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9:43am July 11, 2012

I hate it when this happens.

Something in my voice shifts without my consent. And it’s within the range of sounds normally used to convey emotion. And suddenly I’ve really pissed someone off, when the shift in my voice had nothing to do with my feelings at all.

It’s hard to describe what happened today because my only vocal communication isn’t really words.

But I can say it had a similar effect to what happened when I was laughing at something and someone got pissed because she thought I was laughing at her.

I tried to say “I’m not laughing at you.” Note where the emphasis is in that sentence. On “you”. As in “I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing at something else.”

Unfortunately due to the nature of echolalia, what I said was “I’m not laughing at you.” As in, just like the first half of “I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing with you.” Which is a really asshole thing to say. So of course she snapped at me. “But I’m not laughing.” And I didn’t have the communication skills to explain what really happened.

Today was a similar thing in that my vocal tone… slipped, is the best way I can describe it. Like slipping on icy pavement and going out of control. It had nothing to do with how I felt. Just a misplaced bit of sound. And then someone was mad at me.

At least this time I could explain. Sort of. But I really hate when my voice or body language slides out of control in an unfortunate direction.