I had a weird breakthrough realization recently.
Someone I was chatting with asked if I listened to audiobooks. And I reacted with a visceral, emphatic, “Oh, no, I hate audiobooks.”
And then I thought to myself, now… where did that come from?
It didn’t used to be true. It’s a recent development. I used to listen to audiobooks now and then, that I downloaded from various places online. I used to listen to radio shows and podcasts, too, in a similar way. In fact I did that quite a bit in the years following my cancer surgery.
This new dislike has been brought about, I think, because of Arthur’s tendency to immerse himself in his audiobooks in ways that are both dismissive of my presence and that impair his own ability to function given the limits of his attentional capacity. And so, at some point, I started telling myself: I will never be like that.
It’s not just Arthur – but his way with them is more disruptive of his interactions with others than most people’s.
The easiest way to make sure that I won’t ever be like that is to simply convince myself that I don’t like audiobooks. So my insight, in this recent moment, was that I have, in effect, been mildly traumatized by Arthur’s audiobook habit.
