The subject of tolerance has been on my mind recently. Not so much in a voting or sitting on a bus kind of way but more about respecting the decisions and processes of other people.
I should note that I am currently the warehouse manager for Rupert's Idiosyncrasies, Quirks and Home Improvement Mecca. In my mind, my processes make sense. My decisions mostly make sense. Some of my idiosyncrasies do NOT make sense. I understand this. I acknowledge it. I own it, feed it, and walk it around the neighborhood.
And this is why I try REALLY REALLY HARD to respect the way other people "do things." In therapy, I've learned that casting negative judgement on others is generally an unhealthy method of feeling better about oneself. Unfortunately, it works but it does tend to net you the reputation of Judge-y Bitch Lady.
When I see someone doing something I don't understand, I try to calmly say to myself "That wouldn't be a good decision for me but it obviously works for them." This works sometimes. Other times, I dramatically enter the room and declare to Stuart or Edward "Okay, WHY.....<insert retarded behavior and name of possibly retarded person here>."
I admit it, it feels good to openly (within reason - MY reason) discuss why I think someone is a fucking idiot. And even after I question calmly or vent not as calmly, I do so with the intent of ending on a it's-their-choice-and-it-obviously-works-for-them note.
The problem is that I'm getting older. The strange thing about getting older is that you don't care as much about some things while caring a LOT more about others. I'm starting to have this irrepressible need to kick people off my lawn except that I do not have a lawn and I live too far from anything for someone to accidentally wander onto my not-lawn.
So I am conflicted. Conflicted between the water bong-y mantra of "Live and let live" and the luxury of allowing myself to believe another person is actually a fucking idiot.
Ayiyiyi. First world problems.
"I lost interest in him once he became a cheater." This sentence was uttered loudly recently at a gathering of friends which included an acquaintance who more or less peed all over her marriage vows in a pretty public way. I found it profoundly funny because who doesn't love a healthy slice of irony. The margarita or three I'd consumed didn't hurt either. The subject of the sentence was Tiger Woods who actually did become an more interesting individual after his wife went postal on his SUV with a golf club. But, I digress...
The topic of infidelity is a sore spot for me. I have experienced it personally and while we have "moved past it" and "done our homework", it does occasionally rear it's head and sends waves of ragey-rage through me.
Witnessing the transgressions of others brings up personal feelings as well as a deep sense of disappointment in humanity. Why?
Well, to put it bluntly, being cheated on sucks. As one of my therapy books put it, it is a "violation of human connection". Once the trust is broken, you can build some of it back but you can never reclaim all of it. The whole of it is lost forever. And try as you might to put on a brave face and silently repeat Stuart Smalley-esque positive affirmations, there is always the voice in your head that wonders if he really went to the grocery store or if he is actually getting his nuts yanked at Sven's House of Cock Torture. And that's just the tip of iceberg. You inadvertently assume a hyper-vigilance about all things relating to that person because you never want to be the idiot again. It's destructive and exhausting.
On a more fate-of-humanity level, your word is all you have. Or rather, our words are all we have. Theoretically, we grow up, learn who we are, learn how to communicate with others and do our best to be "good people" (whatever that is). This is why it never ceases to amaze me that time after time people allow themselves to be driven by the naughty bits.
I get that hormones are powerful. I agree that pheromones exist. I understand that sexual attraction can be intoxicating. But in order to be a civilized society, we maintain some type of control over our impulses. This is why we don't masturbate in Walgreens. (Well, I haven't. Your mileage may vary.) This is why we do not choke the lady in front of us who is taking forever to pay because her purse dog is sitting on her wallet. This is why we resist ramming into the inattentive driver who too busy talking on the phone to pay attention to large masses of metal and fiberglass whizzing past her.
As a whole, we do a decent job of maintaining surface civility. But in our relationships, it all seems to go to shit. People cheat all the time. In the case of my acquaintance, she'd been married for over ten years. Over a drug fueled weekend, she decided she didn't really want to be married anymore and then behaved as if she wasn't. Her partner was deeply hurt and although I do not know him well, I have felt a tremendous amount of empathy towards him. He didn't deserve this.
It's fine to decide that you're done with the June Cleaver pearls. But the catch is that you have re-negotiate or redefine your relationship before acting on your impulses. And this is what depresses me. In the case of my acquaintance, she decided (after her trust violation) that she wanted to have an open marriage. Ummm, NO. That is a completely idiotic request after such an egregious act. As I understand it, he has declined and they are divorcing.
I want to believe that we're NOT one tweet away from monkeys. But, I'm starting to wonder...
The times I've experienced sheer and utter panic are few and far between. Like most people, I have a tendency to get caught up in the minutia and sometimes lose sight of what a disaster really is.
