Posted by yellowbrickroad on December 24, 2004, at 7:20:39
In reply to Re: Tis the season to... » yellowbrickroad, posted by alexandra_k on December 24, 2004, at 1:50:48
Cool, cool. I will keep the language PG from now on. Thanks for the tip.
I do hope you feel better. I've had some really crappy years, and then something changed this year. I turned 30...that probably has a lot to do with it. And I started to talk to some of the people I might have avoided previously about their own lives--I started asking everyone about how they were doing and have tried really hard to be sympathetic and to find commonalities rather than differences. That's not any New Age approach, either...I'm really soooo not like that.
So, what's ended up happening is that two people I work with who used to scare me are now friends because I was a good listener when they needed one. Also, this is the second year that I've spent the holidays with my BOSS's family and with friends, but now I see myself as the person who can alleviate their family tension rather than the pathetic single girl whose loser boyfriend ran off to Florida and didn't invite her along (and he's just now become my ex). I know my "people" are looking forward to seeing me, even though I'm not their family by blood. And I finally do feel like I'm better off with my "family of choice" than with my actual family(every member of which has a raging mood disorder, fun, fun).
The difference this year from all the years before is that I feel like I finally have a place, even if it's not with my own family. I can be the dark-comic relief, I can keep my boss safe from her well-meaning-but-hard-to-handle in-laws, I can take my friend out for a smoke break before she commits fratricide or matricide. I can be the weird anonymous neighbor who leaves stuffed animals for two of her other single gal neighbors in the building. Man, I'm important!
Oh, and when the upwardly mobile, thin, dog-raising young couples in my neighborhood look askance at me, I can take a slightly twisted pleasure in surprising them with a HUGE smile and a "Good morning! Merry Christmas!" which, of course, forces them to do the same or look like real heels. Even if you tend to wear black and are heavily pierced and tatooed, pulling a "Merry Christmas!" out of your hat forces people into good-neighbor mode for a minute.
You know, if I have a future as a single cat-lady, I'm going to be the best cat-loving Old Maid this neighborhood has ever had.
Cheers!
poster:yellowbrickroad
thread:433564
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/subs/20041128/msgs/433695.html