Linguistic and other types of conversations

Some conversations tire me out so much. Not all kinds of conversations, of course, some are inspiring and make me feel so much more alive. I'm talking about some specific type of 'linguistic' conversations, under some specific circumstances. Conversations with professional linguists about their area of linguistic expertise are so draining... I am not the most social of creatures but there is hardly anything I love more than a good, engaging conversation. I can be charming, thoughtful, funny, very agreeable in general. Well, maybe not with everybody, but I guess with a majority of potential interlocutors I would find a way to appear quite pleasant to talk to. I can adjust to lots of different styles, I guess. However, there are people with whom I find it hard to talk even though I like and/or respect them. I believe it's the task of adjusting the social style in combination with discussing linguistic topics (at least some of the time) that make it so much harder.

Let me make it all a little more explicit. It's easy to talk linguistics with someone who knows obviously less than I do on some topic - than I do the social work only, and to someone who knows more linguistics but whose age and social interaction style is closer to mine - than I can concentrate on the linguistic side of the conversation. The headache comes when I talk with a linguist who knows obviously more than I do AND whose style I have not been able to figure out yet or who is just so very incompatible with me that no adjusting can fix the gap. The feeling I get then is that I'm walking a very thin line stretched high up and it takes so much effort not to crash! On the optimistic side, I must say that the line walking is getting a bit easier - could it be connected with the number of articles I add to my 'read' list? - so maybe I will eventually get to the point where the social part of the conversation will be my main challenge? Because if I stay as I am I will always, even if subconsciously, play this game of getting people to show me who they are and how they talk before I truly start talking to them. It's always a testing period first. How awkward I feel before I have that done! It's so easy when I meet somebody who saves me the effort and either lets me find out what I need to know within just minutes of our first conversation or clearly has some rules established as to what is allowed and expected. But... how interesting to get to study somebody who has no set rules but at the same time is not willing to open up and let people see exactly what they are made of. I have to say it can be a nerve-racking experience, though. Because to get this kind of a person all figured out, it sometimes requires giving a bit of oneself away. The outcome of such a procedure might not be exactly as intended or expected. Occupational hazard, I guess, it could be called.

My boys

Ok, I have just looked at my last post and I must say it sounds pretty bad. I should always wait a little to cool off before rushing to write down my turbulent thoughts. It might scare somebody. It might scare even me in a year or two, who knows. And definitely in 10 years. I just hope my kids never find this blog (I guess I'll just stop writing and delete the whole thing one day) or they will think their mom was pretty crazy.... Not that they will not be able to figure that one out without reading the blog, sooner or later they will see things more clearly.

However, to think of it, I do behave in the most normal of my ways around them and it's not something I have to try hard to do, I guess they do stabilize a lot in me. They are such a delight to be around (except during the let's-go-crazy-and-run-around-the-house-screaming exercises... or my-life-is-so-awful-because-I-have-to-do-homework kind of thing... ). I love my bedtime reading time with Thomas. We often also talk and the questions, comments, thoughts of my 6 year old son about life and our world are so amazingly insightful and delightfully naive at the same time that it is always extremely refreshing and beautiful to talk to him. Once we were reading about Marie Sklodowska-Curie and he said "You wouldn't like that mom, not to be able to go to college. I know you love to learn and girls could not go to college at that time. I know you would not like that at all." Some time earlier we talked about the times when women could not study, when black people could not sit on the bus with white people. He asked so many questions about that and it was so wonderful to see how unimaginable it was for him, how devoid of any sense. I would like him to stay that way forever!

With David it's already a different story. He's is maturing and becoming a little man. When we have a bit of time to talk we often end up discussing things that need clarifying - things that look good on the outside but may not be truly so, ways to lead a good life, be a good person. He must be in the middle of figuring out the moral part of his life views/attitudes. He still has such wonderful, innocent understanding of how life should be. Life, love, relationships - this is all simple and obvious for him now, good is good and bad is bad and that's that. He knows already things can get uglier, more difficult, more complicated but this somehow has not tarnished his heart yet. He has no baggage yet, no hurt, no burden to carry. I can only hope I teach him well and he will be able to take the hard part of life and still remember about the beauty he has in himself now, despite of my own weaknesses/deficits in that area...

The enemy within

How can I do anything if I'm playing against myself? I have realized these things about myself, I have known them for years but no, I have not realized how much this is not how life MUST be, I haven't realized how much I let this take over my whole life, every aspect of it.

I choose suffering and feeling miserable as a 'safe' place where I can have control and nothing can become an ugly surprise. I would like to keep this feeling of security and control but at the same time stop feeling morose and pessimistic... Somehow these things became all one package. Why did I even decide to see a psychologist if deep down I had never believed he would help me? I will not let anyone help me because that would involve destroying the carefully built world of mine. And I don't know any other world, I don't know any other me. I don't know how to behave differently. I don't know how to be happy, what that means, how it feels like, how real it is.

As much as I don't want to be like this I sit here not seeing any other way for me. I'm scared that my children will learn from me to go through life like this. I fear they will waste so much time in their lives, just as I have been doing it for years and years, because of my fucked up attitude that I surely model for them every day...

So why did I start seeing a psychologist? Because my feelings were becoming too difficult to cope with even for me. I can have the luxury of being this suffering, moody person if I have somebody next to me who will pick me up from time to time, who has a much more optimistic, cheerful approach to life, who will inject some joy into my life. Joy that, although coming from outside and not from within me, allowed me to feel normal and safe and maybe even a bit optimistic occasionally. But when that person, tired as hell and hurt by my destructive quest for misery, started to fail, I found it harder and harder to go on. With nobody to lean on like that, with somebody that actually started to add extra weight to my misery, to this carefully balanced amount that I was able to take, I could not continue being a parasite for bits of happiness to keep me nourished. Apparently, I do need these bits and pieces that fall of the table of the ones who know how to be happy. But I have drained him, I have left him so dry and bitter and disillusioned that there may be nothing left. If I don't start to generate my own joy, and share it, there will be no laughter in my world, no smile, no support, no warmth.

I'm so tired and empty. I know these feelings so well. They are familiar, almost comforting. I don't want them but I don't stop them from engulfing me, numbing my pain, keeping me in this imaginary safe-place. Maybe I really don't want them to go away, I guess D. is right. I wouldn't know what to put in their place. But it means that... I will never stop being like this, I will not let myself or anybody else help me out of this fake safe-place.

What would it take to get me out of there? Can I be taken in peace or rather it must be by force? How drastic would the measures need to be so that I finally let my soul, my mind, and my body to unite and feel good, simply happy, simply? Can you please out-control me, out-smart me, put me in a place where I cannot run, where I cannot fight, where I have to strip off everything that weights me down, where there are no weapons, no tricks, no manipulation, no defenses... and rip it out, rip this horrid destructive part of me that can only lead to more and more misery, the thing that will make me the end of my own family, my own life. It just pushes me further and further. Please take it away, please take it away, please take it away....