Subtext is a bitch. No matter what you do people will pick up on what you don’t say. I don’t care if you believe it or not, pay attention to this for even an hour in any of your interactions and you’ll recognize it.
Get clear on what you’re not saying or that’s all that will be heard. Say what you really mean, no matter how hard that may seem.
An excerpt from my book:
“Picture this: park of the Town Art Museum, Bale and Devi’s wedding day, the after-party. Some of the guests had already left but not enough of them. I ran on stage, took the microphone and to the sixty odd people present, I accused Straight of making “the worst mistake of his life.” I screamed, literally in punk rock glory, that Charlotte, his “shit bag fiancé”, was a “serious fucking bitch.” Oh and she was standing there. She eyed me in her pink flowery dress, her dark chocolate brown locks falling over her bare ivory shoulders, her arms crossed at her chest like she smelled that I loved him. Mom saved me by sweeping me away before it got too epically tragic, but I was up there the length of a short song.
What I screamed to Straight was true. And to be clear we all thought it, I was just candid enough, or drunk enough, to say it, granted I could have worked on my delivery. I wanted to come from a place of friendly advice but alcohol and unrequited love did not let me. My punk rock urging changed nothing – it passed Straight by. My subtext stuck though sullying our friendship. Subtext always speaks louder than actual words, which was why Pericardium would break every single social rule, spoken and unspoken, if that subtext could be interpreted. I called the next day to apologize but he didn’t pick up. We hadn’t talked since. Those two minutes of drunken candor had paused a seventeen-year-old friendship.”
(Anatomical Heart Image from a Vintage Science Book circa 1884, The Graphics Fairy)