by AntigoneUnbound » Thu Jun 19, 2003 4:36 pm
Gods Served and Abandoned
Disclaimers:
(1) When I say that Dick Cheney oughtta be sucked under a snow blower, I’m not advocating violence. It’s just a figure of speech.
(2) Judy, when I told you back in ’97 that we made a great couple, I was being very romantic, but certainly wasn’t suggesting that stalking me after the break-up would be understandable or acceptable.
(3) I don’t own Tara or Willow or any of these fine people except Aunt Beverly. She’s mine.
Spoilers:
Up to season 5. I’ve played slightly with the timing of a certain BigBad’s appearance, with some implications for Dawn’s entrance.
Rating:
R for now; if it changes, I’ll give heads-up.
Distribution:
Sure, with acknowledgement.
Feedback:
I would love it in a jug. I would love it in a mug. I would love it tossed like petals on my living room rug.
*****
Part 32
*****
"Baby, do you want to talk?" Forgotten was the chemistry exam. All that mattered, the only reality of import, was the gentle, bereft woman leaning against her.
"I don’t think I have the energy to speak any more. I mean it, Willow—I feel like my mind are heart are just too exhausted to formulate a coherent thought, much less summon up the energy to communicate it." Tara looked up anxiously. "Is that OK? Does it feel like I’m avoiding it all?"
"God, no. I can feel your exhaustion just rolling off of you. C’mon—let’s go to bed. None of this is going anywhere, much as we might want it to."
A few minutes later, as they stretched out beneath the covers and entwined themselves into one another like the petals of an intricate flower, Tara mumbled, "God, she came all the way from Texas…Just because she was worried about me."
"Well, Tara Maclay, you’re an easy person to love," Willow whispered against her partner’s soft hair, as much to herself as to her beloved.
*****
When Tara met Willow for mochas the next day during their one shared break, she was considerably more energized than she had been at the close of the previous evening.
"Think about it, Will…She knew my dad—both of them—when they were young. I mean, Nathan was a teenager when she was born, but she still knew him then. And she was only two years younger than Quinn, so she knew him virtually all of his life." She fell quiet for a moment, and then added softly, "All of his life, which is now over."
Willow ached for her partner. To some degree (albeit a far lesser one), she ached for everyone in the Maclay family—the boy whose mother left his father because that father was a demon, or so she said; the young man who had fallen so hard for his brother’s wife, eventually abandoning his own family to drink himself to death alone in a strange city; the wife and daughter he had left behind…Some very small part of her even felt a sliver of compassion for Donnie—less loved, it would seem, by his mother and beaten by his father. What a sad, twisted legacy her beloved had been given…And how bravely she fought it.
"Are you gonna tell Beverly about your mom and Quinn?" she finally asked.
"I don’t know," Tara replied slowly. "Part of me feels like it’s not my information to share, you know? I mean, it doesn’t just involve me."
"Seems to me it involves you as much as it does anybody else," Willow countered. More hesitantly, she added, "And Tara—two of the other people that it does involve are…they’re dead."
But Tara just shook her head. "This may sound crazy, but I still feel some sense of responsibility to them, Will; especially to Mom. I know they’re beyond any kind of judgement or recrimination, but…but it still doesn’t feel entirely mine. At the same, I want to tell her. I think that might help it make more sense."
Willow couldn’t honestly say that she completely understood. Her own experiences with death had been of the profoundly unnatural variety, little complicated with the intricacies of family secrets. Her father’s parents had died before she was born; her mother’s parents lived in Phoenix. She saw them perhaps once every three years. Tara’s family was so tightly interwoven, so incredibly entangled in each other’s lives…and yet, for all of that, so alienated and split off. The ones who did love, it appeared, either died or suffered irreparable heart-ache. Willow intended to see that Tara would be the one to break that legacy.
After a moment, she offered, "Beverly seems nice—really funny, too."
"And a card-carrying Friend of Dorothy, it would appear," Tara added with a small laugh. "How cool is that?"
"Yeah, apparently she had a crush on your mom as well. What’s it like, thinking of your mom as some total hottie?"
Tara looked at her somewhat askance. "Actually, Will, I don’t really think of my mom as a total hottie, you know? I mean, it’s hard to put those two nouns in the same sentence."
"Still, Julia McKinnon Maclay had some major love mojo workin’ for her…just like her daughter," Willow added, raising Tara’s hand to her lips.
