Can We Talk? Please?

A month into my alcohol and social media free experiment, and conversation has been on my mind.

Actually, it’s a lack of conversation that’s on my mind.

Hmm, perhaps it’s better to say, it’s a lack of sober, deep, and meaningful conversation that’s on my mind.

Let me explain, I’ve done Dry January many times in my past, but normally my husband and I shelter in place, avoiding all parties, eating out, and happy hours, longing for the end of the month so we can have that glass of wine and rejoin society. This time, while we still long for that glass of wine at the end of the month, I decided to find tools to help me explore why I drink. I was blessed to find the author Annie Grace and her books, The Naked Mind and The Alcohol Experiment. Using the latest in neuroscience and cognitive behavioral theories, I’ve been able to dive into my relationship with alcohol, starting with that first taste of peach schnaps that led to my first kiss, up to the past three years where somehow between the Covid lockdowns and my house burning down, a bottle of wine most evenings had become the norm. In addition, I added a reduction in use of my smartphone this month, for hours upon hours have been wasted since the pandemic started on that device and I want to explore my addiction to both the fermented grape elixir of life as well as scrolling endlessly on my phone, searching for something, but not quite sure what it is.

Could there be a connection between these two things? It appears there is, and connection through conversation is the heart of the issue. Not only since the pandemic, but from the moment I learned to speak, I’ve longed to connect to others via the word, and yet finding someone to meet me in the space of conversation has never been easy.

You Talk Too Much

As a child I was always told to be quiet. Chatty Cathy, they called me. I just today looked up the official definition of this slur: "A chatty Cathy is a person who talks incessantly without saying anything of consequence. The idiom chatty Cathy is derived from a toy that was manufactured in America from 1959 through 1965. "

Reading this brought a deep sense of pain within my heart. Rather than close myself to it, I allowed the pain to wash over me. This is an old ache; I’d say it’s an original wound in this lifetime. The very essence of life for me is to chat with others and the first label given to me suggests that what I’m saying has no significance AT ALL. People think I talk just to hear myself, but that’s not true. I'm talking because I have all these ideas bouncing around in my head and I'm longing for someone to engage with me in this way. To turn the ideas over and reflect them back to me. It’s lonely, painfully so, and as I sat with this realization, it became clear that one of the reasons I drink is to dull the edges of these thorns. It hurts less to be interrupted if I’m buzzed. It hurts less to be told to be quiet after a few glasses of wine. It hurts less to listen to others drone on about how their partner annoys them, or what some politician did that day, or some other small talk that merely scratches the surface of who they are as a person. I may even be a better listener after a few drinks as a result. Go on, tell me more about how your children drive you crazy, or the mother-in-law who butts into your life, or the drama at your job. I’d like to ask you what you think about death, or interstellar travel, or even fairies and the consciousness of trees, but I don't think I communicate these ideas very well because when I do bring up the morphic fields of life, most people’s eyes fog over, and can’t follow me.

People always tell me to get to the point, to give my elevator pitch, speak in blurbs or executive summaries, but what if the point is to have many points and a wandering conversation with no clear ending is what turns me on?

Hell, I went to Chat GPT today for the first time to see if that might be good to talk with, and the server was too busy to engage. Even the most popular AI doesn't have the bandwidth to talk with me. If that ain't a message from the universe, I don't know what is. Though I'm not sure if the message is to kill the Chatty Cathy in me in some way, take a class in dialogue and making friends, or rename this part of me that talks too much Katarina, love her to death, and be happy with my loneliness because at least my own mind is interesting.

However, maybe ChatGPT’s popularity means that EVERYONE is longing for intelligent conversation and turning to a chat bot is the easiest way to do it?

Where Have All the People Gone?

Because of this judgement that I am merely a blabbering doll, I’ve been lonely in this way my entire life, but there have been saving graces along the way. In the beginning, I had my dad. No one is a better conversationalist than Joe, and he has always taken an interest in what I say and do, probably because we like the same things. Still, my father and I love to talk with each other, and our conversations are one of my greatest joys. As an adult, my work has always provided me with the chance for true conversation. From my time as a software engineer to my time as a movement education and dance teacher, the dialogue that comes from leaning into a job with other humans has brought me great comfort. It’s also where I’ve met some of the most interesting people. Brainstorming sessions, code reviews, conferences, faculty meetings, organizing dance shows and productions, spotting kids in tumbling class, dancing with kids, playing capture-the-flag in the redwood grove—all of these activities were fulfilling to me. The loneliness was kept at bay because I wasn’t alone surrounded by all those words.

