Me Talk Pretty One Day?

             Sometimes I think my whole family is bipolar, as a unit.  Maybe they’re all just as messed up as me on the inside.  Maybe we’re all mentally and emotionally unstable, some hereditary genetic flaw or perhaps a family curse?  They can all be good actors when they need to be, playing the happy family gathered around a board game and over dinner with guests.  But who are they, really?  Well for one, they’re all fucking unhappy, but they won’t admit it.  They hate their lives, but they’ll never do anything about it.  They are full of too many regrets and bad decisions.  Listening to my parents’ ridiculous fights (always over finances), I hear them go back and forth, not really listening to the other person, yelling the same things over and over, getting louder until their voices crack, two children caught in an eternal maelstrom of “No I’m not”, “You are too!”, “No I’m not!, “You are too!”  In this debate, there is no clear winner.  And I feel like the loser, an adult forced back into scenes from my childhood, sick of my parents’ complete inability to communicate, wishing they could have just gotten a divorce like everybody else’s parents.

 It’s scary that yet another year has gone by and I feel trapped in a loop that keeps on repeating itself.  There are so many metaphors: a maze, a recurrent cycle, being caught in a roundabout with no exits (stuck behind a car going below the goddamn speed limit, no less).  But it’s all the same outcome.  Happiness remains ever elusive.  Where life has become nothing but a series of fictional distractions to keep you from feeling too much of your real life.  I’m honestly close to the point of creating an imaginary friend.  Not a fake person that I act as if he/she is real, but characters, one being myself and the other, a new friend.  A friend of my own making who treats the character version of me any way of my own choosing.  And the “me,” a version of me that can actually form sentences and say what I want to say.  A person who’s brain actually interprets a message and sends back out an appropriate response via speech.  I’m convinced that there is a yet-to-be-named disorder that is similar to Asperger’s, but affects the other side of communication problems and still comes with all the sensory issues.  Where a person can interpret social cues just fine (and may even be super good at it because of their ability to see detail and note subtle differences), can formulate a response, but who cannot produce said response.  Who cannot show the proper facial expressions or gestures.  Who cannot make their voice inflect in just the right spots and sounds like a monotone robot.  Who trips over words like mad.  Who comes off as rude or an idiot because of the way they said something and is unable to “correct” the mistake on the spot, therefore further coming off in a completely different manner than intended.  Such is my life.

 And no one can ever know the real me, whoever she is, because the world is so speech/oral communication focused.  I barely survived speech class in high school and got my mandatory speech credit in college by taking a summer school course at a community college where I'd have a much smaller class and less intimidating peers.  If only I could just write instead of speak, then I would have a much easier time communicating my intended words to other people.  I could use italics instead of voice inflection and lots of pretty words that I’m too afraid to use when I’m talking.  I don’t think I’m willing to wait around for “awkward” to become the new “cool”.  If only I had a name for this problem, so I could politely say, “Sorry, that didn’t come out quite right, I have [Insert label here].”  “Oh, I understand, no worries.”  Like a free pass for my awkwardness, a chance for a do-over mid-conversation.  Only people in movies get such a luxury, one that's not afforded to people in real life.  Interviews are a bitch. First impressions are a real bitch.  Confronting another person with a problem or issue you have, this is a major bitch.   Parties and social events are impossible.

 

But what happens when your brain is so messed up that even written words fail?  Yep, you guessed it, well actually, you probably didn't, but what happens is you pretty much avoid as many instances where this awkward breakdown of communication is likely occur as you can and turn inwards.  And if you're as creatively frustrated with speech and even words on paper as I am, you create people and worlds in your head where if a whole conversation between characters becomes a complete train wreck, you just go back and start over like it never happened.  Nobody is seen as rude or weird or inconsiderate (and nobody cares because there's nobody there to make judgements).  You drag the right words and the appropriate tone of voice out of your head and all is well, even if you have to do it ten times.  Misspoke a word?  No problem, it never really happened.  Sometimes I feel like my characters are all the stability I have in this crazy, fucked up world.  Even if think you that makes me a total nutcase.