"Well, I don’t think I have the numbers working for me that she did," Tara replied, shaking her head. "I mean, it’s not like the masses have lined up to savor the experience that is me."
"They should," Willow countered promptly. "There should be a web site, or a board somewhere, where people could use all sorts of different colored pens—of the electronic variety, of course—devoted to the loveliness of Tara Maclay."
"Yeah, well, I’m sure somebody will get right on that," Tara replied, giving a wide and utterly artificial smile. "Meanwhile, I got my hands full with one very fascinating witch. That’s all I want."
"Honestly—you do say the most charming things, Miss Maclay," Willow said demurely, giving her best imitation of a southern belle. Her best wasn’t terribly good, but Willow could see that Tara found it terribly endearing.
*****
Between her Art History and Women’s Studies courses, Tara phoned her aunt to see if she would like to join them for dinner. Beverly was apparently out enjoying the infinite delights of Sunnydale, so Tara simply left a message. When she got back to her dorm room later that afternoon, Beverly had left her own message, suggesting that Tara and Willow pick out a restaurant and she would pick them up at seven unless she heard differently.
"How about La Belle Maison?" Willow asked after Tara updated her on the plans.
"Sure. Just give me time to knock off the local convenience store and we should have just enough cash for appetizers." She shook her head in exasperation. "Honestly, Willow, have you ever noticed that no one in our social circle holds down a job except Xander, yet we all act as if we have money wafting into our wallets while we sleep?"
"I know, I know," Willow admitted. "OK, so how about Red Lobster? I’m sure we all love seafood."
Tara looked up at her quickly in the mirror, but Willow’s expression was pure innocence. "Yeah—that sounds good…more affordable than Maison, but a step up from ‘Earl’s Taco Tavern.’"
True to her message, Beverly showed up promptly at seven. "Oh, God, I love seafood," she exclaimed when Tara presented their dining suggestion. Studiously avoiding Tara’s eyes, Willow shrugged into her windbreaker and followed them both out the door.
Dinner was somewhat less emotional than the previous night had been—partly because they were in public, and partly because Tara had spent a considerable part of the day trying to center herself. She refused to let any news from her family of origin dislodge the sun from her own system. She had a truth now—that Life was meaningful, that she herself had worth—and she wouldn’t go back to that place where everything revolved around her father’s angry stillness and her brother’s angry abuse.
Beverly had insisted on picking up the tab. "I remember how broke I was in college," she maintained over their arguments. "I really want to do this. And if you two insist on sharing an appetizer and calling it dinner, I’ll dump shrimp shells over both your heads."
Later, as they nibbled at the cheddar biscuits and their salads, Beverly asked, "So—how you doin' today, Tara? I know last night was pretty intense."
"Better, thanks," Tara replied around a mouthful of biscuit. "I still can’t believe you flew all the way here just to talk to me, Aunt Bev, but I hope you have some idea of just how much it means to me."
"Ah, well, that’s the kind of debt best repaid by a return visit," her aunt nodded, giving Tara a wry grin.
"Aunt Beverly, I know I didn’t give you much to go on last night; I mean, I was pretty vague with the details," Tara acknowledged.
"Are you kidding? You made Clinton sound downright explicit about Lewinsky," Beverly replied dryly. "But I figured you had your reasons."
"Yeah, well, I feel like you deserve a little more info than what I gave you," Tara said. Looking at Willow sitting beside her, Tara linked their fingers and sighed. "OK…See, the thing is—"
"Two crab-leg dinners and an Admiral’s Feast."
Aunt Beverly caught her eye over the server’s arm. "Yeah, crab legs always are the thing, aren’t they?"
When their dinners were duly arranged before them, Tara continued. "Aunt Bev, I just found out some pretty mind-bending news." She felt Willow’s fingers press reassuringly into her own. "Dad told me…" Here she drew a deep breath. "Dad told me that Mom had an affair when they were married."
Beverly’s eyebrows shot upward. "Whoa…I have to say, that really surprises me. I mean, I knew they were having a rough time after the miscarriage, but still…"
"Yeah, well, it gets better," Tara attempted a weak laugh. "I was conceived in that affair."
Now Beverly put aside all pretense of eating. "Jesus H. Tap-Dancing Christ, Tara," she breathed. "You are kidding me!"
