Small talk

One thing I've noticed that's happened since I began analytic training is I have gradually lost any proficiency in small talk. I am amazed to listen to the banter of others who can enter into impassioned, intelligent and often witty exchanges about movies, books, social issues or politics. For a while I could shift gears from real talk to social talk. I can't anymore. It seems what I bring to the table often is a big social bomb that abruptly brings an end to that topic of conversation. My working world is filled with a lot of tragedy and such topics don't make good small talk.

This week there seemed to be a lot of sadness. Was I running an unadvertised special for broken hearts? For every one of the wounded souls I saw, there was an underlying early trauma that today's broken relationship tapped in to. One man carried a torch for years for a married woman. He kept waiting around in the wings. When the woman's marriage finally broke up, he thought he might finally have her. When she let him know that this would never happen, he was devastated. I knew that she represented his mom. He had wanted to help her in the way he couldn't help his mom who slipped into a depression after she and his dad divorced. He was weeping simultaneously for the lost love of 2007 and for the lost love of 1971. Loss=loss. Another woman was removed from her birth family as a small girl. She was placed in an orphanage and then in a series of foster homes. When she was dumped by her boyfriend, all the old themes of rejection, of nobody wanting her and of hopelessness surfaced with a vengeance.

The experience of childhood hospitalization is a loss that is frequently revived by romantic breakup. From a kid point of view, the child is abandoned in the hospital (in those days when moms and dads weren't encouraged to stay over with their child). Not only abandoned but frequently tortured by medical interventions.

I just started reading The Last Street Before Cleveland by Joe Mackell who is an English professor at Ashland College. In the opening chapters he writes of visiting the grave of his childhood friend Tom in their hometown of Parma Ohio. He had not been home since shortly after his mother's death. His mother died at age 44. In the opening chapter, Joe goes to the cemetery to see where Tom is buried. It is also where Joe's mom is buried. Joe is now 44. It no coincidence that he finally chooses to go home at this time. He might believe he's there simply because of Tom. He has not ever visited his mother's grave. In coming to the cemetery he is certainly circling in closer to facing this heartbreaking loss.

This is the stuff that interests me. It's the stuff I think about. But alas, it doesn't make for sparkling small talk.