So different from the other.... A Short Story (well, it is short and it tells a story)

This boredom of life. This emptiness. How does one fill it. Speak to other people, cook, clean your house, find a job, read a book, exercise, meditate. It doesn’t matter what your drug of choice is, it is a poor filler, there are always gaps that no meditation, books, or friends can ever fill. There are still the moments when you are all alone, by yourself.

She feels like calling a friend, but stops short. Every name on her phone list seems inadequate, every conversation is a repetition of the same old stories, the same old grudges, the same concerns and the same solutions. Dull, uninspiring, full of platitudes. What is worse she gets sucked in to them. She mimics the person she is with, she agrees, she laughs, she expresses sympathy, and for the moment there is the illusion of intimacy that seems to satisfy them both. But almost always, when the person leaves, when there is nothing to occupy her mind in the moment, when the mind is all by itself, the emptiness returns, made even more hollow by the previous human encounter. She is deflated, not so much from what was said by the other, but what she herself had said, agreed with, or laughed at. She chides herself for being so shallow, for having gossiped, for saying things that people often say to each other when they are trying to find a common bond. And it seems strange to her that two people bond more easily over condemning a third person, than they do over praising an absent party. What seems even more meaningless to her is the implicit competition in every conversation. It seems both speakers must consistently prove how they were each better or worse off than the other. There seem to be no rules about the direction the rivalry is to be hashed out, but she has figured out that there is always a point that is being proven. If she is to be any good at these conversations she must quickly discern the objective and fall in line. The goal changes from day to day and person to person, sometimes she must exhibit her frugality, you bought a coat for eighty dollars I bought cheaper, at others she must flaunt her brands, not in a crude vulgar fashion but with a sophisticated I-really-don’t-care-about-brand-names sort of nonchalance. Some days the game is to berate your mother-in-law, on other days it is to praise her, but on all days she must listen to the other with feigned or real attention, agree, and then put forth the case of how the same thing was done to or by her in a similar situation.

Unfortunately the exchange is complicated for no one is ever in a similar situation or so they insist. Somehow the nuances, the shades of what she is going through are never the same as what the other is going through. The pains, the joys, the heartaches are ever so not the same. She is dumbfounded with this belief in the uniqueness of the human experience that they must each uphold, showcase, and yet deny all at once – in a convoluted dance of words. I know how you feel, but you cannot imagine what I went through when my mother-in-law said to me…. The contradiction in the offering of sympathy while in the same breath negating the very existence of that pain, confuses her. But he is in a better place now, if he is, then I am not sad, if I am not sad, why do I need your condolence. Besides on what authority do you claim that he is in a better place now? But no, such questions must not be asked. Such questions break the very fabric of polite society.  Such questions are a one-way ticket to outcast-land. She knows, she has been there.

On most days the listening is optional. She must just politely wait for the other to stop talking, on some days even that seems optional, they may both speak. Moved by some primeval desire to create sound, to produce noise on the outside which in some strange way is supposed to be a reflection of the commotion on the inside, but which never seems to do justice, never seems to convey the thought, the emotion, the profundity of the experience which the speaker herself seems to have a very special knowledge of. You have no idea what my pain is about… of course not, how could she, she was so different from the other.