When you won't take any action....

[gottawonder]

how can you expect things to change?

Yesterday I went over to our friend's place, because my sweetie was working with the husband to tear down more of the old house. Yes, this is the friend who wants our pile of dirt to fill in this basement, but it keeps taking up all of my sweetie's time too, to keep going over there to help this friend tear down his house.

It's like that math theorem, that you can take something and divide it by two, and do that over and over again and never reach zero. Tearing down this guy's house is like that. He's been tearing that house down for years, but until my sweetie started going over there, somehow nothing was really getting done. For six years, my friends have still had stuff stored in that house, were in fact STILL GETTING things out of the basement this weekend. My sweetie goes over there, and they get "most of it torn down" (last summer). Then, they work for another weekend, and get "a lot more done". Then, I hear "he's almost done". Then, it's "really, all we have to do is get the last of the ducting torn out, and he's ready to come get the dirt". Then, somehow, "We'll get most of it done this weekend", and remarkably "a few more trips to the dump and we got this". Yet, I never hear "we're done, and he's here right now, moving the dirt".

Anyhow, I spent some time visiting with the wife, who is someone I've mentioned before. We have a lot in common in some ways, in that we both live on acreages, have farming backgrounds, have husbands who work in the same kinds of jobs. We both have animals, and in general I do like her as a person.

I have really limited how much time I spend with her though, because she never actually talks with me. She talks AT me, very forcefully, and will do so for hours without really having a conversation. She'll talk mostly about HER life, though it doesn't take long and we move from present tense to things that happened 20, 30, 40 years ago. She'll talk about her wedding in great detail, then her prom gown that she made, then she'll spend some time on her family genealogy, or some other aspect of her family history. She just talks at you, in a stream of consciousness kind of way, and even if you manage to force in a comment, it doesn't lead to a line of inquiry, you just said something that interrupted her forceful stream for a moment. It makes no difference.

Then she'll take you outside and show you her flowers, but by telling you where each plant came from, and a whole bunch of weird details like how many of the peonies were supposed to be a different color, but all turned out to be fuchsia, again, she'll just talk and talk and talk, but it's not a conversation. She's TELLING YOU what SHE wants to tell you. She wants no input from you.

I'm actually thinking this might be something like Autism, because it's so consistent. Yet, she's completely different if there's a group of people. She doesn't just run on and on.

She pretty much never asks me about my life. I don't even know if she realizes how much time I really spend on art, or riding River. She never wants to know anything about my hobbies at all. If she even knows that I'm working with the ponies to get them used to having their feet handled, or anything at all. She doesn't ask me how I'm doing with being isolated a lot with COVID, or how I'm coping with my sweetie working nights, or if we're getting anything done on the house, and never asks about my family.

She also doesn't have what I call "idea conversations", like for example, my farrier and I often talk about things like the effects of the horse racing industry on animal welfare, or art, or those musing kind of conversations like "what it must have been like to live in Victorian England". The way many people end up talking about general ideas, not necessarily personal experiences, and there's this mutual input, and interest in what the other person might say.

Nope. My friend hammers on and on about herself, her feelings, and then will talk about the last forty years of her experiences and feelings. About her ex, about her Mom, about jobs she used to have, items of clothing she remembers, cars she used to own, houses, people I've never met. She'll talk for a full hour about telemarketers, and SPECIFIC interactions with people she figured were scams on the phone. Or she'll talk about her cell phone service for an hour, with specific references to talks with service people.

I was there, and she talked for nearly three hours about herself. Entirely about herself. I would literally say "my Mom nearly died a month ago", and she actually gave me about two minutes, and then went back to her own dialogue. I've had nothing but worry about my Mom, the issues surrounding her POA, concerns about my brother's intentions, wondering if I dare go visit her with the virus still an issue, and my friend really didn't want to know.

Also, she talks a lot about how unhappy she is. Her mother in law calls her many times a day with requests for them to come do stuff for her, etc. I say "then don't pick up the phone" or whatever, but she just obviously feels like nothing can change. She says she's bored and lonely, but since she NEVER LEAVES HER YARD, she'll never meet anyone or do anything to change that. She won't go for walks with me with the dogs, she turned down invitations to come with us to the city to go to the art gallery, she won't go see a movie in town, and she's not interested in doing any crafts or joining anything like a reading group or volunteering. She doesn't want to go anywhere at all if it means being out after dark, which means for six months of the year she has to be home by 5 pm. She's upset about her weight, but would never consider changing her food, or going to a gym, or talking to a nutritionist. She used to make her own clothes, but endlessly complains about never being able to find clothes that fit her larger bust on her petite frame. She misses going to work, and she could still work if she wanted to, but isn't interested in getting a job. Not even volunteer work.

I'll be honest, I like her well enough as a person, and if we get together with a group and play cards it's all good, but one on one, she's exhausting and self-absorbed. What I often feel after visiting her, is amazed at how she seems to care about our friendship, but can literally not care about what I have to say at all. I think that what she appreciates, is just that every now and then I sit with her and let her talk at me for a few hours. Maybe no one else listens to her anymore. Maybe she's forgotten how to have a conversation.