I think (way too much about dumb stuff) therefore I am (neurotic)

One friend wrote today and said I must be exhausted thinking about stuff this much. And I am. I am.

Although I'm obviously used to it. And used to being around others like me. First of all Jews. I guess after 6,000 years of not being liked it makes sense that we're desperate to curb the tide of that disapproval. And second, I often have a lot to relate to with people who, like me, leave every conversation thinking, "Oh God, was that the wrong thing to say?" so we tend to attract each other.

But I'm not only Jewish--I'm only half (or to some people, not at all. Just ask the Rabbi from Jersey we once found in the studio--sitting on an amp he'd brought to trade that night--playing guitar and speaking Portuguese with Alex). Growing up, I always thought of myself as half-Irish, half-Jewish, in an uncomplicated way. We celebrated Hanukah and Christmas, Passover and Easter. We lit a candle on Yom Kippur. We didn't speak Hebrew and we didn't say the Lord's Prayer. Heather called every night of Hanukah and asked me what I got (though by the 5th night or so it had usually dwindled down to a sparkly pencil or something equivalent). We made Christmas cookies and sang carols. My 10th-grade ethnic heritage pie chart was actually much simpler than most people's. Half and half. Some kids had 16 slices. Half a dozen squeezed in a Mohican great-great-aunt or uncle.

It was only in college that I became identified as Jewish. My name is Rachel Federman. I look Jewish. I walk into a room sliding against the wall, eyes down at the floor. Many of my friends were what would be considered "minorities" and I became one as well.

Anyway it was my mom, from that good, non-neurotic, guilty but silent, I said I hope the road-rises-up-to-meet you and I meant it stock, who reached her limit one night about a decade ago when she was trying to sleep but could hear my dad and I talking in the basement (through the heating vent). It was close to midnight, the conversation had gone on for an hour at least without making much progress. When one of us launched into the 10th round of "Then again, maybe what he meant was..." my mom screamed out, "Make it stop, make it stop!" We later asked if she was annoyed that the noise was keeping her up. Not at all. It was the conversation itself, it just didn't sound like it would ever, ever end.



Comments

  1. Of course, I am just dying to know what you and your dad were endlessly debating. Because, you know, I'm sure I would have been able to bring more insight to the table. Or at least another voice. And I think most people have a constant neurotic dialogue going on in their heads, to some extent. Perhaps some are just better at tuning it out than others. Sometimes I have to yell at myself, in my head, to stop the obsessive loop of debate, if I've done something that actually makes me wince upon (repeated) recollection. Which happens, on average, maybe about once a week.

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  2. There are so many notions, fragments, memories and thoughts that fly through your mind unattended in the split second between someone's comment to you and your reply that an hour is barely enough time to scratch the surface of unpacking what occurred. Sometimes that unpacking is essential; but if you did it religiously, you'd spend the last 90 years of your life unpacking the first day.

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  3. I had a fit of thinking too much yesterday. I have this habit of considering the 500 different outcomes of any action I take. Useful in the workplace for making a good plan, paralyzing in real life where you can't really make one.

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  4. What people don't realize when they call the Jew neurotic is, have they ever read the Talmud? Hello...! We Jews try to explain that we just want to be clear...we're searching for understanding that is really needed.

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  5. Between you, Liz, Hawkeye and Evie, I am reeling at the uncanny nature of the collective unconscious: could I be all of you at once? "What she said!" Isn't that the true brilliance of good writing, that it points to who we knew we were but hadn't figured out how to say...or, what's that quote? I guess I've said it all a bit off, a bit wrong, here in cyberspace, and I'll go to sleep fitfully, thinking of what I might have done and said instead, wondering if anything could be more important than this latest little slip-up. Then I'll awake to "daughter crying" and a whole new crop of shoulda-coulda-woulda's will greet me around every corner of the once-bright day.

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  6. Leah -- what was the example you had about the sign in the store window?

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  7. k.b.e: Talk about good writing; what a lovely phrase: greet me around every corner of the once-bright day.

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