Please speak slowly

true understanding is nervous, and easily scared

For the most part I am a hesitant speaker. It’s a habit leftover from a belief that was held by my dad: “better to stay quiet and have people think you’re a fool, than to open your mouth and prove it.” Between speaking and listening in a conversation, listening is generally a comfortable, familiar place for me to sit. I am a wordy person, I like to pick at them like scabs until they bleed. My intent to listen for what one really means by what they say is infuriating to some: “Endless, endless interrogation” - a review from a close friend.

At the beginning of my relationship I had a fear that the language barrier would be too difficult to surmount. If we can’t match vocabulary, how are we supposed to communicate? My boyfriend’s native language is Tamil, and his second is English, which he picked up in college. He works as a bartender and is incredibly skillful with language, although he is self-deprecating about it to me. It turns out that talking to drunk people all day makes you a very patient and clear communicator.

I learned that I don’t need someone to keep up with an arbitrarily large vocabulary or compendium of obscure philosophical references. I need someone who will force me to slow down, to coax out a tenderness, and who benefits from my ‘interrogation’ as a welcome invitation to explain themselves a little bit more clearly. In turn, being made to relate my emotions and ideas in the simplest way has made them clearer to me - less obfuscated by comparison and analysis.

Romantic relationships in particular require a surrendering of guard: of the egoic fortifications made up from intellect, success, and aesthetic. Not that these things aren’t important parts of a person but more that they are decorations that hide the parts of your person that are shy, unfinished and needy. Having nowhere to hide is scary, and so freeing. A question from my friend the other day: “Have you ever had someone say something to you that was honest, direct, and kind that it just shatters you?”

In day-to-day life, it seems obvious that sometimes the more we talk, the less we understand. Endless meetings, debates, or fights where much is said and little is shared. Every now and then I’m struck by how strange it is that we can exist in completely separate ideological worlds to someone sitting next to us, who may share 80% of our life circumstance. We may operate from the same arsenal of words yet have meanings and associations all networked in different ways, each person a separate different cat’s cradle to be untangled.

I realise that an explicit gap in language gives something clear to build a shared bridge over. This is obvious with differences in mother tongue. Yet we rarely acknowledge that within a named language, such as English, there are a million, or a billion, sub-languages. We can’t even agree if we all see the same colour blue.

Sometimes a point of true contact does happen, and it is so fleeting we need a word for it. Capturing a glimpse of something that you have been striving for: perfect understanding, for a moment. Perfect understanding of what it is like to be me, and where I am relative to you. When my dad passed away my sister quietly took me out of the hospital room and gave me an ice cream from the fridge. Where does that go? Into a pile of rocks, somewhere, vaguely constellated of: love, family, pain, bittersweet, maybe.

---