raybear | I can see you from a mile, running at the mouth

I just lied to this guy on the street who came up to me and asked for a cigarette. I was busy waving to the protestors walking by with signs and getting a nicotine fix to help me through the last hour and I said "sorry, man, I bummed this from someone else." In reality, I had one cigarette left in the box which I usually gladly hand over to someone, even if it's the 'lucky cigarette' because I like being able to throw away the box and realize I shouldn't be consuming them anyway. He shrugged and smiled and said thanks anyway and I felt like shit.

On at least five separate occasions today I've been in a situation where my brain is screaming, stop it. Stop talking about this again. Stop talking, stop talking. But I didn't, I couldn't, I kept going and my brain fumbled for the off switch but apparently I moved it and it couldn't be found. This happened over e-mail, twice in person, over lunch, on the phone. Five times. Five conversations that weren't really conversations but were instead me rapid-firing and dumping.

I guess this might be good for therapy because I'll be less likely to just do an hour-long information dump and instead will actually push and pull the why and how and gain some insight. But still, I hate when I do this. I hate how I feel afterwards, like I just acted really selfishly on top of the icky sensation of oversharing, where I nearly regret giving the information to the person. Not that it's even too personal, just that it's inappropriate at the time and place.

I'm sure I'm probably being too hard on myself since I've been on the receiving end of this at times and I'm usually very sympathetic to the person's need to expel. But still, I don't like it. Part of what I use this journal for is to dump it out, and then people can choose to read or not and I don't take as much responsibility for the possibility that I'm being a time-monopolizer.
A long time ago I was actually very very quiet.