On Annoyance, Life, and Talking Too Much

I've never been too terribly good at picking up on social cues. 

Say what you will about authors and our lifestyle quirks that are often perceived as being the personification of awkwardness, but there's a general assumption that we are all students of the human condition and masters of reading people with a near Sherlockian efficiency. I can't speak for everyone out there or the true depths reached by my fellow writers, but I can speak for me and I can say with great certainty that I am not this way. In fact, I remember quite vividly the first time a man took a swing at me and to this day I still have no idea why. 

It just happened and I remember thinking, "Huh. Well this seems like an overreaction."

Now I'm sure he probably was sending me subtle hints. Maybe his eyes had widened, maybe his nostrils were flaring, and perhaps his muscles were tensing noticeably, but if any of that was true then I didn't notice it. I was probably looking at or thinking about something else and the world as it was slipped away from me. Is that on me? Perhaps. He thought it was. But there's one thing I know with some certainty and that is this: He never said so. 

You see, most of what matters to me can be boiled down to two things, openness and honesty. I write because I enjoy writing but also because I like writing characters who often communicate with the clarity for which we should all strive, a trait that I find to be distinctly lacking in everyday life. My fellow humans seem to have a mindset more in line with "Why speak my mind when I can be obtuse?" or "Why say things when I can just...not?", and it's an endless source of frustration.

As for me, I do tend to talk a lot or not talk at all. I don't particularly like the former, my mouth usually gets dry as I spend most of my life not saying very much, but when it has to be done I tend to sling it out there so I can move it all along. I don't have time for lies or a variety of deceptions, political recruitment or the antics of human misery, I want only to hear the truths that makes everyone tick. So I talk. And when people ask my opinion or ask who I am, I tell them without any sort of filter or quick-buff polish because those things are rather silly and I don't have time for silly things.

Tragically, I'm a writer so the words tend to come out in a waterfall or avalanche and next thing I know, I've spoken more than intended. 

Let's wander into a story.

Have any of you ever dealt with infidelity? I imagine so.

The odds are there and if you have, I'm sorry. It's relatively terrible and I still remember the first time it happened to me. As it turns out, it's much like being swung at in that you'll definitely remember it forever even if you don't always see it coming. In case you were wondering for the sake of comparison and all sorts of mathematical and scientific things, I'd rather get punched in the face and it's not even close. If forced to choose between the two, I'd pick a square shot to the nose or jaw every time. 

Is that a tragic revelation? Not really. I'm almost certain everyone, or the sort of everyone that exists in the generalization that is more than 'no one', has found themselves in this sort of position but it is nevertheless unfortunate. Fortunately for you, pleasant reader, I do have a point for bringing this up. See, this girl of mine had a lot of problems. They were problems I knew about and as I was a fool who desperately wanted to be in love, I thought they were problems we could overcome and live happily ever after in that "We'll still die in about 40 years anyways" kind of way. They weren't, of course, but I didn't have the wisdom to know that yet and I still don't. Instead, I stood by her and spent day and night talking her through the bad times. 

When bad things got worse, we talked. When she couldn't sleep and had crushing depression, she called and we talked. When good things went bad, she called and we talked. Over and over again, no matter the time, I had her number tied to an alarm that would sound when she called so I would never sleep through her calls when she needed me. I made a point to be there for the person that I cared about, never unavailable, and though that's something that can be taken advantage of, it's also one facet of my existence that I don't particularly care to change.

I was a foolish man and today I'm more of a stubborn one. 

In the end, all the talk didn't particularly help. I didn't save a damsel in distress because this isn't a fairy tale and things don't work that way. Instead, she wound up choosing a few different people over a weekend and my world fell apart bit by bit until I was standing amid wreckage that I didn't even realize was mine. I was just...there. And I tried to fix things because that's what I thought I had to do, so I held onto her like I was Sylvester Stallone in Cliffhanger and I didn't have the maturity or common sense to see that this mountain was a volcano.

