My friend picked up his Serbo-Croatian dictionary and moved his finger down the open page of the dog-eared paperback. I was thinking maybe he wants to say mysterious, statuesque, profound, insightful, gregarious...
"Ah, here it is...AB-SENT. Absent. That describes you perfectly."
I was thinking about this as I was getting dressed after a shower last week, noticing that I had shaved just one armpit. I am somewhere else.
It's true at times, and especially so 20 years ago I first got the label, though I didn't realize it. You could be talking to me and I would be mentally exploring sometimes 5 or 10 ideas, sparked by something you said. I didn't know it was unusual, so I didn't try to fix it. I am much better now, remembering to ask pertinent "listening" questions and repeating back what they say if I am not sure I really understood. I wonder if people think I'm taking the piss when I do this.
After all, I have been called "the Queen of Mock" because apparently I have a "tone" when I repeat things, but it's almost always because I either found them funny or just want to hear it back. I am not always aware of what I say out loud. But when I think about it, I wouldn't like it if people did that to me. So now I often bite my lip, use a nice voice, and other things I ask my children to do. My best friend misses "the edgy Samantha", but with my newfound awareness I couldn't take the night-long torture of thinking about who I may have offended.
So now I'm more present, and slightly more bland. and that's ok.
