emotional avalanches
2 of some
today, I listened intently to someone else talk.
correction: two people.
rediscovered egocentricism and felt validated by it.
just un-did the validation by revisiting the technical definition of the condition.
maybe I could rephrase that as humbling myself.
(trying to be kinder to me)
there isn’t a world in which I am not able to see from another’s perspective; this is what puts me at odds with Piaget,—who until this very moment i had completely forgotten about.
also, a question for the crowd:
do other writers just….pause writing the actual thing to research a topic or thought or find the proper spelling because it feels integral to the thing?
and do other writers just return back to the page or am I cheating?
we cannot go down that road and I already know where this is going. feeling fraudulent.
so this Swiss dude Jean Piaget defined egocentricism in one way, the way that I had learned of it and, quite obviously, have easily forgotten. how many times have I identified with something that I was entirely wrong about? the gnawing and inescapable desire to be identified has only cut that fracture deeper.
sometimes I will say that I am stupid and I have to clarify that well, no, I do not think I am actually stupid but I am simply not yet smart on certain things and there is also a threshold for where my intelligence can stretch. there are two immediate examples in my head:
never will I learn how to properly write a poem or any piece of writing
never will I learn to do math like a wizard or an engineer. or operate heavy machinery.
these seem fair.
”stay with me, here, stay with me”, I mentally coax myself as I try to type with my most prominent typing figure healing from accidentally cutting a few layers too deep on my knuckle. questionable if it was worthy of stitches.
watch me try to be brave about something.
glance back up, remember the intention,
skip a line
or two.
-
Piaget talked about object permanence as something to be obtained in the individual by the beginning of puberty. this is what I am struggling with. what if I just bypassed that skill and it’s too late? a sense of emotional permanence was already off the table, but this, objectively, is a tough pill to swallow.
a shock to no one, I have no control over my emotions. and here I thought I had progressed, which yes..of course I have, but not in the way I believe that I need to. and listen, it’s going to sound insane. it’s going to seem hyperbolic for the literary sake, but I am trying so hard to be honest. that is another ache deep inside of me I am also listening to, in addition to the people around me.
may I expire my extroversion? ambiversion suits me best.
the first person I listened to is fine, it’s got nothing exciting to it. standard operating procedures. but the second, is what led me to start writing a few minutes ago or whenever that was…
the second person I listened to, I was incredulously conscious of if I was bringing doorknobs to the conversation.1 “yes, and” has taken over my vocabulary. my thoughts sounded like this:
”don’t interrupt don’t interrupt. don’t interrupt but also don’t forget the thing you want to bring up because it is relevant and yes it is about yourself but it is how you can contribute to the conversation and be an engaged listener. that is how you connect with people, through your own experiences. you are doing fine but you could do better. you sound like you are trying to be a good conversationalist. be natural about it just be normal. stop thinking about it so much. this is your best friend, they will accept you for how you are. but..maybe you don’t have to be the way you are. stop changing the topic. stop stop you were doing so good. personal anecdotes can be secret. shut up shut up shut up. do I have to keep doing this? is this punishing myself?”
WAIT— when I remembered how I listened, I was struck with a genius gift idea for this person. this is something I very often do, and express my love through words of affirmation, (too many words, they all say; still working harder on shutting up) or giving gifts so personal it’s sometimes nauseating. am I trying to hard or am I just being myself? starts to feel like there is no happy medium.
the entire reason I started to write was because I did not want to forgot the gift idea.
objects…emotions…nothing permanent. not even my streams of consciousness. starting to think Narcissus didn’t deserve to drown but perhaps I do.
what if this whole time I wasn't secretly a narcissist? what if it was just egocentricism? maybe that will help me to apologize for so many things to so many people. got a lot of unlove-letters to mail out.
when I think of my dead friend Stephen, I recall what fights for first place as ‘the most important thing he ever said to me’ when I was much younger…when we existed on opposite ends of the scales, where he was much more alive and I was flirting with death.
”go an entire day without starting any sentences with ‘I’.” he dared me but I was never successful.
here is my first apology:
i am sorry, Stephen, that I didn’t get through today without starting every sentence that way, but this is the first sentence of this journal entry that did. I tried to try, and I think i’m better with these words when I do.
