Happy Mail

"And sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in."
-Jane Austen

I used to write a bunch of poetry.  Not good poetry, mind you, but poetry.

'What if these words aren't the ones that express

my meaning, making meaning meaningless?'

I'm quite proud of that line.

My poetry might not be great, but I did have some catchy lines from time to time...

I am an over-explainer.

And that line of mediocre poetry describes why I'm an over-explainer.

Because I don't want to be misunderstood.

I have a tendency to feel very...other.

I know the way my brain works isn't 'normal'.

Instead of A to B, my thoughts go A to F to V to L to Q to Z and maybe I get back to B eventually.

It's like that Robert Frost poem says "knowing how way leads on to way"...except in my case, no one knows where I'm coming from or where I'm going.

I think everybody wants to feel understood.

I know I do.

And so I think to myself if I can just explain the meandering path my brain took,

you would see that it wasn't that crazy of a train of thought after all.

And then I try to explain it.

And it mostly makes me come across weirder than if I just left it alone.

And so I have learned, the older I've gotten, to not explain.

To not try to justify.

And I come across much less weird.

But I also don't come across.

Because you're not understanding what I'm saying.

Not really.

It can feel very lonely, for your brain to work this way.

Because people rarely know what you're talking about.

They don't want to ask further questions.

They don't want to talk.

So you have to pick between being weird and misunderstood, 

or chance being understood but definitely viewed as even weirder because of what it took for someone to finally understand what you mean

It's a really bad game of "Would You Rather".

So sometimes, I don't say anything at all.

Which is also weird.

Especially if the silence happens after a long talking spell.

I talk too much or not at all.

And then, when I am quiet, people think I'm mad at them, or upset in some way...

which leads me to want to explain...

And then explain more, because they don't really get it...

And we circle back to weirdness again.

It's a vicious and, thus far, everlasting circle.

And the only thing that seems to help is perfecting small talk.

How are you?

That's nice.

Some weather we're having, eh?

And I hate small talk.

I want big talk.

I want conversations that show me how your brain works.

I want to know you, not the surface of every random human.

I know I can't expect it from everyone, or even half or a quarter of people.

I'm not greedy.

I'd take just a few.

But wouldn't it be grand to actually know people?

To know that a person is a jerk is easy enough to find out.

But perhaps if you knew why a person was a jerk, you would find them to be less of a jerk.

Perhaps their jerkiness is justified.

And you'll know very quickly that I am crazy, 

but if you just knew what type of crazy I was, 

perhaps it could be endearing instead of off-putting.

Do you see what I mean?