Taking a break from our Radiant friends tonight because I haven’t quite completed the picture of what happens next yet (one of those “I know where I’m going but not how to get there” things) and because I am not feeling very well today.

It started when, around the time Joe and I were to leave for my therapist’s appointment, our building’s fire alarm went off. This is the first time it’s happened since we moved in, and when it started, I had no idea what it was. Turns out, our building wide fire alarm sounds like the sort of soft “ding!” sound I associate with being in a care that is about to make a left turn.

Only MUCH LOUDER, of course. As it should be. The point is to save people’s lives, after all.

And while I definitely prefer this fire alarm to the one in our last building (an old fashioned ringer model, like the bell that told us kids to come in from recess, only MUCH LOUDER), an argument could be made that a soft ding sound does not convey the sense of urgency or alarm that something harsher does.

Honestly, I could go either way on that one.

Either way, it was a shock to the nervous system, and I had to get dressed et al in a hurry. We were about to leave for therapy anyone, so I lost maybe five minutes of lying in bed listening to music time, but it was still a shock to the system.

And I kind of feel like I haven’t caught up since. What a fragile, trembling thing I am!

Anyhoo, I got to therapy and had a session. It was largely lame. I told him about my theory that I intimidate people, but I was too sleepy and jangled to put it across properly and it didn’t go anywhere.

It occurs to me that one of my main problems with therapy is that I am quite often tired or groggy and thus I can’t think of what to say very well, and via that selfsame intimidation (or whatever you want to call it), I have trained my therapist to more or less let me talk most of the time, so….. that is a recipe for bad therapy right there.

All these years, and I still haven’t figured out how this whole life thing works for me. I mean, for me personally. I don’t really understand what effect I have on others and what exactly I am adding to the world by being who I am.

And I kinda want to know. Hard to change paths to the right one if you don’t even know where you are. I know that I can be charming and magnetic, and that I am highly intelligent, but I think I have been hiding behind a naive innocence about how that works for the people I interact with for far too long.

As if always meaning well (or at least, meaning no harm) cures all ills!

So I am trying to peel back those layers of ignorance and get some sort of sense of how I effect people, and this intimidation business is a big part of that.

And it’s nothing the people who know me can help with, because obviously they are not intimidated by me. They know me, and they know that I am a sweet natured person who can be a total spazz and very absentminded. I am a head in the clouds dreamer type, and quite harmless, honestly.

Well, that’s what I used to think. But lately I find myself casting my mind back to the day when two different professors, without any idea the other was doing it, took me aside and talked to me about my dominating class discussions.

This was a newsflash for me because I had never thought of myself as dominating anything. Comes with being the youngest child. You get so used to having no power that it never occurs to you to be careful with the power you have.

Anyhow, I remember them both mentioning things like how my tone of voice made it sound like I was angry and might remind a lot of people of people who had bullied them in the past (what, me a bully? That’s unpossible!), how my height leads to me unconsciously “looming” over people, and other things I had no idea I was doing.

It really made me think about the effect I have on people. When you feel like nobody is listening, you tend to turn up the volume on your personality until they do. I was screaming down the well. Turns out…. there’s people down there!

And they are not at all well.

That, and a later talk I had with the two Brians (dog bless them for having the patience to get through to me) made me realize that I have a responsibility to, in essence, know my own strength. And use it wisely.

And I think I got that. I am certainly a lot less arrogant and a lot more reasonable and polite in discussion than I was when I was 20 years old. I have learned that the world is not the dinner table of my childhood and that I do not have the right to use whatever force I can to ensure my place in the discussion.

But lately I have been wondering if there is still some of that left in me. I still tend to state what I believe with the vehemence with which I believe it, and that is considerable. It’s especially problematic when multiplied by my strong personality and presence. It is still, at least a little bit, like I am shouting through a megaphone at people.

And on some level, even trying to intimidate them. Not being conscious of status wrangling does not necessarily make one immune to it. Perhaps I do sometimes dominate people without knowing it. I’m human.

And I can’t shake the feeling that a vital truth about myself lies at the end of this particular path.

I am dying to know what it is.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.