Everything You Leave Unsaid

Teal Deer (TL; DR)

“Everything You Leave Unsaid”

“Words mean things.” It seems like an obvious concept, right? Well, yeah. Duh. Of course. Until you realize that most people don’t mean what they say. They’re not necessarily lying, mind you. It’s just that they don’t think about the definitions of the words themselves and what they convey. An easy and common example? The rote “Hey, how ya doin’?” It’s an everyday greeting that nobody expects an answer to. It took me the longest time to understand that the “how ya doin’?” was not a literal query into my state of being. I had to train myself to stop answering as though it was.

I love words. I love using them. I love abusing them. I constantly look up meanings to make sure I’m using and abusing them correctly. As someone with a brain disorder and resulting autism and ADHD, I have a really interesting relationship with language and comprehension. I pick up things like a magpie riding a Swiffer. But, too often, it doesn’t work in my favor. Because, again, in dialogue with people, words do not always mean things.

In my 30s, I had a huge crush on a bartender who my friends and I would see on a regular basis because he worked at our local. It quickly became unhealthy for me. Obviously, bartenders—especially actors who are bartenders—know how to work their regulars. Being flirty is a great way to get tips, and this guy and I had an almost-friends kind of vibe for a while. I even had his phone number. But I couldn’t stop misinterpreting our interaction, despite full-well knowing this is how many bartenders operate. I even remember asking him to stop being so nice, because I was taking it the wrong way. At the time, I didn’t know I’m on the Autism spectrum. So I didn’t know why I was reacting like that—only that I couldn’t seem to stop. Suffice it to say, I thoroughly humiliated myself. Words meant things…but not to him. I wish I’d had the mental strength to realize that earlier, but it was a very difficult time in my life. It was only after therapy, medication, and a formal diagnosis that I was able to go “Oh, that’s why that crush fucked me up so badly!”

This tendency to take words at face value has undercut me in professional contexts as well. When I was contracted for three books with a traditional publisher, I was assured that 2021’s Big Bad Wolf was “one of our tentpole titles.” Now, to me, a tentpole signals something vital. It holds up a tent. If you take it away, the tent falls. Ergo, it’s important. What I didn’t take into account as I was clinging to the word? A tentpole doesn’t need to be inside the tent. My book was one of many midlist titles meant to exist outside while authors under the big top got the spotlight. It wasn’t a cornerstone, it wasn’t a linchpin. It’s very likely that the Third Shift books barely rated as holding up one corner of a broken coffee table. But I deluded myself into believing I had more value than I did—and I fell apart when the first and second book didn’t really take off. I couldn’t write a third. I had to get out of my contract. I wouldn’t be surprised if mistakes like that are part of why I haven’t been able to secure a major publishing contract since.

As someone who has always looked to writing and reading as my tether to life, it’s hard to accept that I cannot actually count on words. What I thought of as bricks, as a solid foundation, are more like grains of sand. Insubstantial and easily washed away.  

Hey. How ya doin’?

Not great, my friends. Not. Great.