I Talk Too Much
I spent years as a kid feeling like being too reactive or talkative with people was a bad thing. I was too much for them.
I have always been the girl that talks too much. As far back as I can remember, even Kindergarten, the other kids would tease me about that, teachers would note it in the report cards “Smart kid, talks too much during class”, and even my own parents and brothers couldn’t handle the never-ending buckets of words that would fly out of my mouth at an extremely rapid pace. TALKING: always my common denominator.
They’d later say that I had ADHD, and that sure explained so much. I spent years as a kid feeling like being too reactive or talkative with people was a bad thing. I was too much for them. As a teenager, I sometimes wished I was more shy. I was already incredibly awkward and anxious, so I might as well have been quieter, right? Nope. As I got older, I calmed down the 500 words a minute thing a little. My friends know I’ve always been a loquacious girl and it’s somehow a bit charming to them, or so they lead me to believe. I have my moments though, trust me. I talk about myself and my experiences often because I like to relate to people as a way of empathizing. I’m such a social person that if I’m quiet, a friend will ask me what’s wrong, but usually it just means I’m just really calm or stoned.
There’s one thing that makes it all worth it – I can express myself and articulate (to my best ability) my thoughts and emotions, in ways some people feel they can not. I’d written thoughts and quotes and ideas and inventions and lyrics and crushes into composition notebooks for years. There’s still a stack of about 20 or so of them in what was once my childhood bedroom at my parent’s house in Illinois. I needed somewhere to put all the thoughts. I never thought of it as much more than a “dear diary.” Now, if I don’t write, my brain has an alarm that goes off that says CAUTION MUST EMPTY THOUGHTS INTO MACBOOK HURRY I AM OVERFLOWING, BITCH.
I am a people person. A “sometimes I lack faith in” people person, but albeit, a people person. Sometimes I talk too much. Sometimes I think I think too much and then I talk about how much I think, because that works as a good excuse for someone who unreasonably justifies just about everything.
“You talk too much.”
“Yeah well, I think too much too.”
Sometimes I’m kind of redundant. I think it’s a pattern thing. I have to repeat myself. I imagine cartoon versions of what the inside of my skull looks like: squishy purple brain with a bunch of words floating all over the place and a chamber of secrets containing Harry Potter sorting through files of my past in an OCD fashion. I manage to get it to all slow down on the inside with a little bit of focus and meditation.
Even now as an adult, there are definitely those who probably have some problem with my talking a lot because maybe it’s “annoying” to them or whatever. I try to avoid it. We all have our faults. My good friend Lexi Belle hit me with a zinger the other night as we excitedly held a conversation with an old friend and through the wine and laughter, I’d constantly have something new to say and cut her off a couple times, unintentionally. She says, “I’m Taylor Swift. She’s Kanye! Im’ma let you finish buuuuuut…”. She has a way of teasing me out of love that is at the very least helpful to my self-awareness. Unless I’m interrupting you, not letting you get a word in edge-wise, and being a self-absorbed asshole blatantly rambling on (like I said, I have my moments…), then sorry I’m not fuckin’ sorry. It’s part of who I am and I’m okay with that.