Parenting my sons also fulfilled Chatty Cathy. At first, it was the opposite. Babies are NOT communicative, and crying was not a substitute for the intellectual conversation I left behind to become a full-time mom, and I now believe that my post-partum depression was directly related to this lack of adult conversation. Eventually, my own sons would become two of the best conversationalists in my world. Each one is quite different in his thinking, but both have engaged with me from the moment they could speak in sentences, which was quite early, and both were instantly loquacious, just like me. Rather than tell them to shut-up or give me peace, I loved their words—from their first bad jokes that had me in stitches, to their stories and insights, to their constant “Whys”— they have matured into two of my greatest teachers and companions.

However, in the beginning of our relationship, all they did was cry and while I had no idea what the hell I was doing as a young mother, I didn’t reach for the bottle of wine back then, even when things were dark. Mothering young children required sobriety, especially since I breastfed, so I found other outlets. I joined mother’s groups. Eventually, the kids went to school, and I was drawn into the work of making said schools run. School boards, fundraising, volunteering for everything from classroom assistance to running the Winter Craft fair. In all of these activities, I met other people and conversation was had. We formed book studies, had playdates, and again, all of this was sober. Moreover, all of this was in person. There was no need for wine in these situations, and no time to scroll endlessly on a phone searching for some elusive unmet desire…

Enter the year 2020, when everything changed. The year when people stopped gathering and working together in person. When volunteer work was deemed unessential, unless you could do it online. Where even soup kitchens, bars, and restaurants were banned. Our social world as we knew it was cancelled. Gone were the committees, book studies, and in-person faculty meetings. Communication on Zoom or the phone is better than no communication, yet all of these tools can’t compare to the joy I experienced while working with a team of fabulous women to put on the school dance show. Yet for me, three other isolating experiences occurred within the same moment that the entire world decided to hibernate. First, I’d left my job as a dance teacher in 2019, in part to find work in tech. Unfortunately, I also broke my hip being a silly girl and couldn’t walk for twelve weeks. Just as I’d healed and was ready to get out there again to look for employment, the world shut down, and the momentum was lost.

During this time, I also became empty nested. The boys did return for a few months in the beginning of the pandemic, but by the fall of 2020, they each went back to their colleges, places that never wanted a parent around anyway, but now were locked citadels where only students and employees could venture. Thus, using my sons as a means to meet other people, like I did when they were younger, was off the table. Like millions of other parents, we didn’t even get to visit for my eldest’s graduation. I was banned from their world.

Lastly, my house burned down, but that’s already documented in other essays.

Needless to say, there were may reasons for me to reach for the bottle to combat the stress of each of these events, yet after this past month of really digging into my relationship with alcohol, the real reason I reached for the bottle was the lack of human connection inherent in each trauma. Locking ourselves away is anti-conversational. It’s anti-community. All my outlets for dialogue and human interaction were gone at once, and all that was left was wine and my phone. No wonder I dove into Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and my newsfeed with a vengeance—I was searching for conversation. For interaction. For someone to talk to.

The answer then is yes, my addiction to wine and the smartphone are one and the same, and both are used to fill in a gap of sadness, for I miss humans, even if they don’t quite care to chat.

Only the Bars Have Truly Reopened

In normal times, in order to soothe the empty nest sadness and fill my life with conversation, I would have joined a local volunteer organization by now. Yet looking into local opportunities in Chicago and Santa Cruz, many non-profits that were thriving before the pandemic are still closed or limiting the number of people who can participate. It’s the same with shops and other organizations. Strangely though, the few opportunities at the moment to gather and work are alcohol fueled. People are throwing parties, albeit nervously, and with them comes the booze. The bars and restaurants are open, and I’ve gone out to dinner with many folks here in Chicago, every restaurant with a “Hiring” sign. Yet the book studies and conferences that used to nourish me are still often online only. People don’t gather for the stitch and bitch at my local yarn shop because they will only do it outdoors and it’s too cold right now. At every turn, the sober events are stifled with masking requirements, social distancing, and awkward behaviors, however the booze laden industry is thriving. We’re willing to gather without any restrictions to drink and eat, but still have to check our temperatures to go to a meeting at the library or enter a museum. Why is this?

