Thinking

Short, sweet, and to the point.  Everything I've wanted to say for the last six months, summed up in 22 words.

Communication is an issue for me.  I know.  No, I'm not kidding.  I can talk about anything under the sun, except for when it really matters.  When the other person is holding my heart in their hands, I have a real problem.  The phrase, "We need to talk." makes my blood run cold, because it rarely means anything good.

I guess that I have an issue with words in general, and it comes from being told too many lies, and from promises made that were easily tossed into the wind. ( I'm talking about long ago relationships, not recent.)   So, I tend to let  a persons actions speak for themselves, and ignore the words, although words are nice to hear.  I would have liked to have heard them, and when I thought about it, I realized that I was just as guilty.  He probably would have liked to have heard them too.

Without communication you just end up with a mess.  I would get up the courage to say something and my effort would be swept away by an action of his that I read to much into, (or maybe I didn't, but still) and I got defensive and clammed up. I guess I tell myself that if you're quiet, you aren't vulnerable.  Then I would be crabby and quiet, and my own actions were seriously misread.

In every other area of my life I am fearless.  I know what I want for the most part, and I'm not shy about sharing my opinion on anything, that's for sure.  Clamming up when it's important is very  frustrating to me.  It isn't like I'm a cold fish, and I will talk if someone else starts the conversation.  In some ways it makes me the perfect woman.  I would never sit you down to "talk about our relationship", ever.

As I'm writing this (and I have been writing this for literally a week) I am coming to the realization that it's a trust issue more than a communication issue. Life hurts, and it's messy, and being quiet doesn't help you to avoid that.  I don't hurt any less, that's for sure, and if I had spoken up I would have known where I stood a long time ago.  Would things have turned out differently?  Eh?  Maybe not, but at least I would have been heard, and maybe understood a bit better.  Totally my fault, that part of it anyway. 

Who needs a shrink when you have a blog?  :)  (Don't say "you do" it isn't nice.)  Apparently I have more work to do than I thought when it comes to this, and knowing the issue is collateral damage from my past really burns my biscuits.  There comes a point where you have to get over it, or get run over by it, and here we are.