Overshare

I have always been an oversharer.  I come from a family that keeps a lot of useless secrets, in an extremely self-editing fashion, and it's exhausting, so I try as much as possible to keep information truthful and consistent.  It seems easier.

For instance, when my parents bought a BMW, my mother initially didn't want to drive it home to her family's house.  She didn't want anyone to think they had so much money they were buying BMWs. 

There are plenty of other, smaller instances - I find them baffling and obfuscating in the extreme.  I try to avoid them.

Yet, I find myself in a situation...well, technically a trio of situations...in which I must keep certain things to myself.  Partly to keep from offending or hurting others, but mostly out of sheer self-preservation.  It's odd. I found myself saying about one of these, "If there was anything to say, we would have said it."  And now that I think about it, this is a complete and utter lie.  Precisely because there is something to say, I have left it alone. 

Now, granted, what there is to say is not USEFUL.  It's being left unsaid for several reasons, one of which is because it would sound insane if it got said aloud.  And another - it (and by "it" I refer to several different unrelated things at once) would damage assumptions I have about my life that I need to keep in place.  Or it would disturb the precarious balance I've developed.

I know this must sound impenetrable.  The reason I'm writing about it is in an effort to examine whether I'm turning into my mother yet. 

You want an example?  Sure.  Here's a completely true instance:

My amazing husband is the bees knees.  Given the choice, however, he would never ever move again - we would stay in this admittedly lovely apartment forever.  Now, me, I have never lived anywhere as long as I have lived in Chicago...and I am getting antsy. 

I keep this to myself, because right now there's nothing to head to instead.  Unlike some folks I know, my husband is never going to roll the dice and decide to pull up stakes and wander off to the west coast or even further.  Ironically, that's one of the things I love about him - he gives me roots, gives me a home. 

So I keep my wanderlust under wraps.  I don't discuss it, I rarely mention it, it's just one of those things that gets tabled because there's no use taking about it.

But it doesn't go away.  I just keep not choosing it.

In all fairness, if I did sit down with my husband and talk to him about wanderlust or moving, he would try to make someting happen.  He'd let me go traveling or he'd move to Iowa or he'd find a way to make me happy.  But he'd be miserable doing it, and making him miserable would take most of the fun out of it.  I don't want to ask for things like that.  I don't want him to change his nature.

Not to make it all about my husband - I have similar problems with myself and my own assumptions.  I decided a long time ago not to become an academic so I could pursue being an actor.  So far my success has been limited, and I wonder if I'd have been happier being an academic who acts for fun.  But mostly I choose not to think about that, because thinking about it jangles the compromises I have made and leaves me upset and disappointed.

Now, none of the above are the things I really shouldn't talk about, though the above are true.  But there are such things, and I am trying to figure out if I am being a coward or a genius by keeping them to myself. 

Or am I just turning into my mother?  Her side of the family, I've said time and time again, have an inexhaustible capacity for selective self-awareness. 

I am not immune.