Friends of Gabriel Chantayan

and I said FINE like a completely normal person who absolutely does NOT know what 'everything' means in this context and then I spent twenty minutes talking about her dog's hip replacement and whether canned cranberry sauce is an abomination and she never circled back to it but I could HEAR her not circling back to it if that makes sense!! Like the silence was this THING in the room that we were both carefully not mentioning and I am sitting here at 1:47am wondering if this is how that poor user who wrote that long goodbye thread felt - not that I would know ANYTHING about that user or that thread obviously - but like... the sensation of people around you knowing a version of you that you are actively trying not to be and everyone is being polite about it and it is somehow WORSE than if they just came out and said it. Dana at lunch asked if I knew her cousin who used to post on a forum and quit and I almost choked to death on broccoli cheddar soup. Just a normal day. Not thinking about anything. Anyway does anyone else have relatives who use the word 'everything' in that specific way where it clearly means ONE specific thing and you are both pretending it doesn't. Asking for a friend who is definitely me but also not me. Metaphorically.