I'm awfully indiscreet

It's bordering on a bad habit, I know. I just enjoy the stories of people a great deal, you know? I just can't help myself, so when someone gives signs of welcoming me into their story, I just hop in wholeheartedly, you know?

I have a bad habit of asking improper questions.

Like what did that mean for you, and did it hurt, and how do you feel about this or that, and do you still think about so-and-so, and are you lonely? I'm curious. Maybe it's a writing thing, maybe it's just who I am. I just love learning people's stories. I think we're all so caught up in the deluge of our own life, as it were, that most of the time, we have no choice but to go with it. But sometimes, it can be nice just to break away from your own story for a little while and learn about the way other people are living.

I mean this in a completely selfish way. I don't mean in the scoially acceptable way of taking an interest in your friends' lives or whatever, though I do that, also. I just mean strangers, or almost strangers, or yeah, sometimes friends, but this is in a greedy way. Not entirely, because people love talking about themselves generally, because they (like you) are often caught up in their own deluge of a story, so love nothing better than to discuss their own lives. But you're also getting something out of it.

There's something voyeuristic about asking questions. It's being let in into somebody's life, into the story of themselves that they tell inside their own minds. And you're not normally privy to that. You have the story of them you tell yourself, but seldom the one that's seen from the driver's seat, and honestly, it's interesting.

It's always fascinating to me the way people will sometimes open up to strangers rather than to their partners or their family, but isn't it often the case? And isn't that why therapy works? The whole basis of therapy is this is someone whose unique role in your life is to be the receiver of these confessions. Perhaps we're afraid it'll be awkward if we blend afterwards, our chosen confessors, into the rest of our lives. Or maybe we're wary of being manipulated or vulnerable for extended periods of time.

So we pick these people, at random, take our chances where we can get them, and tell our story. Whisper our secrets.

Why do we ask? We want to know how the world works, and more so, to make sure we're doing it right. That there isn't someone else out there who might be doing it better, perhaps more successfully, more happily.

Why do we tell? For the same reason, I think. We tell sometimes because we want to check in with other people about our own story and get some sort of confirmation, a sense of shared complicity, but also to flash them in a way a bit. There's something interesting about telling a story of yourself to somebody you know will go away, and it's similar to sleeping with someone you know you'll never see again, but also different, because it's less charged with guilt, perhaps, or confusion, and also, because in ways, it's more intimate.

Look here, this is my story, has a different ring than look here, this is my naked body.

Is it cheeky to ask? Certainly. But I don't think it's necessarily bad. It helps, having someone listen to you. Sometimes you really need to bounce your story off a stranger to realize how absurd (or amazing) it sounds. Sometimes you just wanna be heard, and maybe have no one in your life to hear you at the moment.

So I ask. And I figure if people tell me, then there must be something in it for them also.