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Extended Detours

Thought this was a beautiful way to describe why the words your partner says or prompts you to say is so valuable:

Here was a man who could string together words in all the right ways. I ate his words. His words made me feel things. He was honest and cynical and apologetic and vulnerable and guarded. He read my words and encouraged me to send more words. He didn’t even seem to mind long-winded digressions. I didn’t know yet how important that was. Havrilesky, Heather. Foreverland (pp. 16-17). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

Those long digressions are no less important and it is important that there me room for them without impatience or judgement. How many times have I started to share something about my day and all at once there was trigger that took me back in time a couple of decades and suddenly the conversation became about an entirely different and unrelated thing. Having a person in my life who understands that I take such detours often and there is a method to the madness means a great deal. This ties back to the idea of eating words and that produces specific feelings that the author writes about. If those detours were unwelcome, they would kill off certain strands of thoughts, words and ideas before they had a chance to blossom. 

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