Transatlantic trauma

“You shouldn’t worry so much about someone who is thou­sands of miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, you know. It’s not as if you can really do any­thing prac­tical for them, after all — well, except listen to them ramble on in ever-decreasing self-obsessed circles.”

I thought about reply­ing with a bout of dis­missive swear­ing. I’ve been swear­ing a lot recently. More than nor­mal. My lan­guage appears to be trans­form­ing into a pol­luted cesspit of explet­ives. But I didn’t swear; no, I just let the fol­low­ing aggrav­ated response run through my head.

“What do you know, any­way? You don’t even under­stand what you’re talk­ing about. Why shouldn’t I do this if I choose? It’s my decision.”

In my head, I think I was stamp­ing my feet like a hor­rid child.

In turn, the words some­how came out of my mouth like this (which, I decided, was prob­ably rather more accept­able between friends):

“But I quite like listen­ing to you ramble. Really, I do. It’s reas­sur­ing. Even if you are being sick­en­ingly self-obsessed. And if I can’t listen to people who are right next to me, because they don’t seem to be com­mu­nic­at­ing or I don’t seem to be com­mu­nic­at­ing or … then I can listen to you via the won­ders of the inter­net, can’t I? I won’t say any­thing use­ful, of course.”

“You never do.” There was a smi­ley on the end of that sen­tence, just to reas­sure me. I need reas­sur­ance quite often, being excess­ively paranoid.

After a pause: “Listen. Can I tell you something?”