Talking: disobedient ambassador

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I live in a bubble and real communication with other people is nearly impossible for me. I have to extract myself from the bubble, to talk. In the meantime I am aware the the bubble of my survival may be damaged. Being worried about that, what I say vocally becomes something said by someone else, like by a disobedient ambassador. The more I talk, the more I become anguished, and I have only two ways out. One is to quit the conversation all of a sudden, which is easier to do when I am in a group and I can leave to the others to go on talking while I only listen. This is more difficult to do when I am with only one person, and the whole thing is all locked in a face-to-face. Here I become aware that my bubble is disintegrating and will take a lot of timo for me to rapair the bubble when I will be let alone. As I become weaker the more the talk goes on, I also become incapable to quit and it will take more time and effort to reconstruct the bubble of survival.

I dont know if I am understanding you....but I know that I have done a cost analysis of interactions and find many cost more then they give....and then I feel the need and then I run away...I feel like that two sided Lama.."Push Me Pull Me"

Is the bubble of survival "ego"?"sense of self"?How would you describe it and its function?

I am always going back and forth. I need to stay with myself to survive. To stay with myself means that the environment which is meaningful for me is the one I can interpret, legitimize by way of my personal worldview. With this I don’t mean a philosophy or religion, but a more modest ability to put things into perspective, organize them in view of my life history. I think Kafka’s last story “The burrow”, describes, nearly in a musical sombre repetition of a theme, this need. But this solitude is often unbearable, so I need also some contact with the outside world. Some time this contact is absolutely minimal, like an exchange of friendly smiles with a passer-by in the street. Sometimes I try to go further and engage some acquaintance (I wouldn’t talk of friends, I do not feel to have friends, they think they are friends, but I know they don’t know the abyss in which I live). It’s a phone call or, more rarely, a visit. And I plunge in that anxiety producing situation of losing myself, of losing control of my own words. This disobeying ambassador stuff.
I will try to be clearer later on, if I can.

You are alone. I am alone. No one who wants to protect you if need arises. No one even wants to know if you may be in need. You adapt, make arrangements to survive. Should you? Well what do you have to lose? But at this point there is a chasm. A point of no return to the human community, because there is no one who can fill that chasm. No fault with people. No fault with anybody, but no fault with me either. Should I also feel guilty of my being damned? Should I be silent and quiet and only wait? Should I abstain from witnessing? Not that. I don't accept that, and I think that, after all, this a sign of vitality. Hope never dies; this is faith after all, after all. This is LIfe.

Paolo....you really should be published....there are a handful of people who write on this forum,whose voices should be heard inspite of their inability to connect in the three dimensional universe...that is what books are for....I have read many,I hope to read more and your voice is one that I hope to see in print in more then this limited audience forum....Kapesh?You may not be able to touch people in your day to day life but I hate the idea that your voice will be lost without the opportunity to benefit others.....books have saved my life more times then I can count...I had a relationship with authors and "characters" they created(some of the characters being "merely,"ideas")I know nothing about "publishing" and its dirty sister "publicity" but I know I would have been dead long before now had it not been for the voices of my books to keep me company.

Thank you Krex. I feel comfortable here. Is Kapesh the man from Roth's "Dying Animal"?. I liked that book even if I am not keen on Roth in general. Talking of Roths I was fond of Henry Roth's "Call it sleep". I like very much Updike, Yates and Carver, and many others of course.

Paolo.....I will assume your not joking about Kapeesh?.....I dont know how it is spelled bbut it is a word I see in American gangster movies(with Italian Americans)It is supposed to mean...understand..or ..did I make myself clear.....If I hadnt misspelled it you would probably know the word...lol

Oh, kapeesh: capisci in "italian". I didn't know. I learn one more thing. Thank you Krex.

I agree Krex.
You are a very talented and beautiful writer paolo.
Have you thought of publishing your 'musings' on your own web-page ( 'blog') ?
It would be nice to read more of your thoughts; and i suspect you have many other readers who feel the same.

