What's THAT supposed to mean?

Another contradiction I've noticed about myself: I believe all life exists in many shades of gray, and yet I have an overwhelming need to label things.  Even if the labels are vague, it doesn't matter.  I need them.

Someone recently told me that this would become a crippling social need if I wasn't careful.  If that comment had come from a close friend, I would have taken it to heart and owned it.  But this was someone I'd barely even known, and their ability to see into me so profoundly bothered me.  They were 100% right, and yet I got defensive.  And so I've spent the past couple of weeks dissecting it.

The conversation was innocent enough, focusing on mere political identities and nothing more.  I had said that I considered myself a "nomadic leftist," meaning I tend to float between far-left ideologies on any given day.  The offending comment came after I had mentioned that this is a common theme for me, adding labels (even if I just pulled them out of my ass) simply due to a need to clarify my place in the world.

My dissection of the conversation, however, was about way more than a political identity.  In the past six months, I've gone from having it "all figured out" to having absolutely no idea what I'm doing, where I belong, with whom I identify, etc.  When those things are clear (or just clearly vague), I'm in my element.  When they're not, that's when the dissection and over-analysis begins.  "What did so-and-so mean when s/he said that?"  I start to obsess.  It's really not healthy.

Same goes for my relationship with C.  I've been making people laugh by calling him "my ex-ish," but that's not a joke.  It's really the best I can come up with right now.  He's not my "ex" because that would imply that we're divorced, right?  Which we're not.  Ex-ish is, I suppose, a shorthand version of "the husband I'm separated from and probably will divorce," but with a smidgen of humor so that I don't have to follow it up with, "But really, I'm fine." 

A close friend told me not to worry about it, that such a tendency comes with a total openness about what I'm thinking and feeling.  I don't tend to hold much back.  I will usually tell you what I think, which not everyone is used to.  "It's mature," I believe were her exact words.  Mature or not, I can see how it would get annoying.  You could look at me with an innocently-raised eyebrow and I will spend the remainder of the day wondering why.  Not that my sense of self hinges completely on what you think, but because I just plain want to know.  Did I say something you found to be ridiculous?  Interesting?  Offensive?  I can usually read people pretty well, but now and then non-verbal interactions leave me clueless.  As do verbal ones, on occasion... "Hey, remember earlier this week when you said you 'liked' October... what did you mean by that?"  It can really be that innocuous. 

Don't get me wrong... this impulse (can we just go ahead and call it a compulsion?) stems from a vested interest in human thought and behavior.  Believe me - I've dissected this many times over - it's hardly about how people see me, at least not in the "I have to be loved" sense.  If I could have one superpower, it would be to be able to read people's thoughts.  Partly out of curiosity, mostly out of a true desire to know what folks are thinking at any given time.  It's probably my tendency to over-empathize.

(Sure let's go with that.)