties. Not the kind where you bring your spouse to the country club, the kind where the whole department goes out for a long lunch in the middle of the day. My work intersects with multiple departments, so this year I was invited to five of them. And despite my inner cynic, I look forward to these things and the excuse to don some gay apparel.
And so as I was standing in my closet, trying to come up with yet another festive outfit, I had a horrific realization about that fashion equivalent of the fruitcake: the Christmas sweater. I’d always thought that people who wear them—usually women of a certain age—are just born with bad taste. Or succumb too easily to advertising messages. But I’m starting to think it could happen to any of us.
As a twenty-something, festive clothing meant black velvet and red satin. Usually a little cleavage. Maybe even some sparkle. Fun stuff. All of that is still in my closet, some of it fits, but none of it is remotely appropriate for lunch at the office. So this morning I found myself thinking, “If only I had something festive but not at all sexy. Like one of those Christmas sweaters.” Suddenly the room spun around I wondered what kind of sick person put that thought there. Is it inevitable? Does the ticking of the biological clock also reduce my December clothing choices to bah humbug or crazy cat lady?
At last, I found a groovy gauzy blouse in the back of my closet that happens to have a lot of red in it. Paired it with green cargo pants. Dressed and ready for party number five, with no embroidered elves in sight. At least not for a few more years.
The past week has added another hitch to my daily dilemma: office holiday parties. Not the kind where you bring your spouse to the country club, the kind where the whole department goes out for a long lunch in the middle of the day. My work intersects with multiple departments, so this year I was invited to five of them. And despite my inner cynic, I look forward to these things and the excuse to don some gay apparel.
And so as I was standing in my closet, trying to come up with yet another festive outfit, I had a horrific realization about that fashion equivalent of the fruitcake: the Christmas sweater. I’d always thought that people who wear them—usually women of a certain age—are just born with bad taste. Or succumb too easily to advertising messages. But I’m starting to think it could happen to any of us.
As a twenty-something, festive clothing meant black velvet and red satin. Usually a little cleavage. Maybe even some sparkle. Fun stuff. All of that is still in my closet, some of it fits, but none of it is remotely appropriate for lunch at the office. So this morning I found myself thinking, “If only I had something festive but not at all sexy. Like one of those Christmas sweaters.” Suddenly the room spun around I wondered what kind of sick person put that thought there. Is it inevitable? Does the ticking of the biological clock also reduce my December clothing choices to bah humbug or crazy cat lady?
At last, I found a groovy gauzy blouse in the back of my closet that happens to have a lot of red in it. Paired it with green cargo pants. Dressed and ready for party number five, with no embroidered elves in sight. At least not for a few more years.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
In MINI-morium
The guy from the body shop let me know in a voice mail. "Looks like your car will be a total loss." The accident that led up to this was relatively minor, so I was blindsided by the news. Even more unexpected, though was the awful feeling that flooded me. This whirlpool of disbelief, anger, sadness--wait a minute! This is grief! I'm feeling grief-stricken over a car?As soon as I identified it, my first thought was to dismiss it. What kind of shallow idiot grieves for a machine? Cars don't last forever. They break. They're replaced. (We had, as a matter of fact, just replaced our other car with a late model hybrid.) Though all of that is true, it's also similar to the self-talk I've used to deny myself the right to mourn human beings.
I have been cultivating a belief in Buddhist understanding of impermanence. But as one not very far along on the path to enlightenment, I tend to draw the wrong conclusions. Like thinking I should be somehow less fazed by death and dying. Which then leads me to run away from the dying or the bereaved. Which isn't something I feel particularly good about.
Understanding that a person's life is no more or less permanent than an insect's, or a car's, or a planet's brings a certain amount of comfort--but it's not an either-or trade for the grief process. Feeling grief when someone dies is as natural and unavoidable as feeling pain when touching a hot stove. In the case of the stove, the pain tells us to back away and put ice on the burn. Grief reminds us of the precious connection between sentient beings and of the need for compassion.
I'm going to let myself grieve for my car. Our culture anthropomorphizes cars--we name them, we bathe them, spend several hours a day with them, we rely on them for our livelihood and our safety--why not mourn them? Maybe this will give me a little more courage the next time I'm faced with human death.
RIP Sunny the Mini
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