It's also a problem of rythms. It's like you had to play tennis with a leg in plaster. Sometimes you happen to understand what the other person meant, but... later. You have to figure out what the other wants and for this you must do an analytic study, and then you must know what YOU want, which again requires slow deliberation. People like us are procrastinators, hesitant, undecisive. Better not play tennis at all for us.

Paolo, I think I understand you. Too much conversation with people, and I feel as if every interaction or bit of information they demand is stealing away a piece of me. I tend to particularly not like talking about my interests, because it's as if the other person's knowledge and opinion of them would somehow 'tarnish' them; they'd no longer be special, be mine.

paolo, I have enjoyed reading what you have written so much, because some of the things you have said are so much how I have always felt, but not found the words. It has brought tears to my eyes.
I have always thought of it as that I 'dissolve' maybe, or 'lose myself' when I'm with other people, then have to be alone to build myself up again.
You have a real gift for describing your feelings, and I am glad that you feel comfortable here.

Hovis: there is somehow a problem of being “contaminated”, or your thoughts being disqualified or appropriated by others. To this I would add that in communicating with others there is often, unfortunately, an element of power struggle among persons. Rarely communication and conversation is entirely honest and pure in its motivations. There is often an urge to show off, to prevail that you vaguely perceive. As we are weak in the fight for psychological survival, this is further hampering.

This idea of “losing myself” in conversation has harassed me all my life!

Conversation is almost like dancing - you must pick your partner carefully if you wish to master the tango.

Otherwise, it's just shaking your booty and hoping you've hit the right beat.

I wish I could help you but I'm still unraveling the mystery in my own ASD son.

Icebergs.

Well not really icebergs. We are constituted by some 50, 70, 100 trillion cells, nobody knows exactly how many but they would be enough to over-populate the whole solar system if to each cell there was a corresponding human being. There are 220 different types of cells, all deriving by that only initial cell which was the fecundated egg in the ovary, the totipotent cell, as they call it, which will divide and divide and divide in a frenetic activity, and differentiate in those 220 different types, each with the destiny of a different life span. Some will last all our life, like the neurons, some only some hours like the blood red cells, being preprogrammed to die or to live like the replicants of “Blade runner”. The incredible fact is the degree of solidarity and collaboration between them. Some come to replace dying companions, some rush to defend the territory from external dangerous intrusions, viruses, bacteria, or to repair damage, or to do away with the undesired debris. Some attend to their task that may also be that of processing information from the outside world and making decisions.
And the whole thing hosts an even larger number of bacteria, also living beings, vital to our life, external collaborators in various ways, mercenaries in a way.
They identify each other to know if they must help one of their kind or destroy an hostile intruder.
What is most baffling is that they all are replications of that unique initial cell and that ALL (except red globules) contain in their nucleus that store of informations, library or living encyclopaedia that is the DNA and that would in theory reproduce the whole process from the beginning to populate some solar system.
And can we think that we, with our conscious mind (the tip of the “iceberg”), can control the whole machinery (if it is a machinery, I don't think it's only a machinery) ? That a pact, a command, an agreement, a conversation of a few hours between two or more human beings can modify the ultimate destiny, course and direction of these creatures who have been built in millions of years?
In a sense all this should be reassuring. We belong to something which overwhelms us, sometimes in a pityless way, sometimes benevontly, and rewards us, in this life, with pain and with joy.

Well, the reason why communication is so difficult for us is that,after all, communication is always between the tips of the icebergs. Our handicap comes from the fact that we are not naturally regulated to have contact between tips, in the same way we are denied for music. Starving for love and affection we don’t know by instinct where the limits in a relationship must be, so we want more, we ask for too much, just as we are less capable to give, to love, to protect, to tolerate other people’s failures, weaknesses, needs. It’s like being not attuned in a choir or a duet. We want to melt into each other and that's not possible, without crashing the other person and ourselves.