The Quiet
I was much more prolific with opinions in my younger years, huh? Most certainly I still have them I just don't have time to process and work through them and I hate spewing thoughtless things in the world. There's certainly an overabundance of that in the world already.
My problem (in part) is a little PTSD from a not-so-great friend breakup and before things went radio silent I felt very heavily criticized about but not even in a productive way like when in drama club our director would rip us apart with feedback, it was all side-eye, backhanded, so and so said this about you yesterday high school BS. And I'm honestly a little trigger shy after this most recent round of Presidential change and it's taken a while to put words around it because it sounds ridiculous but at the same time when the two main parties are constantly yelling yelling yelling you begin to feel a little bit like a child of divorce. I'm very torn and I'm not the cause of this issue per say, but I feel guilt, dismay, confusion and like no matter what I say it's going to be perceived on someone's side. I'm not on anyone's side...both sides are totally idiotic, corrupt, narrowminded and no longer interested in my needs. So I began bracing myself because I was mentally prepared for being attacked all the time and when you're on edge you start just pre-censoring yourself.
If you spend all your energy trying to explain away anything people could misconstrue it's exhausting and I basically stopped writing interesting content because I already felt persecuted before I even did anything. What does my crochet have anything to do with you? Absolutely nothing, but yet I still felt like some insane person would take it out of context. And I realized this was bad; you shouldn't be so emotionally beat down that you have to self-censor before anything even vaguely interesting is being brought up.
Here's my problem, I want to please people and I hate that I want to please people. I want to be a rebel who dances to the beat of her own drum and gives a wild middle finger to convention...but the reality is that I want people to like me and not shut me out because humans are social beings and I am happiest when I spend time socializing in small groups and have a good fun conversation that is not based on complaining about the same thing over and over again in slightly different ways. I detest complainers. Sure life isn't great and things go wrong, but I prefer action over complaint. Yes, your job sucks, but what are your short term goals to turn that around? Even if it's just to spend 30 minutes each day working on your resume and posting for positions at least that's something. If you complain and literally do nothing then I tire of this endless conversation because it's not evolving in any way. If you and your husband do not see eye to eye, then I hope you have a game plan in place because just listening to you rip him apart for being lazy, aimless and irresponsible year after year isn't going to do anything except build up your resentment toward one another into a mountain which will eventually divide you. If you're just waiting for things to fall apart, just yank off that darned bandaid. If you don't want to fix it, by all means just get divorced and use those years you would have spent hating each other finding better versions of yourself and moving forward. You can't rewind and get those years back so what's more valuable than the potential sting of divorce is your time. Your time is by FAR your most valuable asset. You can work and you can make more money over time but you never get time back once it's wasted.
I have no negative feelings about divorce other than I'd prefer not to have to go through it, but if it makes you happier by all means just do it. There have been many times I've though "geezus, just get divorced and we'll all be so much happier." And the reality is that everyone changes over time and if you're lucky you get to grow and change and evolve together but you're every bit as likely to grow apart. I feel like it gets such a bad rap, but if you're an adult and your partner is an adult you should be able to work through it in a dignified way and come out better in the end because a loveless, bitter, angry marriage sounds like torture.
In my own life? We just celebrated 10 years of married matrimony and I guess convention tells us that we are supposed to do some big thing to celebrate a decade? Frankly, the kids just started school, things are nuts at work and my brother in law is visiting stateside and I just don't have the mental and physical means to plan a big hurrah. We'll do a thing...but for now dinner out and spending time together is fine. My baby is in Kindergarden and he is happy as a clam. He was crabby as all heck by mid-week, but he overall seems to be really soaking up a great deal of pride now that he's a "big boy" and going on the bus and ordering lunch at school. So yes, 10 years is a pretty big deal, but in the grand scheme of things? Today feels like yesterday feels like tomorrow...our one day is nice but overall I want to spend my energy on the things that are happening now rather than reminiscing about how great things were 10 years ago. Sure it was great being younger and thinner but it's not like it was perfect 10 years ago.