"Oh, and don’t I wish I were," Tara replied. "No, this is pretty much the Gospel According to All Indications."
"God, Sweetie…I don’t know what to say." Her aunt looked at her with a mixture of disbelief and compassion.
"OK, so remember how I said it got better? Well, get ready for the Grand Finale." Tara could feel herself trembling. For a moment, it seemed that Willow’s hand on her back was the only thing that kept her from flying out of her chair with the force of her agitation.
"This is really gonna fuck with me, isn’t it?" Beverly asked, her eyes narrowing.
"Yeah, probably," Tara acknowledged simply. "It turns out that Mom was having an affair with—she was having an affair with Quinn." There—she’d said it. Did she regret it?
"Quinn?" Beverly gaped incredulously. "You cannot be serious!"
Tara didn’t bother to respond to the statement. She knew that Beverly’s mind would wend its way, however reluctantly, to the reality of the situation on its own. After a few minutes of profoundly uncomfortable silence, Beverly let out a breath that she seemed to have been holding since Tara first spoke.
"Quinn…and Julia." Her eyes glittered suddenly under the harsh fluorescent lights. "Why am I surprised…"
"Wait, are you saying you should have guessed?" Willow asked, leaning forward.
"God, no— at least not suspected, or predicted," Beverly replied, shaking her head. "But it was obvious that Quinn and Margaret weren’t happy, and God knows everybody was just drawn to Julia’s spirit, and brightness. I mean, when I think about it, Quinn and Julia made a more natural couple than either of them did with the people they actually married." She shrugged helplessly. "Quinn and Julia were both basically happy people, light people, if that makes sense. Nathan and Margaret—they’ve always been more serious, even solemn. Neither of them were what you’d call sociable, or easy-going." She stopped, apparently still trying to rearrange the pieces in this altered puzzle she’d suddenly been handed.
Finally, she looked up, curiosity in her gaze. "Tara, how in heaven’s name did all of this come out? Is there something going on? Something medical, that you needed to be told about this?"
Even in the pain of this moment, Tara was moved by her aunt’s concern. "No, Aunt Bev, it’s nothing like that." She hesitated, looking to Willow in silent questioning.
Do I go ahead and give the uncensored version? Willow simply shrugged, as if assuring Tara that this was her story, and Willow would support whatever Tara wanted to do with it.
"OK, let’s move on to Act II of ‘The Dinner of Infinite Surprises,’" Tara finally said, squaring her shoulders.
"Fine, but I want Ashley Judd playing my part in the Hollywood film version," Beverly replied promptly. At the sight of four raised eyebrows, she defended herself. "What? We could work closely together; I could help her get into my psyche."
"Not to mention your pants," Tara added, grinning in spite of herself.
"Well, there is that," her aunt grudgingly concurred. "OK, so I just thought we all needed a breather there for minute. At least, I know I did." She nodded gently to Tara. "OK, Sweetie—on to Act II."
As succinctly as possible, Tara told her aunt the story: Nathan’s original lie that the women in the family carried demon in them; Tara’s own belief growing up that she would manifest that demon on her twentieth birthday; the subsequent discovery that Tara carried no demon within her (she omitted many of those details, including Spike’s role in debunking that myth); and the eventual revelations about Nathan’s father and his own demon heritage.
Through it all, Beverly sat quietly, looking at Willow occasionally as if to ensure that they were both listening to the same narrative. When Tara finally finished, her aunt gazed at her intently. After a few moments, she asked, "So Nathan says that his biological father was—what did you call it?—a Ghirardelli demon?"
"Zhordellian," Tara corrected her.
"Uh-huh," Beverly responded slowly. "Right. And this revelation did not prompt you to have him evaluated for a possible involuntary psychiatric commitment?"
Willow and Tara exchanged quick glances. Apparently, Beverly wasn’t so much for the demons; for their actual existence, to be exact.
"Well," Willow hedged, "he seemed to believe it, and that seemed to be the main thing."
"So? I believed that Virgil Wakefield down at the Baptist church was Santa Claus’s younger brother because they looked so much alike, but to my knowledge, they don’t exchange birthday cards." She shook her head as if unable to accept that her brother believed such a thing so deeply.
"And you, Tara," Beverly continued, "you grew up thinking you had demon in you; that your mom had demon in her. My God, that’s just insane." At Tara’s expression, she quickly amended, "No insane on your part, Sweetie—on his; on Nathan’s. I can’t believe he’d put you all through that."
