You know when you’re making small talk with someone you don’t know well, and they ask you what you like to do with your free time? I always answer the question vaguely, but the truth is, my favorite pastime is when I am in a different world completely immersed in music. I get there with a little wine, darkness, and A LOT of volume. Okay, the recipe doesn’t always call for wine, but it definitely helps.
When you live in a building shared with two other units, you have to get creative with the way in which you get the music to your ears. Unfortunately, for my future hearing, my current set up consists only of the headphones that came with my phone– which, actually, are pretty great.
Obviously, Coldplay gets a lot of playing time. Their current runner-up, though, is Lorde. Namely, her newest album “Melodrama.” The thing speaks to me. So much so that I had to Google her birthday because her lyrics screamed “Scorpio” at me. Her birthday is three days before my own– suspicion confirmed.
So, there’s this song on the album called Writer in the Dark, with a lyric that I find stuck in my head too often: “Bet you rue the day you kissed a writer in the dark.” I feel that. See, sometimes people aren’t thrilled with reading about themselves on this blog. I can’t imagine you’re surprised by that. I do my best to exclude names (yes, I do, sometimes, name my friends and family). I scrutinize over the truths I share, and the feelings they could stir in those reading about themselves. However, I always make sure that I am honoring the truth of the situation, and some of us, as human beings, don’t accept truths gracefully.
But, what can you do when you’ve read something about yourself that you didn’t care to read– that you know other’s have read, but you and I are the only people who know to whom it pertains? While your options to communicate this to me are limitless, the easiest is to get mean, and fling your anger at me.
Sometimes the flinging has, clearly, been filtered with some consideration for my own feelings. Other times, like yesterday, I am reminded that some people missed the lessons about how to respect women, or other humans for that matter.
If you’ve not read my post from yesterday, now is the time to do so. Yesterday, I wrote that I allowed the same person to stand me up three times. I mentioned that I hadn’t heard anything from him, but I excluded two details which seem to be critical aspects of the story. Firstly, upon apologizing to me and expressing his desire to pursue a relationship, he mentioned that he wanted to give me something to write about (which he did). The second is that the night before we were supposed to go out, he had to take his dog to the vet unexpectedly, and I guess the day that followed was super stressful for him. That is, truly, honestly, absolutely, the only detail whose importance I underestimated. And boy, did I hear about it.
I finally hear from this guy, and he comes out swinging. I mean, multiple messages throwing all of these cutting insults at me. His crowning achievement was to call me inconsiderate and self-centered. Perhaps this wouldn’t bother you. But, these happen to be bombs that the man I used to live with would throw at me. He threw them at me because he knew how sensitive I was to being perceived this way. This is also how he conditioned me to accept his fits of anger and disregard the intuition within me that screamed that he was wrong. Seems that people speak to you this way when they are intimidated by you, feel entitled to the upper hand in a relationship, or want to blame their mistakes on you. But hey, I’m just a crazy, self-centered, feminist– what do I know.
In any case, it just bums me out when I realize that someone isn’t who I hoped they were (duh). Bums me out more when I thought their awareness was stellar, but instead they’re clearly not learning from their past experiences. That one’s a big trigger for me. Understandably, right? Well, it is what it is. No matter how loudly my fears of falling for the same kind of asshole continue to scream at me, I KNOW that you all don’t suck. I know a handful of exceptional men, and I have to believe that the world isn’t limited to only those five.
Another day, another dude. Happy Friday, you patient people.
-M
Leave a Reply