Feather me February

part two.

i’m an introvert. yes. what this means for me is that i can’t do small talk very well. i end up clamming up sooner than most people can understand. not because i hate you, just because i’m out of words. if you want me to ask a relative stranger something incredibly invasive but thought-filled, i can do that, and i’m comfortable with that. i hate skimming the surface, and i love the depths.

now add in my hearing loss? and i’m an absolute winner at social engagement. the poor people i am involved with. i can feel intimately connected to women who have children that I know and they may not know my name. but i know them, because i’ve watched how they speak to their kids, how their kids expect the world to be, how they are when they are sitting quietly watching a baseball game. Because I can’t hear much, my observation skills are HIGH, mammajammas. HIGH. Doesn’t mean I can’t be fooled, but they are HIGH.

so here i come to what makes up part two, which is connected to part one.

I can get dreamy. I can spend lots and lots of time in quietude, even in a crowd. I watch, and live on the outside of things fairly often.

I can also feel invisible sometimes.

And since I have had relationships like that, where i was actually invisible, it is something I worry about. I get too wrapped up in what other people need and want. I need to be sure that my role in my own life is the primary one. How do I acknowledge that without feeling selfish? Even typing it, I am imagining the moms and women around me judging me.

and the moms and women around me are better than that.

but this is the thing, the tether ball pole standing awkwardly next to the tennis courts. If I am likely to disappear into my own world, my own mind, how can I keep from disappearing in real life? How can I stop feeling temporary? How can I make myself stay?

a feather, to be tethered.

sigh.

-me