Today, my brother, mother and I went to see a movie. They both have this "I-have-the-worst-life-in-the-world-and-it-sucks-to-be-me" attitude about life, and were in full force. This drives me up the wall. When I am driven up a wall I have a tendency to jam my nails into my flesh and make marks that last anywhere from six hours to six months. I can only see a few of the marks now, so today wasn't so bad.
It pisses me off though. Who in their right mind blames their bad moods, their sadness, on their life? If your life is really the problem, then you can normally phase the sadness out by thinking about the future. Lives are not the problem. The only time I ever get into that mode is when I have a skewed outlook on my situations. When I'm overreacting. When I don't see the future, what I can do and will be. But at least I recognise that I have a fucked-up viewpoint while I'm there, I don't live in a constant state of "my life sucks," like they do.
A few days ago my brother was ranting to me, saying how he wishes he could have some other life, because his current one is terrible. He also bitched about how it wasn't fair that his friends say he has it great, because if they had his life they would hate it too. My mother says similar things, all the time, with more vehemence. I seem to be the family's receptacle for all of their negative thoughts. And what's worse is that they don't realise that the problem isn't their life, but themselves. When I try to make them understand this, they just get more hateful about everything, "Would you like to trade lives with me? How would you like to be me?"
I learned, in short, to shut the fuck up.
But it still depresses me to be around them, when they're like that. Brings my mood down, for a bit.
Back up a bit, there's one more story I want to tell.
In school on Friday, I inadvertently ended up in a group. I don't normally join groups, when I have the option of working alone. I get things done more quickly when I don't have to explain how to do things, and what the answers are, to other people.
That day a group sort-of formed around me, so I shrugged and said fine.
It was math class, really fucking easy shit, for me, but not for the other people in the class. So I spent a lot of time explaining how to get answers to problems, and basically served as a teacher, more than anything else. I actually enjoyed it though. I forgot how much I like explaining things to people, getting them to understand something they didn't before. It's very satisfying to explain something, and have the person go "Oh!" afterwards, as opposed to just look at you like you're insane. (Normally when I explain things it's a political issue to a conservative, and they prettymuch think I'm nuts every time.)
Even more amazing: I ended up talking to them. Like, supporting and contributing to the conversation as much as everyone else did. Last year, I was incapable of doing this. I didn't even really think twice about it, on Friday, after I got started. The last half of the class was spent prettymuch ignoring the assignment, and just talking about this or that and the other.
It was nice, really. I'd missed talking to people like that. I hadn't since Michigan, in early August.
I still can't initiate conversations, but at least now I can keep them going, and participate, when someone talks to me, which I absolutely could not do before.
So I decided that I need to smile more, stop being such an Ice Princess. As it is I think I intimidate people, and thereby make them not talk to me. I put up thick walls with hard stares and the body language of a marble statue. I do it half-deliberately, to avoid conversation. I never remember what having conversations is actually like. Never think the people around me are worthy of talking to me.
They are.
So I need to learn to smile. (I've been practicing at home, silly as that sounds, because I have not smiled in public for so long that it feels completely unnatural to even think about it.) When I get to the point where I can smile fairly naturally, I'll bring it into public. Maybe it will help.
If you can't come up to people, you need to at least make them feel like you won't bite their head off if they come to you.
I always forget that. Try to remember...
revoless.
1:33 a.m.
September 09, 2001.
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