I’ve grown weary already of talking about the weather, but fairly, when everyone is standing around on heated stone everything else seems secondary. This is New York though, so it won’t last. There will be something else to talk about soon. Too much rain. Too cool for the beach. Summer too short. Too much this and that. We like to use the word “too” except in the inclusive sense. There is always too much or too little of something. It’s how we do, as the kids say.

I was party already this morning to three separate couples bickering. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s “how they do.” Who knows? It made me want to run away. “Too” familiar. “Too” close to home.

An accusatory tone, followed by the annoyed corrective “no.” You know that no.

Noo-oh… almost two syllables with an uptick on the second. Then a pause, and a semi-exasperated and entirely condescending correction.

Then the escalation response that begins with the hard stop, “No!”

So three couples who should probably give themselves some space today. Sit in different rooms or something. It’s just too hot. And my response each time was a nearly visible cringe and while I wasn’t in any way involved the triggers were there. I began to shut down. Like a switch. My lights go off. My brain goes clear. I retreat psychically to the fortress of solitude where such pointless exchanges never happen. They are going to natter away and bicker just for the sake of doing so, for reasons that very likely don’t have anything to do with their partners. No thank you.

I just can’t dot com.

I can’t.

Seriously, I’m not even capable.

Anymore.

Unless there is a point or a goal in which case I am up for the discussion.

Funny how things change, because I have been there before but something broke or unbroke because I couldn’t if I wanted to just fight for the sake of it. I’m entirely open to backing off the feelings of the moment and discussing the hostility and its cause, but fighting for the sake of it makes me want to crawl under the bed and die.

It’s always too something to fuck with that.

There was a point when I started writing this, but it’s lost. Probably too hot to think. It was interesting though, my visceral response to even others headed down the path with no real place to go. Examining it at a distance gave me the opportunity to look at how it’s played out in more recent situations. Partners and friends saw the veil come down and assumed that it was purposeful and spiteful when it was truly only a defense mechanism that seems to have shown up in my emotional armory. It is armor too, and not ammunition, if you see my point. It’s not something I employ, so much as the steel gates come down automatically. It’s a fairly new personal phenomenon. My first reaction used to be to take up arms and rush to battle to crush the advancing forces. Now it’s about repelling invaders, at least to buy time to address the situation rationally.

Anyway… some perspective on me, by me, and really… for me.