Could it be that conversation scares most people, so unless there’s booze, we’re giving up the sober reasons for community?

Some in-person learning and teaching is starting to happen again, and I have hope that as we enter year three of life with Covid, more opportunities for in-person book clubs, retreats, conferences, and volunteer work will arise. They have to, or the world is going to fall apart.

Connection is Survival

It’s not just us Chatty Cathys who need dialogue to live. Obviously, there would be no money in social media if most humans didn’t crave it. It’s been said that only 10% of social media accounts actually contribute to the content online, the rest are called lurkers. The scrollers, engaging without engagement. I imagine many people are afraid of the deeper layers that real conversation can bring. The fact that most people still don’t want to return to work, whether in the service industry or in the office, shows that something about being together hurts us, yet even the quietest among us wastes hours scrolling into the cyber-expanse, guided by algorithms to watch one more YouTube video or podcast. Distraction is on the rise. Distracted parenting is a real concern for development psychologists. Booze is now a regular thing at playdates. A recent survey said 30% of participants had witnessed a mother getting drunk at a playdate. We’re drifting apart and at the moment, booze and our smartphones are the glue holding us together.

One of the things they say happens when you remove alcohol from your system is lucid dreaming. Normally this takes about three weeks, and of course, for this chatty one, the dreams have been doozies, unearthing my greatest fears. I could call these nightmares, and they certainly feel that way when I’m in them, but in reality, it’s my subconscious having a conversation with me. As a conversationalist, I truly appreciate this. I’ll end this essay with one of the latest intergalactic tours within my psyche…

I dreamt the other day that the world was falling apart around me. Walt, my son Michael, and I were in a city and during the day, there was chaos. Not as violent as what we fantasize about in our post-apocalyptic movies and stories, but it wasn’t great. Some people were arguing, yelling, beating each other, but most were simply not doing anything. They sat on park benches, staring into space. Others lay down in the grass or along the streets, drifting into sleep and then death. I discovered that to survive, we had to get on a train and ride it around the city all day. We could only venture home or out to explore at night, when everyone else who was still alive, locked themselves in their homes.

On the train, people were alive and animated. They were playing boardgames, talking, and watching the world outside as it fell apart. It was like the charm in Sleeping Beauty was taking over and the population was falling asleep where they stood, one-by-one. When the sun set, the train would stop and all of us would get out and explore the state of the world. I recall one scene where we were inside an indoor water park. The pool water was murky and dirty, its pipes rusting and filters clogged, plastic cups, towels, toys, and flip-flop sandals were strewn about, as if no one had been there to clean it or do any work in ages. Rain was leaking in through a crack in the ceiling. Where were the people? We quickly left and boarded the train, where life was still happening, even if the rest of the world was fading away.

This dream centered on my fear of losing connection with the world. This is what I fear most about letting go of the smartphone and my wine, because both simultaneously satisfy my need for connection while also easing the pain of a bigger truth—the world has lost its connection in the physical aspect. It is fading away. Stores, towns, organizations, and office spaces are empty and dying. We are isolated, and this terrifies a person like me. I don’t want to turn to my phone, or ChatGPT, to connect. This reality hurts my heart. The wine takes away the pain for a little bit.

I’m searching for that community on the train, the Peace Train is what I’ve started calling it, where in-person dialogue beyond the small talk is happening. The sort of conversation that builds nations rather than tears them apart. The sort of conversation that enlivens us, rather than lulls us to sleep.

Perhaps, this has always been the case for me, only now it’s getting harder to pretend it doesn’t hurt. Chatty Cathy could smile and drink away the pain when interrupted or told to be quiet. Katerina, on the other hand, is more aware, more demanding. She is the part of me who sees and tells. It’s her whole purpose and even if others won’t listen to her, I damn well better. She’s in my head, after all 😉