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greetings from the Hell Planet
Aug. 31st, 2004 01:27 pmi feel like i can't speak the language anymore. my friends talk to me about their relationships, their kids, their houses, their trips to europe, and i have no frame of reference for any of it. i don't have those things, and i'm sad about that. i want to respond but i can't come up with anything appropriate to say. meanwhile, the things that are foremost in my mind are incomprehensible to pretty much everybody, and not acceptable topics of conversation in most situations.
i can't even respond to "how's it going?" because i can't tell people, not really. and of course, most people don't really want to know. they say it because it's a greeting, and i say "ok" back -- and then i have to, of course, chat about houses and kids and relationships, because those are safe topics. and meanwhile, i have this pressure in my head. i have to carefully examine everything i say to make sure it's ok. i can't talk about my childhood. i can't talk about my love life. i can't talk about my apartment. i can't talk about my life at all. there's nothing i can say that won't reveal something i don't want co-workers or casual friends to know, something that will bring any conversation to a screeching halt, that will make people feel like they have to apologize for talking about their own lives and self-consciously joke about not having real problems.
don't ask me what i did over the weekend. i'll have to lie. sure, i had a great weekend. just hung out at home. what did i do? oh, stuff. and things. things and stuff.
i'm just living in this totally separate world from everybody else. Mercury, perhaps -- a tiny and circumscribed world, blasted with heat so intense that anything that touches it is instantly incinerated and nothing can live, orbiting in cycles that bear no relationship to Earth days.
i'm 48 million miles away. it takes more than four minutes for your transmissions to reach me.
be patient.
note: this is not a hint that you shouldn't talk to me about your life. just to explain why i may not have very much to say in return.
i can't even respond to "how's it going?" because i can't tell people, not really. and of course, most people don't really want to know. they say it because it's a greeting, and i say "ok" back -- and then i have to, of course, chat about houses and kids and relationships, because those are safe topics. and meanwhile, i have this pressure in my head. i have to carefully examine everything i say to make sure it's ok. i can't talk about my childhood. i can't talk about my love life. i can't talk about my apartment. i can't talk about my life at all. there's nothing i can say that won't reveal something i don't want co-workers or casual friends to know, something that will bring any conversation to a screeching halt, that will make people feel like they have to apologize for talking about their own lives and self-consciously joke about not having real problems.
don't ask me what i did over the weekend. i'll have to lie. sure, i had a great weekend. just hung out at home. what did i do? oh, stuff. and things. things and stuff.
i'm just living in this totally separate world from everybody else. Mercury, perhaps -- a tiny and circumscribed world, blasted with heat so intense that anything that touches it is instantly incinerated and nothing can live, orbiting in cycles that bear no relationship to Earth days.
i'm 48 million miles away. it takes more than four minutes for your transmissions to reach me.
be patient.
note: this is not a hint that you shouldn't talk to me about your life. just to explain why i may not have very much to say in return.
