The conversational short-circuit
30 Sep 2017 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneI don't mean to imply by the following story that I usually know what to say. I have anxiety in social situations (not of the same nature as the condition known as Social Anxiety Disorder) and I tend to be shy. But in familiar contexts, surroundings, and situations, where I have over time constructed a decent model of what is usually expected of me, I can rely on shortcuts, and at work, with my friendly work acquaintances who are usually speaking to me in Finnish, I tend to quickly, even automatically reply with "Mmm!" or "Hmmm?" or "Mm-hm" when something else doesn't leap to mind, as it often doesn't due to factors like not understanding what they said or not knowing what they're referring to.
But last week my friend Ella was relating something about a sick grandmother being sicker recently and I got so distracted thinking about what she said - like just basically processing it and then continuing that with stuff like mental math for how old she'd've been and stuff - that I hadn't even got around to wondering how I was supposed to react and I suddenly realized way too much time had passed, during which my face was no doubt completely blank due to my thoughts being focused inward. Ella was late and ran back to the cash register, and she wasn't offended or anything, but I was actually startled out of my thoughts and a little alarmed to realize I had lost track of what exactly was going on around me (couldn't remember what facial expressions people were making and wasn't quite sure how long I'd inadvertently been silent). I was focused so far inward that I was too slow to decide what intonation of "Mm" noise would have been appropriate until it was too late!
And I realized that while my mother was dealing with the deaths of her grandparents into her 50s - all of whom were terrible people who were physically and/or emotionally abusive, so I wasn't broken up about it; but as a victim of multiple abuses who is still in a state of mixed denial necessary to preserve the positive emotional connections she has with memories of her own parents, my mother is an enthusiastic victim of FAAAAAAMILY-brainwashing and got very emotionally involved in each of those events - I've already got no grandparents left before the age of 35. The only remnants of the generation are my step-grandmother, who has grandchildren of her own, and my parents' aunts and uncles, only one of whom I really have an attachment to; the others are at best distant nodding acquaintances whose names I can barely remember, people I met at parties a few times as a child. My paternal grandmother died when I was only 8, and she was probably the only one I ever had a chance of developing a real personal connection with; I feel more grief about that now, even though it's only remembered grief, than about the more recent loss of my perfectly nice maternal grandmother, who was warm and kind but rather alien and who never made any attempt to protect her children from their physically and emotionally abusive father, and who remained more warm, kind, and emotionally attached to him than to them up to her death, from what I observed.
There haven't been any losses from my parents' generation in my extended family yet, so I find it difficult to even imagine being united in a sense of worry and grief with other family members over an aging relative to whom you all share a sincere and unambivalent attachment, who actually acted nurturingly towards all of you. Like, my brain was struggling for a reference more immediate than fiction but less immediate than the accident that rendered my dad quadriplegic when I was 19 (that is too tangled to sort out, and I was already in the midst of a nervous breakdown at the time, besides being a teenager - it just doesn't work as the basis of empathizing with an adult whose grandmother is entering a nursing home). And I don't really have such a reference.
"That's hard for everyone" or "How did that make you feel?" would have been the best sort of models to go with, in retrospect.
But last week my friend Ella was relating something about a sick grandmother being sicker recently and I got so distracted thinking about what she said - like just basically processing it and then continuing that with stuff like mental math for how old she'd've been and stuff - that I hadn't even got around to wondering how I was supposed to react and I suddenly realized way too much time had passed, during which my face was no doubt completely blank due to my thoughts being focused inward. Ella was late and ran back to the cash register, and she wasn't offended or anything, but I was actually startled out of my thoughts and a little alarmed to realize I had lost track of what exactly was going on around me (couldn't remember what facial expressions people were making and wasn't quite sure how long I'd inadvertently been silent). I was focused so far inward that I was too slow to decide what intonation of "Mm" noise would have been appropriate until it was too late!
And I realized that while my mother was dealing with the deaths of her grandparents into her 50s - all of whom were terrible people who were physically and/or emotionally abusive, so I wasn't broken up about it; but as a victim of multiple abuses who is still in a state of mixed denial necessary to preserve the positive emotional connections she has with memories of her own parents, my mother is an enthusiastic victim of FAAAAAAMILY-brainwashing and got very emotionally involved in each of those events - I've already got no grandparents left before the age of 35. The only remnants of the generation are my step-grandmother, who has grandchildren of her own, and my parents' aunts and uncles, only one of whom I really have an attachment to; the others are at best distant nodding acquaintances whose names I can barely remember, people I met at parties a few times as a child. My paternal grandmother died when I was only 8, and she was probably the only one I ever had a chance of developing a real personal connection with; I feel more grief about that now, even though it's only remembered grief, than about the more recent loss of my perfectly nice maternal grandmother, who was warm and kind but rather alien and who never made any attempt to protect her children from their physically and emotionally abusive father, and who remained more warm, kind, and emotionally attached to him than to them up to her death, from what I observed.
There haven't been any losses from my parents' generation in my extended family yet, so I find it difficult to even imagine being united in a sense of worry and grief with other family members over an aging relative to whom you all share a sincere and unambivalent attachment, who actually acted nurturingly towards all of you. Like, my brain was struggling for a reference more immediate than fiction but less immediate than the accident that rendered my dad quadriplegic when I was 19 (that is too tangled to sort out, and I was already in the midst of a nervous breakdown at the time, besides being a teenager - it just doesn't work as the basis of empathizing with an adult whose grandmother is entering a nursing home). And I don't really have such a reference.
"That's hard for everyone" or "How did that make you feel?" would have been the best sort of models to go with, in retrospect.