This past Saturday evening, I experienced a panic so profound that words will probably never be able to truly articulate. Edward had driven home after a wine tour to attend to our cat. I stayed up north with friends and planned to return home the next morning. Before he left, I kissed him and asked him to call or text when he got home.
He never did.
The moment that I realized I should have heard from him and didn't felt like slow motion. My brow furrowed, my brain processed how much time had passed since he left and my body was overtaken with a deluge of panic.
I am generally decent in a crisis. I am extra decent when it's someone else's crisis. But I learned this past weekend that the closer my crisis is to ground zero, the more incoherent and useless I become.
Our brains are supposed to protect us from trauma, right? This is why people dissociate and repress. How does it make any sense then that in the least appropriate moment, my brain conjures up images that would make Wes Craven cringe?
My rational self realized that Edward had probably gotten home, forgotten to contact me and fallen asleep. This was very likely. This would not be out of character. In fact, it would be very much within his character.
No matter. The 10% chance that he was unconscious in a ditch somewhere overruled all else. I imagined him in my mangled Honda somewhere in a valley. I imagined him being unable to call for help because his phone had gone missing during the accident. I imagined him having a flat tire and being overtaken by road bandits while putting on the spare. I imagined having to clean out his closet and sell all of our furniture because I couldn't bear to keep any of it.
It seems odd that my brain would start the grieving process so early.
In between mentally sorting out my husband's possessions and preventing my heart from forcibly exiting my chest, my best friend took charge of the situation. She convinced a friend of ours to go to my house to see if he was there. After an agonizing 25 minute wait, Edward called sheepish and regretful. She had woken him from sleep and as we'd guessed, he had simply forgotten.
I was relieved but also angry. However, I also thought sleep was once again a possibility. It seemed logical that I could rest knowing that all was well.
Despite knowing that he was safe, my body refused to cooperate. My heart was still racing and I felt small bursts of electricity running white hot through my veins. At one point, I turned to Stuart and cried my eyes out. I would do the same thing again upon returning home.
Even now, 3 days later, I'm feeling the after effects of so much adrenaline. Sleeping has been difficult and I feel like I've been robbed of my energy. Recently, there have been a number of "life challenges" and although perhaps this should have put things in perspective, it has only served to wear me out.
My college research professor never had sex. I know this because he was in his office. All the time. Not having sex. Or perhaps more specifically, not having sex with another person. His research was his life, his sex partner and perhaps even more disturbingly, his idea of fun.
I spent the last two years of my undergraduate studies working with him on various research projects. No question about it, he was a brilliant man. But he never really mastered that life/work balance. And he felt that we, his loyal subjects, shouldn't either.
I spent many a Saturday administering questionnaires and conducting interviews with low income 12-year-olds who were just there for the free snacks. I spent many an evening trapped in "research meetings" that were somehow supposed to be less awful because he bought us pizza. (It helped. But I would have been happier with a can of soup at home.)
I had designs on graduate school for most of my college career. And after working with Dr. Slavedriver, I knew that I needed a break. After graduation, I got a job in my field thinking that I would take a short sabbatical from collegiate life but that a secondary degree was inevitably around the corner.
Never happened. I periodically checked in with myself and even researched grad schools a few times. I continued to feel that I was not ready to immerse myself in that environment again. Perhaps having a life outside of education was intoxicating. Or I'm just really lazy.
But in the last year or two, something has changed. An advanced degree in my current line of work doesn't make sense. I have to do continuing education so that satisfies my desire to learn somewhat.
Without trying to sound like a Rosetta Stone commercial, I've realized that I want to learn via travel. And really, that is sort of an odd thing for me. I love to be at home. I like being comfortable, having my stuff around and knowing exactly where everything is. But I've also realized that being in strange countries invigorates me. It challenges me on a level that I don't remember feeling since I was a fresh-faced first year student.
At home, history puts me to sleep. But when I'm standing in front of it, it's fascinating. I come home with a new appreciation for so many things. The world seems both bigger and smaller at the same time. And I find myself feeling a little more content in my corner of the world.
Patience is not my strong point. Certain things annoy me. And other certain things REALLY annoy me. In order to avoid being a narcissistic asshole (of which I am occasionally guilty), I do try to look inward to determine why Annoying Annie has such a ragey-ragey effect on me.
Sometimes I discover that a person reminds me of someone I knew in the past. Or someone who hurt me. Or someone who unceremoniously dumped the contents of our shared locker in the 8th grade hallway along with my Tiger Beat posters of Kirk Cameron. Not that I keep track of that sort of thing.
And sometimes... that person is someone who irks me irrational and insane levels simply because they fucking do.
I currently have a person in my life who falls in the Bi-Reasonal Category. She has personality traits that I also have (which I try to keep locked up) and she's generally garden variety annoying.
