foot in mouth disease

Can’t remember a time I didn’t suffer from foot in mouth disease.  If something can be said that should not or mangled in the worst possible way, I will do it.  Thus it has always been.

If you could look up the antonym for “charming conversation,” there would be a picture of me. 

I did it yesterday, unintentionally saying something that seemed perfectly innocent to me, yet was experienced by someone dear to me as hurtful – I hadn’t thought about how the words I used could have been interpreted by anyone who didn’t know my point.

What a challenge, never knowing what is too little, what is too much, when I so rarely say something just right.  Have found myself thinking about my mother, who never learned how to drive because she was too preoccupied wondering about the mechanics of a car, how it started & maintained speed & stopped.  She couldn’t just let it go & drive.  Under my tutelage, she finally learned how to set a parking brake, but nothing more.

That’s me & conversation.  I listen to John & Mom & Mim & Peter and they all do it so effortlessly.  They build a conversation, feed it with interesting kindling, fan the flames with pertinent observations & comments.  Not me.

People scoff at my claims of being a lousy conversationalist.  They don’t know how terrified I am of making a mistake, of not listening in the right way, of having such pitiful background for developing engaging topics.  Like Mom with cars & driving, I’m so focused on my ignorance of the basic mechanics of a good conversation, I go into overdrive or push the limits of propriety or can’t follow where the conversation is naturally headed & send it off on an uncomfortable detour.

My heart was born to be filled with friends who jabber on the phone or join me for a cuppa, who seek my advice in dark days or invite me to join them on all the happy ones.  One reason I love Facebook to the moon & back is because of getting to see all the other connections out there, all the friends hanging out over an electronic fence sharing every sort of news, posting pic of every sort of fun times.  

 

That wasn’t the life I was cut out to live.  

 Love, yes.  Live, no.

How ironic.  It feels to me like my oldest brother & sister always saw themselves on the outside of where they wanted to be, looking in but unable to fully be part of whatever it was.  And here I am,  doing the same, due to deeply etched, hopelessly flawed communication skills.  Bitter, bitter irony.   

Normally, all of this doesn’t make me weepy.  Today, am all too aware of how my no brain/no boundaries ways can cause others at the least discomfort, at the worst pain.  I blew a fledgling friendship by letting books & place & slightly similar histories dissolve the proper boundaries that keep tight-bud relationships safe enough to slowly unfurl.  

Hard truth - people often don’t feel safe around me, because I don’t know the difference between okay & too far.  Am too aware of the mechanics & too sure I am messing them up. They often aren't comfortable around me, yet my assumption is that I'm always blowing it, always feeling like they're mentally edging away from me.  

How, at 62, do I learn proper boundaries & safe limits?  Can see them all too clearly afterward, after the stunned look & frozen body language response. 

Part of me accepts that, at 62, this is me.  Work with what is.  Build it into whatever is possible & don’t regret the never was, never will be. 

I get that.  And some days, like this day, it is a grief.