On the Subject of Being Interesting

You said you find me interesting and I laughed. I think momentarily you were hurt. I regret that. I needed to explain. To find the words that would exactly convey why I'm not. Not in the way you think.

You see, I spend so many hours alone. Days of isolation. Not opening my mouth to speak, never uttering a word. There's no one to utter them to. And my voice seems deafening if I dare to use it to break the silence of the void.

Instead I think. A lot. And those thoughts become explorations way beyond my limited experience or knowledge. I wonder if animals think and if they do what they think. And if they grieve. And if they love. And if the waves ever tire of their constant reaching for the shore, only to be dragged back by the tide. And if time travel were possible, how many lives might be saved by one well placed bullet into one badly conceived mind. And whether lives on other earths like ours are thinking the same thoughts I'm thinking at the same moment I'm thinking them. And my head becomes so full of thoughts like these and so muddled and confused that I think I'm going mad and if anyone could hear them they'd know I was for sure.

And then I speak with you, late into the night, and I share them, and you listen. You listen and reflect them. Adding your own slant. Your own twist. Your own equally random and wonderful explorations to worlds and thinkings that your own mind takes you and I feel I've come home. Home to somewhere safe.

You say I'm interesting, yet I'm only interesting when I have a bounce back. If I have no one to talk to, and therefore no reason to speak, how could I be interesting except silently in my own head and that would either make me arrogant or insane. When I speak with you, the radar pings out and returns back with data received. A sense of shape and distance over the thousands of miles are analysed and formed into rational thought from that data. Information logged. Interest piqued.

You say I interest you, but when there's a sounding board to reflect against, and hear echoes of thoughts bounce back, in agreement or otherwise, only then do I become interesting. And I wonder. Who is the interesting one in this exchange? Is it you or I?

And if only one of us stopped speaking, the world would be quiet and the silence deafening as the void closed in again, leaving the other alone in the darkness and fearing insanity.