“it all came true anyway”

On an almost-daily basis for as long as I can remember, I have impressed and even shocked the people who cross my path with the things I say. Sometimes this is to my everlasting horror; but most often it’s a pleasant feeling of being able to listen carefully, alchemize my knowledge in whatever glass maze bubbles my interior, and try to say the most helpful or funny or insightful thing I can under the circumstances, and to say it in a way I have never heard.

Just now I took a Lyft ten minutes across town, and the driver told me with a laugh as she got in that she was texting her daughter. Apparently the daughter at 13 is obsessed with her mom’s Lyft rating; she wants to know how many stars, and what comments. She is maybe waiting for her mom to slip up. Anyway, my driver notes I’m too young-looking to have children, and goes on to talk about how strange it is to navigate this relationship and how ready her daughter is to find fault. I say something about how parent-child relationships are strange, because they have to inhabit so many modes interchangeably. Disciplinarian and playmate and teacher and so on. I didn’t keep track of precisely what I said because it seemed incidental, but she paused and said more quietly, “I can’t believe you don’t have kids, because you understand that so well. I’ve never heard anyone put it so clearly, but it’s so true.” Then we talked a bit more about my observations of my parents as I grew up, and I said I think it’s so important for parents to recognize that those modes are changing as a kid approaches and reaches adulthood, and that my relationship with my own parents was stretched to breaking by their absolutely unwillingness to recognize me as an adult capable of making decisions in my own best interest.

In any case, we had a spirited and compassionate conversation about parenting that ended with her saying, “Wow, it was REALLY good to talk to you,” as I got out of the car.

And I, depressed but less so than in recent days, can’t help but extrapolate this tiny moment into the vast array of conversations I’ve had over time where, even if I don’t know the answers, or even if I don’t think what I have to contribute is particularly profound, other people treat me like some kind of sacred alien, or preposterous anomaly, or fuck man I don’t know what the point is. I can be real helpful to other people and a lot of times I feel like it’s one of a dozen personal strengths that goes to waste, and one of many ways my value is not recognized or compensated, but I also realize I’m blowing this way out of proportion! Oh well! Do your best even if it doesn’t make sense. Have a good day!