there's no "i" in "we"
i spent last weekend in Truckee/Tahoe/Reno with friends, the most notable being One More Potential Lover*. It was a fun weekend, a nice break after moving and working and stressing for so long, and a welcome opportunity to get to know her much better. I've done plenty of overthinking on the whole thing, both in the midst of the weekend and of course afterwards, so i'll share just one of those little things and try to figure it out better for myself.
One of the things i caught myself doing in random conversation was using we as an unqualified pronoun. It started out subconsciously, and then i caught myself doing it. Afraid that someone might actually force me to qualify who the we was in the story, i tried to correct my behavior and switch it to I, and found it to be difficult. It became my own version of the pronoun game, though my own variation lately seems to be a friend game, where lovers are referred to simply as a friend to avoid more pointed questions.
So what's the big deal? I dunno, i guess it just feels like deception, which i don't really care for. There are plenty of stories from my recent past that go something like this:
* ya, that's too long for a pseudonymn, but we'll go with it for now.
One of the things i caught myself doing in random conversation was using we as an unqualified pronoun. It started out subconsciously, and then i caught myself doing it. Afraid that someone might actually force me to qualify who the we was in the story, i tried to correct my behavior and switch it to I, and found it to be difficult. It became my own version of the pronoun game, though my own variation lately seems to be a friend game, where lovers are referred to simply as a friend to avoid more pointed questions.
So what's the big deal? I dunno, i guess it just feels like deception, which i don't really care for. There are plenty of stories from my recent past that go something like this:
we looked at buying a house over there...They're all past tense of course, a life once lived. In every case i could go ahead and switch the we to i and the story remains the same. But it wasn't i that did those things, it was a we that i was only half of. I'm rambling, but you get it, right? My own little identity mish-mash. It's not that i want to strike out all of the past and remember it as me living solo, but i also don't know how to lightly step through the narratives with any new potential lovers (who, more often than not, really don't want to hear you talk about your ex's).
when we went on vacation to...
at some point we considered...
* ya, that's too long for a pseudonymn, but we'll go with it for now.
posted by joe @ 3:31 PM
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