I read an interesting quote about nostaglia taking away the rough edges from our past memories. I thought it was "funny" because everyone seems to yearn for the good old days, but from what I recall the days of yore weren't that great. Why would I ever want to go back to the 80s? I wouldn't. Gender inequality, shoulder pads, terrible synthesizer music, huge poofy hair...I don't get it. Have you re-watched an 80's classic movie like "Revenge of the Nerds"? It's so awful you want to cringe from the racial stereotypes and basically rape that happened...but ya know, it's okay because he's in a Darth Vader suit and he's the better man? Go back further and being a female minority would be even worse. No thanks. But I guess if you grew up when you could get a gallon of milk for a dime and your parents weren't neurotic messes about you playing unsupervised outside in the dirt you might think the past was great. But now we know about child snatchers and molestors and milk is like way more expensive but it's not like it's $100. It's all relative. I don't flinch spending $3 for a gallon of milk because there's so little you can buy in the world for $3 anyway that I'm not going to argue about a few bucks. And the liklihood of your kid getting snatched now is infinitely less than it was back in the "good old days" of the 50's and 60's. The only difference is now you hear about that weirdo in Florida doing terrible things and back then you were lucky to hear what happened within the confines of your own town. The pervasiveness of media makes our world feel smaller but you can walk up and down these streets and be perfectly safe because there are no kids in the street at all, nothing is happening. There are absolutely no kids to kidnap because none are physically in sight anymore. Kids are inside watching videos of other kids opening easter eggs and they themselves are handled like Faberge eggs and gently supervised at all times.
The only "great" thing about the past is that we got to spend it with certain people and due to the passing of time sadly some of those people have passed on. I lost a friend this year and I was in a very deeply sad place because I had so much grief. Not because I had any control over it, nor was especially close to her after we passed our mid twenties and she moved to Florida but I realized the feeling I was working through was basically unresolved guilt I had for not being a better friend. The guilt was not about her as much as it was about me and once I realized it and worked through it I felt much better. That's the thing; we think we grieve for other people but they're dead. They are literally gone of this world; they are not sentient and they are not worried anymore about our feelings. They're done worrying about me. And they're dead so they're safe, they aren't sick, they aren't in pain, they aren't lost. There's nothing more to worry about because I know exactly where they are and how they're doing. Even in life, I didn't necessarily have that certainty but in death I do. She's fine, she's not in any discomfort, she said all the I love you's she wanted to say and she is gone of this world. The problem is that my little tiny human brain has to work through all the feelings of unfairness left in the wake of her passing. Cuz life ain't fair, right? We want it to be and our sense of order demands it, but it's just not.
So, what does one do to work through sadness regarding being an inadequate friend? I don't know about you because...well you have to work through your own feelings but I hugged my babies. I made plans with my best friend to spend time with her. I texted my other friends I love. I had dinner with my other buddy whom I actually can reasonably drive and see. I hugged my husband tight. I hugged my doggy tight. The kids only tolerate so many hugs but the dog? He'll tolerate me hugging him all day. He's a little weird and if I hug my husband he barges in and inserts himself in the middle. Some article said dogs don't like hugs but...I don't think they met Roni. As my first child I think he feels he needs to be part of all of the hugs.
I could write a big to-do about my friend, but she'd hate that. She didn't like being the center of attention. She'd hate all extra attention. She was weird and fun and silly and had the funniest kind of cackling laugh. Did we have tons in common? Not really. I liked being a slightly nerdy, slightly less than cool, goody-goody but I wasn't a hard core nerd in the vein of knowing all the lines of certain pop culture movies. To this day, I'm still not that person. I fall asleep during 4 out of 5 movies Trevor tries to put on Netflix. I can't focus and it is hard to follow really complicated plots if you're only half invested like me. I'm really in for the snacks and then a good long nap sounds great. I'll watch whatever movie the kids want to watch, but I'm not invested in what happens to the red lawn gnome guy, so if I meander around a little and miss 10 minutes I'm not losing a huge chunk of plot that is imperative to the continuity of the story and why he's suddenly missing his weird gnome hat. I can probably piece it together. I'm sure this is not how other people enjoy the cinema. But I'll probably watch this silly terrible movie at least ten times so by the tenth viewing I've certainly managed to catch all the scenes.
Is my sadness gone? Of course not but if the love you put out into the world is your legacy then she gave a lot and I never ever questioned her love, authenticity or kindness. The world is brighter for having known her. If I die and people are even half as nice about it I'd be elated. I'm not always a great person. I try, but I'm rough around the edges; nostagia hasn't made me seem more like Mary Poppins yet. I like myself, but in an attempt at being a better example for the kiddos I really amp up the politeness and generosity to a level I probably would not if left to my own devices. I'm a work in progress but that's okay. I like having something to reach for and I like being an example of a work in progress for my kiddos, it's far more relatable than being some pillar of perfection. I always felt like grown ups were so unattainable and otherworldly because I couldn't relate to them. They seemed to have it together and understand their role and not be a mess about it. I didn't get to see the humanity behind the adults in my life. They were just my parents or aunts or uncles and they didn't seem to have any interests or personalities that distinguished them or made them real to me.
