Conversation filters

Last night I had a dream about going back to work. Everything was fine at the literacy center, but when I got into the main library, the librarians cried to see me and said they’d missed me so much. I woke up and realized I feel really guilty because I told them I was moving in January, and now the date keeps getting pushed back and back, so I feel like I lied to people I care about. I’m sure it’s not a big deal, but I’m weird like that. I’d prefer to tell nothing but the truth, ever, and any form of truth-fuzzing — however harmless — makes me acutely uncomfortable.

Once, when I was a freshman in high school, we told my piano teacher that I would have to miss a recital because I had a soccer game. Then I ended up not going to the game, for some reason I can’t remember. When I got to my piano lesson the following week, my teacher asked how the game went, and I explained that I hadn’t gone after all. Later, when I told my mom, she got mad at me because she’d told the teacher that we’d lost the game. Then I got mad at her, because how could I have known she would say that? And now we both looked stupid.

I understand the preference for clean, neat white lies over the complicated truth. But I can’t do it, at least not as a matter of course. It’s no fun telling the whole story when things are so messy and complex, and sometimes it can be quite awkward. But I always feel so wrong when I fib, too. I always wonder whether everyone else just got over this weird feeling back when they were kids, and I just somehow never got the practice.

So I was telling all this to Erik, and he told me the next time someone asks me about something and I don’t want to lie, I should just say, “Well, it’s complicated, but the short answer is ______.” Then I realized that the reason Erik knows to do this and I don’t, is that Erik has a very strong thought-to-speech filter, and I don’t have any. Erik thinks first and then thinks some more, and finally if he thinks it’s appropriate, he translates that thought into speech — but not always. He’s much more private than I am, whereas my fondness for truth-telling comes from a penchant for sharing everything that passes through my head (often while I’m thinking it, which has gotten me into trouble more than once!). My thoughts don’t stay in my head; they come out as words, either in speech or on the page or the screen. It’s the reason I talk so much, the reason I keep this journal — and the reason I have so much trouble when the truth is too complicated to go straight from my brain to my mouth.

Most people’s conversation filters are fairly complex, and allow for multiple layers of private and public thoughts.

My filters are minimal, and the boundaries between public and private are very fluid.

Erik thinks my lack of conversation filter is a good thing, because it means I’m very open and truthful. But, as I say, it’s gotten me into trouble more than once, so I can’t help but wonder whether maybe I should start monitoring my words more. We’ll see.