Poor little girl
Ran away for good
I try to explain
Why she won’t say a thingSad, sad thing
I’m so far away now
How can I say
Why she won’t talk at all
–X/Poor Little Girl
I have always been fond of explanations. Because I tend to go from zero to wild ass speculation in some situations, I end up needing to explain myself on a semi-regular basis. Maybe “fond of” isn’t exactly what I mean. “Required to” might be a more apt description.
I have also been known to put myself in situations where I need to explain myself because I’ve been an insane dumbass. (Aaaaand, so much for the positive self affirmations!) That’s slightly different from wild ass speculation, because it involves being a lunatic. With wild ass speculation, I am being rational but imaginative. When I’m an insane dumbass, there’s no pretense that I’m sane. Still, points for being imaginative, right?
Positive self affirmation: I am imaginative and only occasionally a dumbass and some people like me!
That needs a little work.
A lot of the time, though, I find myself explaining myself for no reason at all. Justifying a feeling. Over-documenting something I did at work. Offering a rationalization for my behavior when no one has asked. Why is that?
Self confidence? Well, since I don’t have any of that, I doubt that’s the problem.
Oh.
For someone who is as bright as I am, and I am pretty bright, I am seriously lacking in anything like self confidence in some areas of my life. Work? Mostly OK. Anything that involves academic work. Mostly fine. Wander over into the areas of feelings? So not OK. For a long time I even worried about whether or not my female friends liked me. If I don’t hear from someone for a few days, I am still very prone to thinking it must mean that they don’t want to talk to me. Maybe they’re mad? Maybe they’re offended by something I said! Maybe I did something stupid?
Maybe I’m being irrational?
That’s likely.
But, hey–I’m imaginative about it.
The alternative is that I not talk at all when I’m irrational. If I’m talking to you, and I’m acting like a crazy person about something I imagined that I said or that I think you meant, it means I love you and am trying really hard not to REALLY be irrational and stop talking to you entirely.
Except when I do elements of both. Once a good friend and I stopped talking to each other for a very long time because we each thought the other was made about something each of us had completely imagined. That takes a certain about of creative insanity, don’t you think?
I think I’m a little saner than that now. Maybe. Mostly. I try really hard to talk about things instead of. Sigh.
Well.
Work in progress.
I’m sure I’ll explain later.
P.S.
You know what? I really meant to talk about how I like it when people actually tell me what they are thinking so I don’t have to guess, because guessing makes me crazy due to my over active imagination. It didn’t work out quite that way.