"He was afraid of losing her," Tara said quietly.
"And lo and behold, lose her he did," Beverly quickly replied. "God, I feel like I wouldn’t recognize Nathan right now if he were walk through those doors and show me his driver’s license."
"I’m sorry, Aunt Bev," Tara offered after a moment. "I know we’re talking about your brothers, and your mother here."
"Yeah, well, I can’t imagine my shock comes anywhere close to what you’ve been going through," Beverly commented, placing her hand over Tara’s. "This must be hell for you, especially the part about your mom."
Tara felt tears stinging her eyes. Dammit, I’m not going to cry in the Sunnydale Red Lobster. It felt important somehow, though she couldn’t have begun to explain why.
"You’re right, Aunt Bev…It’s pretty much rocked my world. I mean, I always thought of my mom as this—I don’t know…
angel. Then I find out that she had an affair on my father, and that she took Donnie with her. Now it feels like maybe I never really knew her."
"Whoa, there." Beverly held up her hand. "I’m not saying I agree with what Julia did; not for a second. But there’s about three continents and a country mile between making a mistake—even a huge mistake—and being evil." She tightened her hold on Tara’s hand. "Even if there
were
such things as demons, Tara, your mother certainly wasn’t one."
Tara was quiet, not sure how to answer either her aunt’s defense of her mother or her flat denial that demons existed. Finally, she replied slowly, "But she had a choice, Aunt Beverly. Maybe…maybe a demon, or anyone who’s just completely malevolent, doesn’t really have a choice. Maybe it’s so much a part of their nature that they’re just acting on instinct. But a human—a decent, average human—who chooses to do something wrong—maybe that’s worse."
"I don’t know, Tara," Beverly sighed. "I certainly can’t claim to be the world’s leading ethicist. But before you convict your mother, keep in mind that she can’t testify in her own defense."
"I know that," Tara replied, somewhat more hotly than she intended. "Nobody needs to tell me that she’s gone and I can’t talk to her." She felt Willow’s hand raising to her cheek; dimly, she noticed that tears were splashing down over the soft fingers.
"Oh God, Tara, I’m sorry," Beverly said her voice filled with remorse. "I didn’t mean to imply that you were being harsh, or that you had forgotten she’s gone. You feel that more acutely than anyone else, I suspect."
"It’s OK," Tara finally replied, after she had taken a sip of water, lifting the glass with a shaking hand. "I just keep thinking that if this were some story, I’d find a letter she wrote me, explaining everything and saying she’s sorry."
"Yeah, it’d be nice to log onto 'www.deusexmachina.com' and order yourself a nice plot device," Beverly concurred.
"So you’re saying that site isn’t up and running?" Tara asked dryly.
"Server went down shortly after Tom Clancy’s last novel. May never be up again."
They ate in silence for a few minutes, though no one, Tara thought, seemed especially hungry. Mindful of her aunt’s generosity, however—in both spirit and money—Tara tried to make herself crack open several of the crab legs in front of her. She mulled over what had just emerged: her aunt had definitely not known about Quinn and her mother, though she had hardly been surprised that there was an attraction; and she appeared to have absolutely no belief whatsoever in demons.
Well that kind of puts a cap on how much detail I share about my life here in Sunnydale.
She decided she needed a change of subject, at least for awhile. "So, not to break the awkward silence or anything, but can you tell me about my grandmother?"
Beverly looked up, seemingly surprised by the question. Then she nodded. "Sure; that’s pretty easy. Well, Adele was about as different from her husband—her second husband, at least—as you can imagine. She was wound up tighter than an 8-day clock. Always nervous; always fretting and worrying about something, whether it was the furnace or your eternal soul."
"Pretty religious, huh?" Willow queried.
"That’s putting it mildly. You remember the Stephen King story, ‘Carrie’?" At the combined nods of her listeners, she continued, "Well, my mom would make her mom look like someone who got kicked out of Woodstock for misbehavior."
"You’re kidding," Tara protested.
"Only a little bit," her aunt relented slightly. "She really was into her church, and Bible verses, and Scriptural dictates on right and wrong. I don’t know that she ever got near as much fulfillment out of the love and compassion parts as she did the hell-fire and damnation portion of the program." She looked closely at Tara. "How much do you remember of her, Sweetie?"
