Sometimes people ask me questions about how I feel and expect a prompt and honest response. The social pressures of conversation, the barrage of sensory input, and the expectation of an appropriate reaction all make for an atmosphere antithetical to introspection. I'll often blunder through these conversations, operating on instinct which is sometimes deceitful, and then feel uncomfortable at the dissonance I've created between the truth and what has been said. Trying to flatten an emotion into words is like trying to run in a dream. The path ahead is clear, but for some reason my movements flail, my body is clay-like and uncooperative. When I speak, none of the words I use feel accurate. If anything, I feel less sure, returning to my body, than I did before I tried to capture a feeling. Meaning has dissipated in the wake of my thrashings, and the air is empty, and my words hang limply at my side.
There are three paths forward when confronted with a question that demands introspection. The first, and most honest response, is "I'm not sure", or silence. This acknowledges the panicked emptiness which is my mind when I look inwards. There are no words in there that are ready to be plucked and presented. When I'm given the chance to meander to conclusions via writing, I can get there in the end, with the help of stumbled-upon realizations and deleted red herrings. My mind and consciousness are not so removed from each other. There is communication, but the acute distractions of conversation is enough to sever the connection.
And words! Clumsy tools to begin with. Even my journaling leaves me unsure if words can have value, being so flat and real life so multi-dimensional. I acknowledge the irony of trying to articulate the feeling that nothing can be articulated. But the secondary emotions generated from personal questions - unease, stress, and then disappointment at myself for failing to complete what is asked of me - is easy to spot. When a question is asked about a previous quandry I've worked through, I can usually retrace my thoughts, which is good for conversation. But I don't feel equipped to forge into new territory while speaking. The process of putting thought to speech seems to betray my instinct to be prudent and accurate. Sometimes I'll say things in a tone I didn't mean, or will blurt out half-truths, presumably in the face of social pressures, but with no real thought on my part. It's an unsafe medium, and feels out of my control.
In grade seven, our art teacher interviewed us about our projects to assign them grades. After a few questions about my intentions and artistic process, she complimented my ability to speak. She asked, "How do you feel, talking about this?" and I went mute. The right answer was elusive. She was asking me to simultaneously look inwards and also engage with the clumsy, performance-based medium of speech! It was impossible. An empty panic set in, and I stammered "I don't know".
Since then I've gotten better at answering those questions, if the criteria we use is pleasing others. My second method of articulation is to offer a guess at what my listener wants me to respond. It feels like my speech is falsified by guesses that I'm not really experiencing while speaking, because when speaking, my experiences are crushed under the distraction of articulation. Therapy is a similar practice in accidental deception. I find myself supplementing answers which guide the conversation into waters I know resolve nicely. I'm not lying, so much as choosing one answer of many which is convenient. It makes therapists feel as though I respond well to therapy. I'm almost convinced, convinced that what I said was true, although it feels hollow afterwards, and I feel a little less myself, and I feel an amorphous guilt for having misrepresented myself, and a knowledge that I can never be properly represented, and a subsequent worry that maybe I don't exist at all.
The third method, which I am only able to use in the company of someone I trust, is the closest to the maximalism of unfiltered journalism. It involves throwing out a bunch of hypotheses, reasons that could be governing what I can gage of my internal state. Of course, many of these theories contradict each other. My monologues circle back on themselves, cave in, are worn out by rallying. Sometimes my trains of reasoning correspond to my internal state, but never reach it, the way parallel lines never touch. I have so little faith in my ability to translate feelings into words that there's a diaspora of possible answers at my disposal. To chose the right one, the best one, the closest one to the truth, would be an infinitely long process.
I'm not sure how to measure success in my answers - if I ever get to the truth - but I frequently leave conversations feeling vaguely as though I've betrayed myself. It is an imperfect representation, and I worry that the small difference in reality and words opens a cavern beneath me. Returning to the emotion in the same pure state is now impossible. It is marred by words which have been spoken and cannot be unspoken.
I can't be alone in despairing at the manipulative effect articulating has on seeking truth. I wonder whether it's my unease that's the problem, and that I should trust in the shadow-me of oral language. I do sometimes leave conversations changed, but almost always because of what is said to me, rather than what I reveal. I don't trust in things I say during conversation. The audience in front of me, which I've spent a lifetime changing myself for, dirties rather than distils reality. Or maybe I am wrong! a catchphrase which surfaces in almost every step forward I take, sending me back to a blurred starting point. Sometimes I feel that the third method gets close to journaling and that journaling gets close to truth. Although I feel agitated at the end of these conversations, maybe that isn't a bad thing.
The third method is a habit I am growing into. It has the potential to lead me astray, but it also has some potential to allow me to circle the truth. It's a defence, as well - each answer is like a costume that I try while seeing what's most comfortable. Knowing what comfort feels like, of course, is another challenge. I'll cycle through several trains of thought, as though all of them can belong to me. It feels like they do in the moment. It feels like they don't. To be almost-most honest is to contradict myself. To be most honest is to say nothing at all.