The Journal Of The InnKeeper

I got to explain to my mother part of what makes my relationship to tacit special: We argue over which rules of grammar to use.

We don't have *serious* arguments over grammar. And what I mean by that, we are both completely serious in our positions, but the arguments aren't really arguments - they're not a big deal and we're not emotionally invested in the outcome, we're just stating (and sticking to) our positions.

While explaining to my mom that I'm a staunch supporter of the Oxford comma, I realized something by her reaction. She was an English major in school, but she never actually made it to college. She got married right out of high school and embarked on that oh-so-desired-by-1950s-mentality career for women of "secretary", where her "English class" skills were most useful for a woman in her class and era. Which means that she actually had no idea what I meant when I said that I preferred the Oxford comma, in spite of being an intelligent woman who specialized in the exact subject where one would have learned about it.

I also realized that she and my dad would never have an argument, serious or otherwise, about grammar, or any kind of intellectual pursuit. They argue about money, how to punish a misbehaving child, whether or not my mom is a backseat driver, whether my dad is being inappropriate, stuff like that. There were never political discussions at our dinner table unless I brought it up from something I learned in school. They don't discuss research or science unless I bring it up. They're both completely in favor of science (they both boggled at me, for instance, when I revealed to them the existence of antivaxxers), but to them, science is a given and not worth debating or discussing. When scientists tell them something is so, they accept it and move on. The implications of said research isn't of any interest to them.

I just got a new therapist - the first time I've ever had any kind of therapy - so we're spending a lot of time working on the basics and establishing foundations. I'm finding this part a bit tedious because I already know a lot of it and I want to skip over the basics and get to the advanced techniques that I haven't learned yet. I had this problem in college too, where I was required to take Intro To Tech Theater 101 after having already worked in the business for, at the time, 15 years.

Talking with my therapist about loss and grief, for example, he said something about how most people don't think about death and their own mortality, so when they hit the age I'm not far away from, with friends now getting heart conditions or dying and caring for ailing parents and facing retirement with no money in the bank, well, that's basically what a midlife crisis is - facing existential questions with no prior exposure to them. I ended up disconnecting from my therapist in that moment because, well, I've spent so much time thinking about those things that the subject is now just a little boring.

Among my circle of friends, having partners who discuss existentialism with one is the norm. I first contemplated death when I went to my first funeral around age 6 or so. Then, in middle school, a kid in my school was killed in a gang-related incident (he was hit by a car that was involved in some kind of gang something or other at the time). I went to his funeral too. In 8th grade, my babysitter's son was killed in a car accident when his car skidded on some black ice and went over a cliff. His father, a doctor heading to work in the opposite direction at the same time, was first on the scene and had to pull his son's destroyed body from the wreck when the chain hoist arrived to lower him down to the crash site.

On my high school graduation day, I was asked out by a guy I had a crush on. I had to turn him down because 1) I had a boyfriend and 2) I had a graduation party that night. He promised to call me in a week or so after he got back from Disneyland, where he and some others were taking another friend for his 21st birthday. He and the birthday boy died on the drive down there. They had a joint funeral, which I attended. Only one of them had an open casket. I spent years afterwards dealing with the denial phase because I didn't see the one who asked me out, so I kept expecting him to call, forgetting that he had died. But the other friend was the first time I had seen a body. That took a while to process too.

A couple of years before that, I got pissed off at my mother for something I don't even remember and took off in my car. I thought I had calmed down by the time I headed back home, but then I decided to try to beat the speed record among my friends for this particular windy, downhill road. My car wasn't built for it and I rolled my car down the hill. I survived without a scratch, but I had plenty of time while rolling down that hill to think of everyone I ever loved and how I couldn't tell them that I was sorry for killing myself in such a stupid, senseless manner that would cause them so much grief.

During the worst of the bullying, I slipped into a depression so deep that I contemplated suicide. I learned how to disconnect myself from my emotions entirely and I felt nothing - no happiness, no sadness, I just moved through the motions. I had taken to scratching myself just to remind myself what feelings were. I didn't know it was depression, and I didn't know there was something that could be done about it. I just existed until the bullying stopped. I taught myself how to feel again. Strangely, I never stopped believing that I was worthy of love, and that self-esteem is probably the only thing that prevented me from actually killing myself. I tried to make plans to do it, but everything ended with my parents feeling pain, and the idea that I couldn't reward them for their love by causing them that kind of pain is usually what prevented me from putting any of those plans into action. I knew that I was loved, and I knew that I would continue to be loved. I've never questioned that.

I've looked into the void. I've contemplated the hard questions - who am I? Where did I come from? What is my purpose? What else is there? And so have many of my friends. That's partly the reason why we're friends. We *think* about things. And that's why I was first attracted to Franklin - he *thinks* about things. He makes me think about things. He makes me think about why I think what I think. He encourages my curiosity to understand why other people think the way they think. He posts things like that Interview dream that I reposted last night, and the twists and turns in his brain always, without fail, make me fall in love with him all over again. I'm fascinated by how his brain works and I love to watch it go through its processes.

I don't generally consider myself sapiosexual because intelligence is not always necessary for me to be physically attracted to someone, and in many cases, intelligence alone is not sufficient for me to develop either attraction or emotional connection to someone. But intelligence is definitely the cornerstone of my relationship with Franklin, at least on my end - his intelligence and his respect for my intelligence, even if I'm wrong about something.

So what makes my relationship with tacit so special and meaningful to me is that sometimes we argue over shit like the Oxford comma. Because who cares about a freaking comma? We do, because we care about precision, about thinking, about practical applications, and about a million other things that I've learned in my life that other people don't even bother to consider until they get smacked across the face with them and then they have to freak out because they don't know what to do with that knowledge now that they have it. My social set (including online) is self-selected, but really, we're anomalies.

This is actually a rare quality to find in another person - the dedication to knowledge and understanding, as well as the sense of self-worth that leads us both to holding our position in the face of opposition from someone we care greatly about is kind of the foundation of our entire relationship. All because we argue about grammar.