Tara frowned, trying to pull fragmented images into some meaningful picture. "Well, I know she died when I was five. The biggest thing I remember is that I totally had her name wrong until I was maybe ten." At Willow’s questioning glance, she explained. "She was always referred to as ‘Grandma Adele’ to me. I guess people said her name quickly; I don’t know. Anyway, in my mind, she was ‘Grandma Dell’ for the longest time. I think it wasn’t until I saw her name written down that I realized what it actually was." She smiled at the memory.
"You know she suffered from dementia in her final years, right?" Beverly asked. "She finally went into a nursing home only a few months before she died. God knows Dad tried to take care of her himself. I’d be surprised if you had any memories of her before she lost her faculties, Tara. It was all so sad…She got really paranoid at the end, and a lot of her delusions involved—here’s a big surprise—religious ideation."
Tara felt her mind falling away from the table, as if being pulled down into a tiny, empty theater, until she was watching a series of blurry pictures play out before her.
It was summer. She knew it was summer because she was wearing her blue shorts and a sleeveless red cotton top. They were eating supper, all of them…cold roast beef, and potato salad, and iced tea. The screen door banged open and then an old woman was standing in front of them, yelling and waving her arms. She was wearing a shirt—pink, with white flowers on it—but then she could see that the woman wasn’t wearing any pants. She was naked from the waist down, and she knew that you weren’t supposed to let strangers see you naked. The woman was yelling at her daddy—what was she saying? She was calling him ‘the Devil,’ and ‘Satan’s bastard child,’ and saying she knew he wanted to kill her. Her daddy’s cheeks got all red and splotchy, but her mama’s hand had reached under the table to hold hers so she knew then that it would be alright eventually. And then someone else came through the door—her Grandpa Frank—and he was holding a blanket out towards the strange lady. He was crying, too, and that was almost as scary as the strange lady, because Daddy said boys didn’t cry, so surely old men didn’t either. Finally, her daddy and her grandpa got the woman to sit down, and they wrapped the blanket around her, and then the two grown men just looked at each other.
"Tara? Baby?" Willow’s voice drew her back into her present reality. "Baby, are you OK?"
"Yeah," she finally managed weakly. "I just had this—this sudden memory of Grandma walking into our house…I must have been about four, and she just marched into our house while we were eating, and started calling my dad evil and saying he had Satan in him. She—she was only half-dressed, too," she added reluctantly, as if fearing that news of this incident would hurt her aunt.
"Yeah, I heard about that," Beverly replied. "Dad told me about it. I think that was what finally convinced him to put her in the nursing home, when he realized he couldn’t keep an eye on her every second." She sighed. "Nice parting gift to her eldest, too—calling him evil."
Tara tried to envision her father sitting helpless before his delusional mother who had just walked half-naked down the country road to his house, listening to her call him the worst names he could imagine. She bit her lip against the tears. Finally, she looked at her aunt.
"You think the demon story is a crock, right?" Her aunt nodded as if this were a foregone conclusion. "So, do you think she really believed that her husband was a demon? Or that she made that story up, for God-knows-what reason?"
Beverly tilted her head to one side, frowning thoughtfully. "Well, I guess we’ll never know for sure what happened that afternoon that she left him. But here’s where I put my money: I think she saw him with another woman, and the only way she could let herself leave him was to say that he was a demon; that he was possessed."
"I don’t follow you," Willow interjected, capturing Tara’s bewilderment as well.
"Mom was nothing if not a good Christian lady," Beverly said patiently. "She was always talking about what a good Christian lady should do, and how she should behave, and one of the primary rules of conduct was that she stick by her husband. She also considered infidelity just about the worst sin you could commit. To hear her talk, it was practically worse than murder. I think that she caught him with someone else—hell, maybe it was a man, and not a woman. That would’ve freaked her out even more. She can’t stay, but as a proper Christian wife, how can she just run off and leave her husband, and take a boy’s father away from him in the process? The only possible excuse would be if he represented a greater evil than leaving your husband: being possessed by something evil; being a danger to her mortal soul. I’d guess she really believed that his behavior did reflect some kind of moral corruption of the worst kind; in other words, something demonic. Heck, she’d probably have passed a lie-detector test about it."
"And she just made up the details? Like, the name-brand of the particular demon?" Willow asked skeptically.
