I'm Tying the Knot

But I'm trying to stop it before it happens.

I notice things.

Call it ADHD, C-PTSD, or any other letters that you want to hang on it. For better or worse, it’s how I’m built. I see patterns before others do, before I can even name them for myself. When I see something, I have to say something.

📸 : Pre-show selfie from We’re All Going To Fucking Die!

Thoughts go from my brain to my lips without a filter.

While I cognitively understand that other people might have thoughts, feelings, and emotions that they don’t express out loud, I just don’t see how that doesn’t bug the shit out of them.

Even without words, I speak. My sister can tell my mood by how I answer the phone. Strangers can tell whether I like them or not just by looking at my face when I’m around them.

In particular, in my relationships with men, when I directly call out things that I’ve noticed (whether it’s something they said, or didn’t say, something they did, or didn’t do) they often clock it as an accusation, or tell me they feel like they’re being interrogated.

This happens more often than I’d like to admit.

They say or do something, and I say that I’ve noticed it. Only, they don’t actually address the thing I said or asked. To be clear, there’s no silence. No, that would be too obvious. Instead, maybe the guy answers an adjacent question, or volunteers tangentially relevant info that sidesteps the question entirely.

Or, maybe, he flips the script and turns it into a conversation about:

• How I asked the question. (”I don’t like it when you raise your voice.”)

• How the question made him feel. (”Are you testing me?”)

• What he thinks is “broken” in me such that I felt the need to ask in the first place. (“Do you think this has something to do with your childhood?”)

Either way: he doesn’t answer the question.

Having vs. Managing

I’ve started calling this the difference between having a conversation and managing one. When I’m having a conversation with a partner, words come out of both of us the way water flows out of a faucet: freely, in a straight line.

Questions → Answers.

By contrast, when I’m being managed, it feels like watching a dress rehearsal. If you’re into theater, you know exactly what I mean. Flubbed lines get repeated differently. That thing that malfunctioned gets rerun in a new manner that “works.”

In moments with my partner, not on stage, it looks and feels different. Maybe they’re inserting pauses between what they say, tracking my face to see how much more space or diversion they’ll need, or figuring out whether they should walk something back.

To be fair, of course, there are reasons why this happens.

• Managing: Chances are, the person managing the conversation already knows where it’s going. Answer: Straight to hell! They already know that, and you probably do, too. They don’t want it to derail, so they’re trying to figure out what’s the thing to say, or not say, to keep the conversation on track. So, it’s like a verbal jujitsu around avoidance.

• Having: Just say it, for crying out loud! And, honestly, the reason why the conversation might go off track is because neither person is actually doing the very hard, deep, emotional work around the thing that’s causing the conversation to derail in the first place. Real talk? That’s the conversation you should be having.

So, what happens in my relationships? When I ask a direct question and I don’t get a direct answer, at that exact moment, while it’s happening:

I stop breathing.

It’s like my body instinctively knows something’s up before my brain has caught up. It feels like everything is moving too fast for me to process it, let alone how I feel about it. Because there’s:

• the one thing I said, plus

• a minimum of two other things to consider: 1) the managed non-answer to it, and 2) no space in between my question and the managed answer. So I don’t get to actually sit with any of it before the next thing is already happening in the conversation.

It can feel like a tight, stiff, tiny knot forming. Basically, the opposite of the kind of flow that comes with having a conversation instead of managing one.

The longer something goes unaddressed, the bigger the knot gets. The more that conversations like that pile up, the more knots form. At some point, the emotional and physical labor of untying all the knots just stops being worth it, especially when it feels like I’m the only one doing the work to untie them.

That’s when I leave.

But, lately, I’ve been thinking about and growing into something else. Instead of immediately asking myself if I should leave, what if I start by staying in the moment without losing myself in it? That’s the hard shit, and here’s what I’m learning about that.