This person has never really grown up. And although I only have a couple of years on her, sometimes it feels like decades. She assumes I'm in charge of everything. And despite the many boundaries I've drawn around myself in order to keep from committing sodomy with a toilet brush, she continues to ask me the same fucking questions and make the same fucking assumptions (which are generally associated with me making every known decision in the universe).
Admittedly, I maintain a level of annoyance with her most of the time so she is at an unfair advantage on the How-Close-Am-I-To-Constructing-A-Voodoo-Doll-Of-You scale. Every time I want to shake her violently and scream at her to stop living like an 18 year old, I try to remind myself that I'm probably already irritated with her and am overreacting to the current annoyance-du-jour.
She does have positive qualities and is heavily enmeshed in my group of friends. I do occasionally enjoy her company. She isn't a bad person. I can, in my rational state, acknowledge this.
I do, however, wish she would find a different "leader." Perhaps, a lemming...
I have a love/hate relationship with stuff. I love to buy things but I hate clutter so I also love to throw things away. As I become older and more crotchety, I have become more particular about the stuff I accumulate. I want what I want which means that you should give those chotchkes to someone who will appreciate them.
My mother loves to buy me stuff. And when it happens to be things from a link that I've sent her, that is wonderful. However, she also buys me lots of crap. I've gently explained to her that I would really prefer she not do this. She appears to understand but two weeks later I will receive a random something-or-other because it reminded her of me. Most notably, I received a small print of cats in people-clothes with eyes that follow you across the room. It's creepy. It's currently stowed in the guest bedroom because I am scared of it (and because we keep the door shut so I'm reasonably certain it cannot get out). I do also give some of the things she gives me away to people who would like them more than I do. I made the mistake of telling her the last time I did this and there was a meltdown. I maintain that once it's been given to me, I am free to do with it as I please and if you are so attached to the outcome, you should probably never give me anything. (I have yet to solve the conundrum of telling vs. not telling. I'm thinking the meltdown really wasn't worth it and I may have to become the person who "loses things".)
Because of the abundance of stuff (and other emotional therapy-worthy reasons), I'm not a big fan of Christmas. This year, my inlaws gave us taster dishes. It was an appropriate gift because Edward cooks a lot and we do a fair amount of entertaining. However, it's one more thing to store. It will be one more thing to pack and move when we leave our home. It will be one more thing we come across while cleaning out a cabinet and say "Oh, we should have used these for the Dungeon-warming party."
I don't mean to sound ungrateful. More than the actual gift, I appreciate the time spent looking for it and picking it out. Much of the time, I would be happy if the person took a picture of the item and sent it to me with a note that says "This really reminds me of you. I'd love to buy it for you but I know you don't like stuff so just know that I was thinking of you *and* willing to plunk down the $15 for a watch with a stripping Batman on it." That would truly warm the cockles of my heart because it means I am loved and it also means I don't have to figure what to do with something I will never use, wear or look at. And best of all, I will never have to confess that I gave a stripping Batman watch to my very confused niece.
I realize this makes me a difficult person to shop for but the solution is simple. Don't buy me things. I won't be offended and you save money. It's win/win. And if you do buy me something anyway, just know that I will really enjoy throwing it away.
I don't do resolutions. I don't "turn over a new leaf" come January. And I don't make lame proclamations that THIS is the year I will <fill in the blank>.
However, there's been a concept that's been floating around in my head for some time that's just finally come together in a cohesive thought. And it's my new philosophy.
I worry too much about what other people think. I worry too much about what I think. I wonder if the mailman thinks I'm a perv. I wonder if people at Walmart think I'm a hoarder because I buy 6 boxes of Kleenex at a time. When purchasing new deodorant, I try to do my sniffing inconspicuously so people don't think I have a problem.
Getting off the I'm-concerned-with-everyone's-opinion-of-me-including-people-I-don't-like train is no easy task. I don't care how old you are - no one wants to be the creepy kid eating lunch by him/herself.
However, it's not healthy, it's time-consuming and it's a killer of stuff-doing because you fear looking silly.
So, my detour around such ruminations is to ask myself: What would I do when I'm 80?
When I'm 80, I will fart audibly and unapologetically in Walgreens. I will gleefully present my AARP card to get discounts. I will fake frailty to get priority boarding on airplanes. I will wear hot pink hats to dinner because I FEEL LIKE IT. I will fling my dentures at my dining companion because it's funny. I will plant a hair from my head in my food and claim it's a pube to get a free meal. I will use and abuse my age as much as possible but above all, I will do whatever the hell I want. Why? Because I'm 80.
I think it's karmically acceptable to "borrow" my 80-year-old-ness a little early. If I'm senile at 80, then I'll be happy not to have wasted it. I won't have to write pithy essays about all the things I wish I knew when I was younger. I won't bemoan the fact that "youth is wasted on the young." I will bask in the fact that I borrowed my sass and used it well. I will gloat that I did the things I wanted to do while I still could.
Now go away. I need to watch my stories.