"That’s my guess," Beverly shrugged. "But like I said, it’s a guess. None of us were there that day; none of us saw what actually happened. I’m just hypothesizing, based on what I know about my mom and what seemed to make her tick. But is that the truth? I wish I knew." She looked apologetically from Tara to Willow.
It was clear that her aunt didn’t believe in demons, and it was just as clear that they really did exist. Those facts didn’t necessarily mean that her aunt was wrong about this particular scenario, however. What if there were no demon, anywhere, in her family? What if her grandmother had been a scared, rigid woman who had stumbled upon her husband committing some horrific sin and contrived the only reality that permitted her to leave him?
And if so...how much had all of them lost?
The remainder of dinner was fairly quiet, each woman mulling over what she had heard and how it fit into her picture of her family. As they walked out to Beverly’s rental car, she took Tara’s hand.
"Sweetie, I have open passage on my flight back to Dallas. I don’t want to overstay my welcome, but I think we probably have a couple more conversations between us before I leave."
"I think that’s a safe bet," Tara replied quietly, squeezing her aunt’s hand gratefully.
She has long fingers just like I do. Maybe like Quinn did.
"Did." Past tense. He’s gone.
Back at Tara's dorm, Beverly insisted on parking the car and walking them both to Tara’s room in order to hug them good night.
"Willow, I hope I see you again before I leave. I can tell what you mean to Tara, and anyone who’s that good to my niece is great in my book."
Tara’s heart swelled, watching her beloved shrug awkwardly with the praise. "Well, usually I talk a lot more, and only about two-thirds of what I say actually contributes to what I mean, but I’m glad I’ve been able to spend some time with you. And yeah, I wanna see you again before you leave," she added.
Beverly gave Tara one final hug and then began to make her way back down the hallway.
"Remember," Tara called out after her. "Be careful on your way back to your hotel." Keying into her room, she commented to Willow, "She’s gonna think we’re paranoid, talking about demons and constantly warning her about walking to her car."
"Better safe than sorry," Willow replied philosophically. "Dallas may be a hell of a lot bigger than Sunnydale, but we’ve got the market on things that go bump, drool, and bite in the night."
*****
Tara’s room actually looked out over the parking lot. Had she and Willow been gazing out the window during this exchange, they would have observed a very curious thing.
Aunt Beverly was tall, and she certainly carried herself with no small measure of confidence and self-assurance. She wasn’t especially muscular, however, nor did she carry any observable means of self-defense, such as mace or pepper spray. In sum, to the casual observer she appeared to be neither especially vulnerable nor especially imposing. One would expect that she would reach her car quickly, keys at the ready, and not, perhaps, hurry into its safety, but certainly not dawdle, or stroll. One would surely be surprised to see her reach her car in easy, measured strides, only to perch on the hood and lean back on her elbows, as if taking in a particularly beautiful night. Behaving thus, a vampire might easily think her a potential victim, particularly in a parking lot that, while well-lit, was also virtually empty.
A trio of vampires would certainly think her vulnerable.
In such a case, the dominant vampire would lead the stealthy approach, her lesser companions following a respectful step behind. They would think themselves quite lucky to have such a beautiful young mortal practically presenting herself to them on the silver platter of a Toyota Corolla hood, now stretching herself back to rest against the windshield, hands linked behind her head, gazing up at the stars.
Which was why it was so surprising that the lead vampire, having neared to perhaps twenty feet of her, stopped suddenly, and tilted her head as if in question. Her eyes narrowed, and they held confusion, and something else besides. Her companions halted just as abruptly, looking first at their leader and then each other with troubled eyes. They sniffed the air, and finally, a very low, very soft whine escaped their throats. They didn’t speak in any fashion at all. They simply turned, first the leader and then the two within her pack, and melted back into the shadows.
Several feet away, on the hood of the Corolla, the woman was humming an old Sarah Vaughan tune, remarking to herself on the stillness of the night.
*****
To Be Continued
).
charge outright they were a tad more hostile than we might expect. Just a note from "Legal;" this should in NO way interfere with the flow of your creative juices in future.
I’m just messing with you. I just found it a funny choice of words. 
. Sometimes I think I do it as a defense mechanism so I can sort of take a break from what could be a tough conversation. My inner monologue can sometimes take a life of it’s own. It’s usually the things I would love to say out loud, but to avoid conflict or drama I just listen.