My problem (in part) is a little PTSD from a not-so-great friend breakup and before things went radio silent I felt very heavily criticized about but not even in a productive way like when in drama club our director would rip us apart with feedback, it was all side-eye, backhanded, so and so said this about you yesterday high school BS. And I'm honestly a little trigger shy after this most recent round of Presidential change and it's taken a while to put words around it because it sounds ridiculous but at the same time when the two main parties are constantly yelling yelling yelling you begin to feel a little bit like a child of divorce. I'm very torn and I'm not the cause of this issue per say, but I feel guilt, dismay, confusion and like no matter what I say it's going to be perceived on someone's side. I'm not on anyone's side...both sides are totally idiotic, corrupt, narrowminded and no longer interested in my needs. So I began bracing myself because I was mentally prepared for being attacked all the time and when you're on edge you start just pre-censoring yourself.
If you spend all your energy trying to explain away anything people could misconstrue it's exhausting and I basically stopped writing interesting content because I already felt persecuted before I even did anything. What does my crochet have anything to do with you? Absolutely nothing, but yet I still felt like some insane person would take it out of context. And I realized this was bad; you shouldn't be so emotionally beat down that you have to self-censor before anything even vaguely interesting is being brought up.
Here's my problem, I want to please people and I hate that I want to please people. I want to be a rebel who dances to the beat of her own drum and gives a wild middle finger to convention...but the reality is that I want people to like me and not shut me out because humans are social beings and I am happiest when I spend time socializing in small groups and have a good fun conversation that is not based on complaining about the same thing over and over again in slightly different ways. I detest complainers. Sure life isn't great and things go wrong, but I prefer action over complaint. Yes, your job sucks, but what are your short term goals to turn that around? Even if it's just to spend 30 minutes each day working on your resume and posting for positions at least that's something. If you complain and literally do nothing then I tire of this endless conversation because it's not evolving in any way. If you and your husband do not see eye to eye, then I hope you have a game plan in place because just listening to you rip him apart for being lazy, aimless and irresponsible year after year isn't going to do anything except build up your resentment toward one another into a mountain which will eventually divide you. If you're just waiting for things to fall apart, just yank off that darned bandaid. If you don't want to fix it, by all means just get divorced and use those years you would have spent hating each other finding better versions of yourself and moving forward. You can't rewind and get those years back so what's more valuable than the potential sting of divorce is your time. Your time is by FAR your most valuable asset. You can work and you can make more money over time but you never get time back once it's wasted.
I have no negative feelings about divorce other than I'd prefer not to have to go through it, but if it makes you happier by all means just do it. There have been many times I've though "geezus, just get divorced and we'll all be so much happier." And the reality is that everyone changes over time and if you're lucky you get to grow and change and evolve together but you're every bit as likely to grow apart. I feel like it gets such a bad rap, but if you're an adult and your partner is an adult you should be able to work through it in a dignified way and come out better in the end because a loveless, bitter, angry marriage sounds like torture.
In my own life? We just celebrated 10 years of married matrimony and I guess convention tells us that we are supposed to do some big thing to celebrate a decade? Frankly, the kids just started school, things are nuts at work and my brother in law is visiting stateside and I just don't have the mental and physical means to plan a big hurrah. We'll do a thing...but for now dinner out and spending time together is fine. My baby is in Kindergarden and he is happy as a clam. He was crabby as all heck by mid-week, but he overall seems to be really soaking up a great deal of pride now that he's a "big boy" and going on the bus and ordering lunch at school. So yes, 10 years is a pretty big deal, but in the grand scheme of things? Today feels like yesterday feels like tomorrow...our one day is nice but overall I want to spend my energy on the things that are happening now rather than reminiscing about how great things were 10 years ago. Sure it was great being younger and thinner but it's not like it was perfect 10 years ago.