When emotions were stripped away and the truth crept through the whispers that I hated so much, it turned out that it hurt a lot more than the action. I think it did, anyway, as those are the things I remember most and if I focus hard enough I can still hear the words echo in my head like they're screams. I asked her why, I asked what I did wrong, I asked why I wasn't enough and if I ever could be, and she looked at me without the faintest appearance of regret and said: "Honestly, it's because you talk too much."

I wasn't quite the same for a long time after that.

People asked with relative frequency why I was darker and more sarcastic. I lost a few friends and I spent most of my time alone. Worst of all, I stopped talking. I devoted myself to not saying much of anything and decided that saying nothing, nothing of substance, honesty, or support, was a better pursuit. To be completely frank, I was young, stupid, and I sulked. I sulked for about 11 months until things started to look better and they only did that when I finally walked away from a future that I was trying desperately to will into existence.

It couldn't be willed. It had died a long time ago if it was ever alive at all and I am not a necromancer, nor do I believe in resurrection. But youth makes fools of us all and I spent a portion of mine getting lost in the words of someone whose words should never have mattered. But what can I say, I'm a writer. And words always seem to hold weight, so while the pain faded with time, they hovered and lingered and stung.

You talk too much.

Those are tough words to digest for someone who thought he might be in love and I found myself in a world where I didn't know when to talk or why. Interestingly enough (and of no great surprise to anyone), I'd never been a good socialite or conversationalist and I'd been even worse at miming my way through small talk and whatever young people were ever supposed to do, so you'd think I wouldn't have lost too much. But I did. Any mooring that I had was cast off and worst of all was the truth that I no longer knew when to try to help. 

How, after all, do you speak words of comfort or support when those words might be unwelcome? How do you be who you were when who you were wasn't good enough? I didn't know. So in time when those unpleasant wounds had healed, I started talking like I used to and tried my best not to look back. Why? Because there is no such thing as all the right words and even the best authors need editors and the finest speakers stumble over a tragically terrible turn of phrase. That more than anything else broke holes in the dam of a youthful and saddened mind and pushed me down the waterfall. 

The funny thing is, I'll always talk too much. I rarely know when is the right time to say the right thing, nor do I ever know how to say it, but I try. I speak because the words are there even when they're a hurricane. I speak even when my emotions have been bottled up for what feels like the eternal lifetime of a genie in a bottle. I do so because it's me. That voice, those stutters and words built on the back of elephantine good intentions, they are all that I am. And yes, sometimes I talk too much and wish I had an editor who lived in my canines or the roof of my mouth so that he might tinker with the syllables so the right ones always came out. But life isn't a book.

It's not a story.

It's not a fairy tale.

It's just life. It's there until it's not. And all those people, even and especially the ones you care about most, are only there until they're not. So damn those editors that creep into your head and tell you what not to say. Damn the coward in your heart that says there's always time tomorrow for what could be said today. Because even now, even in the shadows of pain and behind fortress walls built from what I used to be, I wouldn't take a single thing back from those too many words spent on a person who didn't hear the right ones. 

Words are like puzzle pieces and they only complete a certain picture. Mine aren't expert level, they're quite often so clunky that they're the puzzle version of Duplos, but they're a grand portion of what I hope might make up quite a pretty picture. It would be of a horse, I think. Either a black stallion or Secretariat with smoke billowing from his nostrils like a steam engine, because I like horses and I want to live in a world where all my words and missteps still make up something beautiful and worth seeing. 

We all stumble over words. No one knows the right thing to say. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't stand at attention til the late and early hours of the morning for the people we think we might someday care a great deal for. All it means is that there's a dam in the gaps of our teeth and if you can knock them free without getting punched in the face, you should do it. You should do it even if it means learning to take a left hook.

Because words matter.

The honest ones will always matter.

Whether in the form of a waterfall or a barely-there stream, they are you.

I'm Luke Ganje. And I talk too much.