Most Talkative

When I woke up today, I sat down and wrote my husband the following note:

“Congratulations honey. I have laryngitis. It can last 2 weeks or longer. I must refrain from speaking.”

He smiled. It’s no secret in our family and among friends that I like to talk. I am a chatterbox, or at least I am a chatterbox when I am around friends and those I feel comfortable with. It always surprises me when someone describes me as quiet or soft spoken; I am finding, lately at least, that I never am short for words, in conversation anyway. Buzzing inside me at any given moment are a trillion words, just waiting to roll off my tongue and pass my lips . . . and though it is a bit embarrassing to admit, I know that I am one of those people who has a tendency to dominate a conversation. Months ago, before ppd., I was a talker, but not the one I have morphed into since being unable to sit down and write. You see, writing a blog has likely saved many a bystander from having to engage in mindless chitchat with me . . . I suppose I’ve just started enjoying the sound of my own voice.

I am such a talker that sometimes I worry that my neighbors run for cover when they see me coming. From across the parking lot, I stand on my tiptoes and wave at the other two moms who are at home with kids too. “Hi Linda!” “Hi Stephanie!” Sometimes my advances are well received; my neighbors wave back and a conversation, that I truly didn’t intend to happen (often I’m just being polite), turns into a long discussion about something or other. I can’t help it. I just can’t shut up. Other times, the ladies will wave back and quickly say they’re off to go here or there (“Gotta run!”); I suppose that if I were them and I had to listen to me go on and on and on, well, I’d probably find that I had something to busy myself with too.

What it boils down to is that I am always thinking; there is always something on my mind, and for some reason, I just have to get it all out. Fortunately, many of my close friends, including my husband, are the greatest of listeners; I talk, they listen. This is usually a good arrangement. I am never alone with my thoughts; but then again, I am. Since most pauses in a conversation with me occur because I need to take a breath, whoever I am speaking with never gets to share what is on his or her mind. Thus, I don’t get to learn about other people because I don’t take enough time to stop and listen. And this is a loss for me because on the one hand, I am bouncing my ideas off of other people, but on the other, I don’t allow for any feedback.

Over these past two months since I broke my silence, here and to my family and friends, that I was suffering from depression, I stopped writing. This was good and bad. Mostly, I didn’t have the time. Every second of free time and every ounce of energy that I had has been reserved for my children and my husband. Without my notepad as an outlet, I turned to people as my outlet. What this meant though was that the talker within me went into over drive so that whoever I crossed paths with gets to know just about anything they want about me. I talked to the checker at the grocery store about my opinions on breastfeeding (she’d expressed disgust with women who nurse in public as she scanned my son’s weekly can of formula; I told her that if I wasn’t experiencing ppd and was still nursing, that I would be one of those women flashing a boob every time my baby asked for num-nums). I’ve also rediscovered talking on the phone (which, once upon a time, I hated to do. I’d felt that it was a waste of time), catching up with family and friends, or whoever would answer their phone, :-) Sometimes I fear that I share too much. While getting to know my neighbors better and becoming closer to my friends, family, and my husband has been great, I realize that I leave little to guess . . . there is no mystery to the universe that is Jessica.

Of course, this is all an exaggeration; having laryngitis, being unable to talk, and experiencing the ups and downs that accompany both ppd. and what I suspect accompanies any new parent’s adventure with 2 kids, I know that there is much within me that I don’t share, that I refrain from discussing with just anyone. In part my not being able to put words to everything has something to do with this (though I seriously doubt that I would hesitate to share all this too if words could do justice to what a panic attack feels like, or feeling so hopeless that I ask my husband whether we’ll ever survive the early years with our kids). When it comes to topics like these, I think that I tend to hold back, to force myself to be positive, to give hope to a discussion or a situation that most others would deem hopeless. And to be honest, I sometimes hate being that way. It feels so dishonest. At the same time, I wonder whether putting on a smile when I am feeling shitty inside, and talking my neighbors’ ears off is my way of pressing on, digging in, and trying to make it up this mountain.

So, I think that I will keep talking. Now and again, I will take a break and stop myself from butting into someone else’s chance to talk, and I will listen. I will listen because I am learning that the value of talking, of releasing what is going on inside of me, really has more to do with needing to heal, needing to grow. Oh, and I’ll keep on writing too.

And because I suspect you’re wondering . . . here are a few pics of Annabelle and Levi too, :-)