My Everything

He was my everything.  Being with him made me so happy I didn’t quite know how to act.  I wasn’t good enough for him.  I often hated myself and cried and had frequent emotional breakdowns where I knew beyond a doubt that I was hateful, mean, hopeless, and totally without value.  I couldn’t understand why he would want to stay with someone like me, who acted up the way I did for seemingly no reason whatsoever.  I feared I was too needy.  I feared I was too pathetic.  I feared no one would want me since I didn’t even like myself and I kept being such a bitch.  I came up with a hundred, give or take a million, introspective guesses why I was so messed up, but none ever got me any closer to happiness.  They reinforced my self-loathing and the problem escalated.

One night, sometime after midnight as usual, I felt another attack of helpless unhappiness coming on.  He was stretched out on his bed, a thick dark-blue cover pulled up to his waist, propped up on one elbow with a dated laptop open next to him, absorbed in what he was reading.  I had been sitting in a chair, legs propped up on the bed, intermittently reading one of my favorite books.  I told him I felt wrong.  He looked up from his web comic, concern shifting the tilt of his eyebrows and a slight crease dividing the two.  “Wrong?” he asked me.  “Like how?”

But I didn’t know how.  I was just a stupid, hopeless creature who brought sadness and unease into the bedroom with me half the nights I spent with him.  I talked on and on, trying to figure it out.  He prompted me with questions, tried to comfort me with sad eyes and a hand rubbing up and down my leg.  I didn’t want to see his eyes looking at me.  I didn’t want him to touch me: a hateful thing who couldn’t be happy with every reason in the world to be blissful and who couldn’t love herself no matter how hard she tried.  Eventually I couldn’t take staring at my knees, feeling him watch me, eyes willing me to find contentment somehow.  I glued my eyes to the floor, got up from where I was sitting, and closed myself up in the small, windowless bathroom with the door that doesn’t lock.  I sat on the toilet and stared at the tub, not really seeing it, and tried to figure out why I couldn’t be happy and why I couldn’t stand myself.  My ears rang loudly as I sat in the quiet of my tiny, self-made world of confusion and malcontent.

I sat there staring and thinking and listening to the whine in my ears and the small noises the shifting toilet seat made that seemed unbearably loud in that small room.  I thought.  And thought.  And understood.  I don’t know why or how exactly I came to know it, but I finally hit upon the real reason for my months of incredible imbalance.  Perhaps it was a revelation straight from God; I believe it must be so, because I was so clueless.  It was so simple.  I could even fix it.

I missed my friends.  Those loyal friends from high school that I barely saw now that I had started college.  Those wonderful girls who knew me, had known, me for years.  Those blessed people whose love made me feel worth something and brought out the best in me.  I had unknowingly been trying to fill the hole left by their absence with my boyfriend’s love.  His was wonderful and fulfilling in its own way, but it was a different type of love than what my friends and I shared.  No matter how glorious our romantic love was, it could never ever fill the gap where my friend’s love should be.  I had been frustrated and unhappy because his love wasn’t enough and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why. 

He was my everything.  His hugeness in my life made me small, unbalanced, and unhappy.  But I have my own friends who love me and who I need to be around more because they are crucial to my happiness.  They can never be replaced by romantic love and their company is as essential to me as shelter and food.  I have my own interests and goals apart from my boyfriend.  He is not my everything.  He is a wonderful part of my life, but still just a part of a much larger life.  I am balanced now.  I am happy now.  I know all the pieces that make up my everything and they are many and varied, just the way I like them. 

Small Talk

Small talk is the most useless form of communication known to mankind.  Its only purposes are to fill silences and to extend politeness, or at least the appearance of politeness, to others.  Antisocial husbands who point and grunt communicate much more in their behavior than those who engage in small talk.  Pointing and grunting is direct and tells others what you want, which is more than small talk can boast.  Even lying is a more useful interaction.  Lying often smooths over conflict, or potential conflict, and usually helps the liar achieve some goal.  Small talk achieves nothing, reveals nothing, wastes time, and can even form a barrier between individuals that prevents them from moving on to meaningful conversation. 

People advise against discussing religion, politics, or other touchy issues with others; this is a fairly well-established social rule.  I, however, love to delve into hot topics such as sex, religion, war, capital punishment, and a whole range of other taboo subjects as part of my ‘getting-to-know-you’ ritual.  I have never met someone who was offended by such conversation and I always have deep, meaningful exchanges when I talk about those things.  Rather than dabble in meaningless chatter, I pave the way forward to connection and friendship by bringing up hot-button issues from the get-go.  I have found that most people are passionate about, and enjoy, talking about such issues as long as the discussion remains respectful-which it always does.  Hearing people’s opinions on hot topics gives me huge insights into who they are as individuals and how they view the world and their relation to it; they also learn more about what makes me ME at a fundamental level. 

If I don’t particularly care to get to know someone, or if I just want to show some brief politeness before heading on my way, I use small talk to effectively end conversation quickly, which allows me to move on to others I really enjoy being around.  It’s not that I dislike the person; it’s just that I have nothing else to say but I want to appear nice and sociable.  Sometimes I actually do dislike the person so I use small talk because I don’t want to make enemies while at the same time I want to discouraging further talking.  For me, small talk is, at best, a convenient but often irritating social tool that allows me to be polite with minimal effort.  I know almost blow-by-blow how the conversations will go and I can judge when I am permitted to move on and talk to someone else or to go do something else.  First I’ll say “how are you?”  Then they’ll respond with “good, how are you?”  Then I’ll smile a little, bob my head a few times, and respond with “good,” regardless of how I actually feel (no one will tell a fellow small-talker that they are having a totally shitty day).  Sometimes I’ll even spice it up and say “pretty good”-just to keep them on their toes.  This exchange is usually followed by some observation of the weather or an obvious, neutral statement about the immediate surroundings.  This could range from “it’s kinda’ windy today” to “I should have brought my jacket, but I left it at home.”  Sometimes, if someone is feeling creative and wild, they’ll say something like “when do you think it’ll start?” or “wow, there’s a lot of people here.”  Small talk is generally accompanied by pretending to look at something interesting in the immediate vicinity, head bobbing, and appropriate monosyllabic responses.  Small talk tells me that someone is just trying to be polite and they don’t actually care, so I try not to waste their time and instead oblige them with boring, unrevealing dialogue. 

Small talk is the bane of real emotional and intellectual exchange.  All meaningful conversation is squelched by its uninspired and predictable back-and-forths.  If you actually want to get to know someone or to grow closer to them, steer clear of this social evil.  Joke, be sarcastic in a good-naturedly kind of way (these tactics tend to work best on guys because they always fire off an equally quirky and fun remark), talk about what you really care about, and genuinely try to learn more about the other person.  Treat everyone like you’ve known them for years and assume that if they actually do have something interesting to say about the weather, they will tell you without being prompted.