Words Feel Defective

Words feel defective today, like they're not doing the job they have. I love words. I love that they allow us to communicate all these subtle things, ideas, feelings, plans, directions. I love to make words happen.

But then there's that thing where you repeat a word over and over, or stare at it on a sign for a long time, and it stops making sense.

You're like, "Yield. Yi-eel-duh. Yeee-uld. Yelled? I think I forgot how to say it. None of the ways sound right anymore."

You feel like maybe you better not say 'yield' in front of anyone, because all the ways to say it sound wrong and they're probably going to laugh at you.

If your kid asked you right now what 'yield' means, you'd want to look it up to be sure you were still right, because the meaning feels gone.

Except that's how I feel right now with all words, not just one.

I want to tell a friend I'm glad a thing went well for her, and "I'm glad for you" sounds like it doesn't make any sense, even though intellectually I know it does. Those are the right words. But I have this paranoid feeling that if I type it and hit 'send' she'll message back, "What does that mean? Is that English?"

I type "I'm glad" and before I can go any further, my brain goes,

"Glad? What's that? Happy? You're happy? Or a trash bag. Glad is a trash bag. Why would you tell her you're happy? She's the one who had the good thing happen. She's happy. You're not a trash bag. That doesn't make sense. Why are you saying trash bag to her? Glad is the trash bag, right? Maybe that's the wrong word."

It's perfectly silly and I have to make words happen today for work, but my brain insists that none of them make sense.

Now, to cross my fingers that this nice informal word-making pushed me past the block.