talk

Yeah so I struggle with small talk. A lot. I’m shit at it. No matter how many times you tell me to just nod and smile, I can’t. My brain will engage with that silly comment and I will forget the matter at hand. Always. 

So there are two things going on here:

1 - I have absolutely - and I can’t stress this enough - absolutely no interest. none at all

2 - It is completely overwriting what I had in my memory for the real conversation

So conversation I love. I excel at conversation. The real juicy stuff. Close to the bone. The stuff that hurts and has meaning and makes you laugh? The hard conversations? Well I live for those. When I have the batteries of course. And if you can tolerate catch-dump instead of catch-ball.

I understand why the small talk happens - it’s to lubricate the wheels and assure your partner that you’re not going to punch them in the face because of your inappropriate emotions.

But for me… it comes in and takes 60% of my working memory, knocking out the next thought I had lined up. The little ‘oh yeah that’s annoying’ comment which I know was to try to facilitate the conversation has actually made me forget what I was…

Anyway; the flip side is that I dive into tough topics too fast for people. They're like 'do you want cream in your coffee' and I'm like 'let's talk about childhood trauma'.

But yeah - talk and conversation are two very different things. And the easy one for me seems to be the hard one for most.

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