There are a group of us at the park. We sit at one of the wooden tables under the cover of the old bandstand. While the rain pitter patters on the roof, the others talk.
As so often happens in groups, the conversation has shifted from the sharing of stories to a discussion of our personal lives. I haven’t spoken for several minutes. I’m growing more and more fascinated in the worn grooves and flaking wounds of the table. Outwardly, at least. It’s not that I’m not interested in what my friends are saying. Of course I am. I love them. And this is a common ritual in friendship, or so I’ve observed. The sharing of moments.
You know what I mean. Those conversations where a person talks to others about themselves. About things that they’ve done, things that have happened to them, and how that made them feel. Those conversations that no longer focus on abstract stuff, but on personal successes and struggles that actually… y’know, matter.
And I’m thrilled to share these types of conversations with my friends — I want to share these types of conversations with them — it’s just…
I never know what to say.
I’ve never been good at making the noises you’re supposed to make. The smiles and laughs. The congratulations and the oh my gods. The that’s so terribles and the I’m so sorries.
And it’s weird because you’d think that would be up my alley, right? That formulaic human stuff. Because it’s almost like there’s a guidebook, and people like me are supposed to love things that they can understand. Or so the stereotype goes.
But I don’t know. It just seems so… false. Like there’s only so many times you can do it before you’re just repeating yourself and the words lose all meaning. Or maybe that’s the point. Maybe the words are supposed to be background noise, something to keep the conversation flowing and keep the other person from feeling alone. I don’t know. It’s something I haven’t figured out yet.
Maybe I should stop trying to make sense of things that don’t make sense.
Urgh. I drifted off there. Did I miss anything?
Nope. It’s only been a second.
The others are still having their conversations, still sharing their moments, and I still don’t know what to say.
Shit. There’s a gap in the conversation. A gap that I’m expected to fill.
Shit.
I run through the last few turns of the conversation in my head — it only takes a second — and foolishly say the first thing that pops to mind.
It’s the wrong thing to say.
There are rolled eyes. Exasperated sighs. People talking over each other to determine just how and why I’m wrong.
But I know where I went wrong. It all comes to me in the clarity of my beautiful, useless superpower.
The conversation becomes a low buzzing. The rain a slow, drawn-out drumbeat. Time speeds up and slows down as a thousand million thoughts crash through my brain in an instant.
I pick apart the conversation to this point. Every word. Every action. Every intonation and piece of eye contact. It’s all rendered in my mind in perfect, startling three dimensional space. I can twist it. Fast forward and rewind. I watch it again from every angle. Consider every piece of metadata in every possible context — even some that are not possible at all.
And by the end of this exhaustive, second-long self-examination I know what I did wrong.
I stepped outside my role. Tried to become a participant rather than staying an observer. Tried to offer a solution rather than platitudes.
To put it in a way that doesn’t sound quite so wankery: I offered unwanted advice when I should have offered support.
My friends are wonderful. I don’t deserve them.
And I really, really hope that they never realize that.
Is that selfish?
It feels like it.
I know it’s a bad habit, but there’s this thing that I do where I twist everything around to myself.
It’s narcissistic, I know. It’s weird and awful and I’m a terrible person. But as a kid they always told me to imagine myself in the other person’s shoes, and now it’s like the only way I can fully understand a situation is to do that. So I do it with everything. I can’t bear not to understand something.
Huh. Maybe the stereotype is right after all.
But this habit… I’ve done it so often and for so long that I’ve gotten good at it. Really good. Like I said before, it’s my superpower. My own special brand of mundane magic.
And it makes me a judgemental piece of shit.
Someone will tell me something, share a moment with me, and I’ll imagine it through my eyes. Imagine how I would react. How I would feel. I run through countless simulations in my head and form my opinion based on the average outcome.
It comes from that need to understand. It ties into a need to establish a connection with somebody else, even if I have no idea how to do that. I want to sympathize with others. To empathize. Instead, all I do is inadvertently judge them and make them feel like shit. All because of my shitty "superpower". All because I filter everything they say through my own viewpoint and consequently through my own self-hatred.
I know the problem is that I’m removing the other people from the equation. That I can’t just slot myself into someone else’s life. They have different experiences than mine. Different brain chemistry.
I know that’s the problem. I know that. But I can’t adjust for that, because for that to happen, I’d have to understand the other person and I. CAN’T. UNDERSTAND. OTHER. PEOPLE.
I keep hearing that it’s simple. I keep hearing that it’s not so hard. I keep hearing that it’s easy to be a decent person.
But the fact remains that no matter how hard I try to be one, I fuck it up every time.
I’m useless. Pathologically self-centred. Pathetic. Defective.
And I’ve veered away from the conversation again.
You know what? Fuck it. I already know how this is going to end.
In tears.
I can’t help but push the people I care about away from me.
Maybe it’s for the best.
Fuck me, I haven’t been paying attention to the others at all, have I?
I hear the words, I understand them, but they pass me by like a breeze. These people are supposed to be my friends and I’ve been ignoring them to wallow in my own self-pity.
Fuck me, I’m a piece of shit.
Fuck.
See this is what I’m talking about, I’m broken, a selfish piece of shit that can’t think of anyone but themselves, no matter how hard I try, and that turns every situation into a personal examination that looks no farther than the end of my own nose and only ends up compounding the shitty way that I feel about my own shitty self and distances me the actual circumstances and people that I should be thinking about because all I can think about is my own fucking self, and yes I know I’m doing it again, I’m doing the thing where I make everything about myself while bitching about how other people talking about themselves turns me into a nervous, narcissistic wreck, and I’m not confronting how hypocritical it is to focus entirely myself and my troubles when it’s that very same thing done by others that makes me so uncomfortable in the first place, I know that I’m a piece of shit, fucking hell I’m such a piece of shit, fuck, I need to just stop talking, fucking hell why won’t I just stop talking, why won’t my fucking brain just stop for a second and let me
Breathe.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
...Sorry.
Back to the conversation. What have I missed?
Oh. Nothing.
It’s only been a second.
