Lymus Interruptus

Most people would probably agree that trying to have a conversation with someone who constantly interrupts borders on insanity—pointless, frustrating, unlikely to change. I’ve never had much patience with people for whom it seems impossible to hold their tongues. And to my knowledge, interrupting others had never been an issue for me. I can’t recall people complaining to me about it, and I’m quite sure it would have made my wife’s Top Ten list of personal habits to “work on” if it had been issue before now.

Sure, the lively exchange of ideas between or among friends is one thing, when everyone’s brains are clicking on overdrive and the thoughts come faster than words. Or when we exchange heated words, our own anger or hurt or fear outweigh our senses of social propriety and we tend to bound forward, heedless of the one with whom we are engaged in battle.

But in the course of normal conversation with friends and family, lately I have developed the annoying and shameful habit of interrupting others when they’re speaking. It’s terrible, and I don’t even know I’m doing it until it’s too late.

I find myself, too, not only using the wrong words or forgetting words altogether, but giving voice to thoughts I would rather have kept to myself. So far it has been mostly about inconsequential things, or when I’m in one of my increasingly frequent moments of pique, to which I will admit I’ve always been prone. But I used to be able to control what came out of my mouth, carefully weigh my words.

Now I’m lucky to remember the end of a sentence once I pass the half-way point. And if I’m interrupted by anything, I not only lose track of what I was saying but of what the other person was saying, and much of the time what we were even talking about to begin with.

My wife suspects this drives my new annoying habit of interrupting; that I’m afraid I’ll forget what I wanted to say in response to something in a conversation, so I blurt it out. She’s probably right. But still, it’s rude and it drives us all crazy. It assumes that I know, before the other person has finished speaking, what they were about to say, have processed it, and have readied an appropriate response. None of which is the case when I’m drawing breath to speak after my conversational partner has uttered only five words.

Soon no one will want to talk to me at all anymore. As a lifelong social isolationist, three months ago I would not have considered this a great blow. Then, I still worked full time and my days filled with coworkers, acquaintances, friends. Being polite, friendly, professional drained me, more and more as my physical health declined. I longed for days uninterrupted by the voice of another human being, unfettered by the expectations to play nice and get along when I hurt so much I really just wanted to go back to bed and cry.

At the same time, though, I resisted taking a leave from work because I didn’t want my days to be filled with only my own voice. I wanted the option to go back to bed and cry, but I didn’t want that to be how I actually spent my days. But it is. And I am fortunate to have worked for the same employer for over a decade, to have the opportunity to take this time to get healthy without worrying too much about paying the bills and educating my child.

The only thing is, I’m not getting healthier. I can interrupt every conversation I have from now until I draw my last breath, and it won’t make me remember my words, won’t keep me from losing track of my thoughts, won’t undo the damage the spirochetes have done to my brain. And I can spend each day in bed, until my days are done and it’s time to donate this wreck of a body to science, but it won’t change the outcome.

I’ve undertaken this new course of antibiotic treatment because what I’ve been doing for the past year wasn’t enough for me. And it’s tough (duh). But I remembered yesterday something a friend, who is a practicing western physician and knows a little about Lyme, said by way of encouragement about this new treatment plan. It’s got an average 35% success rate—and that’s good! WTF? Talk about a light at the end of a tunnel.

After spending the next two years praying for either sleep or death (with no preference as to which method finally delivers even a modicum of peace from the endless unrelenting pain) I have a 35% chance of truly being better and getting my life back. Well, that is exciting news. I’ll no doubt interrupt at least half a dozen conversations today in my exuberance to spread the joyous word.

I just interrupted myself and thought it would be fun to go online and find out what else I have a 35% chance of doing, getting, or otherwise being impacted by. But as I sat looking at the screen, I couldn’t think of anything. I typed in “statistical probability” and the predictive software guessed I was looking for info on either the probability of the theory of human evolution being correct or whether life exists on other planets.

Where did we come from? Where are we going? And are we really as alone as we feel? Questions of the ages, and I am once again reminded of my mote-like existence in comparison to the wider world around me.