How to Tell Someone to STFU

No honestly, I'm asking

The other day my friend recommended a podcast to me called Blink about a guy who endured “locked in syndrome”—basically he appeared to be in a coma but was in fact perfectly lucid for months. My skin started to crawl with abject terror and hasn’t stopped since.

I no longer consider this person a friend because truly I can’t think of anything Shallon Lester would want to consume less than a real-life horror story such as this.

“I mean, no one wants to have locked in syndrome, obviously,” she said, trying to justify this ghastly rec. “But ultimately it’s a very uplifting story.”

NOPE.

It’s unendurable even as a concept mostly because it feels so…familiar.

A few weeks prior to this conversation, a friend of a friend was in Bozeman and I was tasked with entertaining him for the afternoon.

I hesitated—I was ovulating and that’s my most creative time of the month. Ideas poured out of me, I could film for hours.

The urge to create was a very particular sensation, this kind of crackling energy inside me and if I didn’t put it to good use making videos or writing, I’d end up wasting it talking to myself in the mirror or sending 10-minute voice notes to my friends, both of which made me zero dollars.

I purposely blocked my social calendar off so I could ride the wave of “uterus wants a baby” magical energy. The energy was gasoline, where would I have it take me?

Against my better judgement, I let it take me to my friend Jen’s house to pick up her old college roommate. How taxing could one afternoon be?

Sweet Jesus.

Jeremiah was gay, therefore sex (my go-to time waster, especially if I’m ovulating) was out of the question, so we were left to talk to each other. Sorry: he talked at me. For hours. Endlessly.

If you’d asked me that morning “Would you rather talk to Jeremiah for 7 straight hours or be water boarded with Diet Coke and diesel fuel?” I feel like I would’ve picked Jeremiah but I assure you, by 5pm, I’d be banging down the doors at Guantanamo Bay.

Why not just stop talking to him? Try it. When have you literally tuned someone out, one on one, for hours when they’re speaking directly to you? Just a blank stone face, eyes glazed and unseeing, or maybe just popped in your Airpods and didn’t even try to pretend. Have you done this?

Of course not.

I can’t just not talk to someone or engage in a conversation. It’s antithetical to my breeding and my general personality. I have to at least add a “Oh wow that’s cool” but usually I go further, peppering in normal replies and “yes, and”-ing a conversation.

It didn’t matter. My contributions were merely minor pebbles on his Autobahn of demented monologuing.

As someone who talks for a living, I am of the belief that listening (if you do it right) is just as difficult, if not more taxing.

At least if you’re the blabbermouth, you’re energized by the masturbatory gratification of expressing yourself and the melodious delightfulness of your own voice.

Listeners are often just hostages, and how relaxing is that? Not very, as my pounding head proved once I had almost literally kicked him out of my truck on Jen’s doorstep.

I went home and starfished on the floor like someone had shot me. I felt the will to live ooze out.

The tingle of my creative energy was still there but I was too exhausted to even type out a text let alone film a video. I wanted amniotic silence, to bury my head in a bog or cement or into the Earth’s very core.

I think of this gif way too often

The sun sagged on the horizon and the sky turned purple and still, there I lay like a slug. But I wasn’t sleeping.

My mind cycled through all of the video topics I’d had planned, their structure now hazy, the once-mind-blowing advice now not quite as nuanced or interesting. It was like trying to remember a dream and feeling it slip away like smoke.

I knew that by the next day, none of these topics would make a god damned bit of sense. The magic was gone. The arguments and theories my mind had tee’d up had collapsed under the weight of that rat bastard’s ranting.

It was over.

I wasn’t going to listen to a podcast on locked in syndrome because that day, on that floor, I had already experienced it in my own way. My brain was willing but my body was not. And soon, unlike the intrepid podcaster, all systems just failed.

It was actually then that I decided to restart this blog. I couldn’t bear to hear or speak another word but I still wanted to express myself somehow, and I remembered this thing called “writing” where words are indeed a factor.

I was able to turn it all into lemonade, but how often do we get that lucky?

What usually happens is that our exhaustion and squandered energy curdles into rage. Yes, at the Jeremiahs of the world, but more at ourselves. Why did we agree to this? What compelled us to endure it?

Why can’t we say, “Hey bud, you’ve been filibustering about parakeets for 45 straight minutes and I’m going to need some quiet time so let’s put on a podcast.”

Because I don’t want to be impolite. That’s the ugly patriarchal truth of it. Women need to be polite above all things. How dare we cut off a narcissists supply and protect our energy, time and empathy?!

The greatest people among us have slayed this dragon and told someone to knock it off, already. Why do we care so much what a monster thinks? Do we actually need them to like us when we hate them?

To summarize: we are ok with enduring a jabberjaw but cannot endure the idea that someone we despise might think we’re rude.

UH WHAT?

How have we justified this social arithmetic? IDK, but it needs to stop. I am especially disappointed in myself over the Jeremiah Fiasco because I am supposed to be the Internet Bad Guy everyone love-hates for her ruthlessness. Allegedly I’m not afraid of being the villain but when the chips were down, yes the fuck I was, clearly.

I’m going to make you a promise that I demand you echo back to me: no more social vampires.

In the comments, let’s workshop phrases we can say to get someone to shut the hell up, even if we look crazy or bitchy or whatever.

I’m sure that if we put our lil alpha heads together we can come up with a perfectly diplomatic way to say, “If you don’t stop talking I’m getting the Diet Coke and diesel fuel.”

If you liked this post and want more me in your life, join me and hundreds of other fun and fabulous alpha females in The Shallontourage, where you get 5 videos a week (rants, deep advice dives, storytimes and more!) plus 25+ group chats with me and your new besties! XO, S