I read an interesting quote about nostaglia taking away the rough edges from our past memories. I thought it was "funny" because everyone seems to yearn for the good old days, but from what I recall the days of yore weren't that great. Why would I ever want to go back to the 80s? I wouldn't. Gender inequality, shoulder pads, terrible synthesizer music, huge poofy hair...I don't get it. Have you re-watched an 80's classic movie like "Revenge of the Nerds"? It's so awful you want to cringe from the racial stereotypes and basically rape that happened...but ya know, it's okay because he's in a Darth Vader suit and he's the better man? Go back further and being a female minority would be even worse. No thanks. But I guess if you grew up when you could get a gallon of milk for a dime and your parents weren't neurotic messes about you playing unsupervised outside in the dirt you might think the past was great. But now we know about child snatchers and molestors and milk is like way more expensive but it's not like it's $100. It's all relative. I don't flinch spending $3 for a gallon of milk because there's so little you can buy in the world for $3 anyway that I'm not going to argue about a few bucks. And the liklihood of your kid getting snatched now is infinitely less than it was back in the "good old days" of the 50's and 60's. The only difference is now you hear about that weirdo in Florida doing terrible things and back then you were lucky to hear what happened within the confines of your own town. The pervasiveness of media makes our world feel smaller but you can walk up and down these streets and be perfectly safe because there are no kids in the street at all, nothing is happening. There are absolutely no kids to kidnap because none are physically in sight anymore. Kids are inside watching videos of other kids opening easter eggs and they themselves are handled like Faberge eggs and gently supervised at all times.
The only "great" thing about the past is that we got to spend it with certain people and due to the passing of time sadly some of those people have passed on. I lost a friend this year and I was in a very deeply sad place because I had so much grief. Not because I had any control over it, nor was especially close to her after we passed our mid twenties and she moved to Florida but I realized the feeling I was working through was basically unresolved guilt I had for not being a better friend. The guilt was not about her as much as it was about me and once I realized it and worked through it I felt much better. That's the thing; we think we grieve for other people but they're dead. They are literally gone of this world; they are not sentient and they are not worried anymore about our feelings. They're done worrying about me. And they're dead so they're safe, they aren't sick, they aren't in pain, they aren't lost. There's nothing more to worry about because I know exactly where they are and how they're doing. Even in life, I didn't necessarily have that certainty but in death I do. She's fine, she's not in any discomfort, she said all the I love you's she wanted to say and she is gone of this world. The problem is that my little tiny human brain has to work through all the feelings of unfairness left in the wake of her passing. Cuz life ain't fair, right? We want it to be and our sense of order demands it, but it's just not.
So, what does one do to work through sadness regarding being an inadequate friend? I don't know about you because...well you have to work through your own feelings but I hugged my babies. I made plans with my best friend to spend time with her. I texted my other friends I love. I had dinner with my other buddy whom I actually can reasonably drive and see. I hugged my husband tight. I hugged my doggy tight. The kids only tolerate so many hugs but the dog? He'll tolerate me hugging him all day. He's a little weird and if I hug my husband he barges in and inserts himself in the middle. Some article said dogs don't like hugs but...I don't think they met Roni. As my first child I think he feels he needs to be part of all of the hugs.
I could write a big to-do about my friend, but she'd hate that. She didn't like being the center of attention. She'd hate all extra attention. She was weird and fun and silly and had the funniest kind of cackling laugh. Did we have tons in common? Not really. I liked being a slightly nerdy, slightly less than cool, goody-goody but I wasn't a hard core nerd in the vein of knowing all the lines of certain pop culture movies. To this day, I'm still not that person. I fall asleep during 4 out of 5 movies Trevor tries to put on Netflix. I can't focus and it is hard to follow really complicated plots if you're only half invested like me. I'm really in for the snacks and then a good long nap sounds great. I'll watch whatever movie the kids want to watch, but I'm not invested in what happens to the red lawn gnome guy, so if I meander around a little and miss 10 minutes I'm not losing a huge chunk of plot that is imperative to the continuity of the story and why he's suddenly missing his weird gnome hat. I can probably piece it together. I'm sure this is not how other people enjoy the cinema. But I'll probably watch this silly terrible movie at least ten times so by the tenth viewing I've certainly managed to catch all the scenes.
Is my sadness gone? Of course not but if the love you put out into the world is your legacy then she gave a lot and I never ever questioned her love, authenticity or kindness. The world is brighter for having known her. If I die and people are even half as nice about it I'd be elated. I'm not always a great person. I try, but I'm rough around the edges; nostagia hasn't made me seem more like Mary Poppins yet. I like myself, but in an attempt at being a better example for the kiddos I really amp up the politeness and generosity to a level I probably would not if left to my own devices. I'm a work in progress but that's okay. I like having something to reach for and I like being an example of a work in progress for my kiddos, it's far more relatable than being some pillar of perfection. I always felt like grown ups were so unattainable and otherworldly because I couldn't relate to them. They seemed to have it together and understand their role and not be a mess about it. I didn't get to see the humanity behind the adults in my life. They were just my parents or aunts or uncles and they didn't seem to have any interests or personalities that distinguished them or made them real to me.