The only thing that sucks about tortilla chips at a party is not being able to hear anything while you’re eating them. The worst is when there’s a group of people all munching on tortilla chips trying to have a conversation and they’re all just nodding as if they understand what the other people have said, and you think you’ve all bonded, but in fact the bonds of potential friendship have been quashed by Tostito’s Hint of Lime® tortilla chips.
Really, though, the tortilla chips are a saving grace for me. If I’m in a group of more than 4 or 5 people, I can’t concentrate on anything being said. If there’s a bowl of tortilla chips available, at least I can be in my own little world of crunch that drowns out all the stimulus. I’ve never been a viber. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do in a large group besides stand there and watch. If something funny happens, it doesn’t land, because the cacophony of noise and lights is so overwhelming. I don’t know what to say, but I feel like I have to contribute noise to the whirpool of sound happening. If someone took my voice from a party and isolated it, it would be a series of not-even-loud “eeeeyyyys,” “ahhhhhs,” and “ohhhhhhs.” People would think I’m practicing my vowels. They do need practice, as I tend to garble my words.
I have trouble concentrating in most conversations. More often than I’d like to admit, a conversation from several hours prior will pop into my head, and a response my interlocutor gave will finally fully land in my mind, and I’ll realize the full significance of what they said. I’ll feel guilty and think, “That was a really interesting thing they told me, and all I said was ‘oh wow.’” I make a mental note to follow up. It’s a work in progress.
I wouldn’t be the first to point out that we constantly feel the need to make noise, everywhere all the time. Often I’d like to sit in silence with others. A perfect day with a loved one to me is taking Sudafed and sitting cross legged facing one another and staring in each other’s eyes until we feel compelled to speak. Just kidding about the Sudafed.
Of course, some of this is anxiety-driven. How can one not have anxiety talking to someone else? Stepping outside your door is terrifying. I exaggerate, of course. At a big soiree mixer in Montpellier in August 2023 I was chatting with Caroline from England for a while. Throughout the conversation, I kept thinking, “Just be normal. Keep your head above the water.” I thought it wasn’t going too well. When she went to get another glass of wine, I was left standing there with her American friend. We asked each other a few questions. I’ve never felt such contradictory vibes, every branch of conversation screeching off the road straight into a ditch. It was like those videos of crash test dummies driving a car into a brick wall at 60mph and watching the car crumple into itself. After a minute, another man walks up and starts a conversation. This guy made me look like James Bond – he turned the dynamic from a crash dummy test to a full-on fatal 40-car pileup on the highway – not that I’m judging! I walked away without saying anything, then Irish goodbye’d from the whole mixer. A classmate told me the next day that Caroline was asking about me. The density of my head is a marvel.
I did try to astrally communicate with some of you in recent months. I’m assuming you didn’t get anything, or you would’ve said something.
I went to the doctor’s last week and said, “Doc, I never have anything to say and I haven’t had an original thought in years.” He gave me Omeprazole. I think it’s a fact that my brain doesn’t have the best chemical makeup.
I do think it’s tragically funny that we’re stuck just verbally describing our sensations to doctors in the hopes that they get it, which they rarely do. We say, “I have this weird pain – well, not pain, more like a pressure, right about here.”
They start poking and prodding you, first hitting your knees with hammers.
“Well, I guess behind here. I guess it’s a little painful. It’s like a tingling.”
They start firmly tapping different parts of your body with their pointer and middle finger like an aggressive goose.
“Maybe it’s closer to this area, actually. Ow, yeah, actually, that hurts a lot. Kind of a sharp pain.”
The prescription paper comes out and they guess which pill will make the pain go away.
Same with therapy – months and years of trying to describe what you’re feeling.
I’ve always thought it would be great if you could have someone else inhabit your body for two minutes, just to gauge how your body and brain feels to live with. We have no true sense of what “normal” is supposed to feel like. What if a trusted friend inhabited your body for 30 seconds and went “JESUS this is terrible, how are you walking around right now?” Or if you could walk into the doctor’s, have them go into your body, feel how it feels, and then immediately point you in the right direction or give you the exact remedy you need. Or maybe more positively, they could say, “Wow, I wish I had this clarity and lightness of being.”
I think this is possible under the right circumstances. Obviously we’re all enmeshed in the same vibrational field/web, so obviously there’s a way to reconnect our vibrational cords. Right??
I could go on. This all being said, I love talking with people – I may just need a pocketful of tortilla chips to go into crunchtime when the going gets rough !
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