Day 173: You Don't Have to Talk Dirty to me, Just Talk

I have spoken more in the last 24 hours than I have in a month. At a time when people seem to think my life should be filled solely with passion and meaningful glances, I find that what is really getting me off, is conversation. Don’t get me wrong, passion is great, but when you’ve lived without your partner for a year and have limited contact with companions other than a cat, talking is oh-so-good.

We don’t realize how much we need social interaction on a daily basis until we don’t have it. Sure, I have friends, I go out here and there, but most of my time is spent alone with my cat and no matter how much I talk to her – and it’s probably more than is advisable – she never seems to be listening. Having my partner back, the person who knows me better than anyone else in the world, highlighted what I’d been missing: conversation. I’m sure that after a year in a combat zone and four days of traveling what he really wanted was a shower and relaxation, but I have been unable to shut up since the first kiss.

Without dialogue, a part of who we are is missing. It’s one thing to be alone, I like my alone time and I need a lot of it, but I also need conversation. Talking to my other personalities doesn’t seem to do the trick and now that I have Jeff all to myself for 24 hours I realize why, we don’t just need to talk. We need eye contact, we need an acknowledgment from someone else in the world that we exist and that they hear us. After living in a big city for years I came to believe that many of the street people we think of as “crazy” are just suffering the effects of years without anyone treating them like a human. When was the last time you made eye contact with a homeless person or said anything to them other than, “no” or “here you go”? We would all be mumbling to ourselves after a year or more of that.

I feel like I’ve been saving up most of my normal conversational skills and topics for a year and now the dam has been opened. Hopefully for Jeff’s sake, I will eventually slow my role to a trickle and give him the peace he likely needs. For now, however, he seems perfectly content to let me talk and talk and talk and sometimes I even pause long enough for him to respond. Dialoguing is fun.