Day Sixty-Six: I Don't Know How To Argue

One day at work, while sitting and enjoying lunch with my two friends, an uncomfortable conversation ensued. One of my friends, who is a practicing Catholic, was complaining that she couldn't eat a cheeseburger because it was a Friday, and on Fridays during Lent, Catholics can't eat meat, as part of it being a sacrificial season. My other friend looked at her in disdain and said, "MMM, boy, this meat is REALLY GOOD." This is not a new topic of disagreement between the two of them. One thinks she has no say in the matter, and the fact that she is Catholic dictates her actions such that she must fast in such a way. The other, who I am inclined to agree with, thinks that she has absolutely no right to complain because it is a choice she makes as part of her religious beliefs, but she is not at all obligated by any force outside of her control. She may not be able to control her beliefs, but she can absolutely control her actions, and if it weren't difficult, it wouldn't be a sacrifice and that would defeat the purpose.

In any case, I was tired of being in the middle of this bitter point of contention between the two of them. "We are not having this conversation again," I said briskly, trying to avoid the awkward situation that had already occurred twice in the past two weeks.

My Catholic friend looked at me and said, "you really don't like confrontation, do you?" In a state of shock, I thought for a moment. "Well, no," I said. I didn't. But I also didn't want to be put in the middle of another argument that I did not want to be a part of. "You know what bothers me about you?," she asked me. Startled and shocked that she was annoyed at ME at that moment, I defensively protested. "You don't know how to argue."

I didn't know how to argue? My other friend looked at me in an effort to elaborate. "You're not Italian, are you?," she asked. In truth, I'm about 1/4 Italian and had an Italian grandmother, but I didn't have any characteristics of being of strong Italian culture. I asked them, in piecing the conversation together, if that's just naturally how Italians argued, then. They both agreed.

Apparently, Italians can argue for hours on end without having feelings of actual anger towards another person. This is completely foreign to me.

How can you have a point of annoyance towards someone and not feel slightly angry towards them? I was utterly confused.

But apparently, I don't know how to argue.

Day Fifty-Three: Negativity is Contagious

Try as I might, every morning I wake up and attempt to be optimistic. Granted, it's not the first thought that pops into my head (it's usually, "ugh" when the alarm goes off), but as I'm making my bed I try to pick out the positive points of the day. For example, this morning I was positive about it being Thursday. I was also a little negative that it was ONLY Thursday, but it's a good start. I was positive about breakfast, because I love it. I was positive about it not snowing outside, which is a rare occurence these days in such parts. I was also positive about the idea that tonight is I am not held down by an appointment, and can go home and eat a nice, leisurely dinner as usual and putz around the house, go to the grocery store, or do what I felt like without rushing somewhere else.

But somehow as the morning progressed, I got increasingly negative. The people on the phone made me negative. People I communicated with made me negative. And while some of them definitely had specific reasons to be negative, I still got negative just the same, from a combination of that and just growing generally annoyed by little things. Then, it became only Thursday. It wasn't snowing out, but it was cloudy. My breakfast had worn off and I'd gotten hungry. I was thinking about not being able to spend my weekend as I liked. I started thinking about how the afternoon would probably seem to drag on for days. I wanted six chocolate chip cookies in the middle of my negative spell. And then I mentally smacked myself.

Just because others were negative, it didn't mean I had feel their negativity, too. I tried to ignore the people who are pointlessly negative, and help those who are upset for good reason. And when it comes to myself, I'm trying to be at least 60% positive all the time. Usually, I'm pretty good at being optimistic, but for some reason, I feed off the negativity of others and become negative myself. I usually take the mood of whoever I am around at the time, which is completely unhealthy and one of the reasons I don't want a roommate. I don't want my mood affected by a stranger. But negativity really is quite contagious. If one person is negative and brings down someone else, they could bring down two more people, and in no time everybody's pissed off. It's no way to live. So try to stay positive.

Day Forty-Three: Patience, My Ass

I am not, and have never been a patient person. I hate waiting, I have a short attention span, and I will usually take any opportunity I have to make a process go faster, and usually at my own expense. "Oh, I'm supposed to wait thirty minutes for my nail polish to dry before attempting to open this cardboard box with my hands? No, that's okay, I'll just do it very carefully."  This, of course, only ends in a string of colorful curse words, wasted time, and wasted nail polish. "Please wait seven to ten days for delivery." No, I will avidly track my package from the day I make my order to see if it will arrive on my doorstep in, perhaps, two or three days instead.

When it comes to waiting for important things to process that I cannot possibly make go any faster, such as the waiting after a job interview, or in my current example, waiting to hear from a realtor about a place, I feel helpless, restless, and annoyed that the situation is almost completely out of my hands, and anything I could do to make the process work faster would almost certainly harm the outcome. Sure, I could call or email the woman several times a day to get the status on my credit check and the landlord's decision, but proving myself to be "a real go-getter" will probably only prove me to be controlling, impatient, and untolerably annoying. Nobody wants to rent to somebody like that. So instead, I must be content with what I can do with this process: sit and watch my phone blink peacefully in its unquavering and uninterrupted sleep. Sure, at some point during the day, or within the next few days, it might vibrate to life with flashing lights and blinking colors, but right now, it isn't, and I won't have any idea when it will (or if it will). So I have absolutely no other reasonable and psychologically stable option other than to wait patiently. I could wait impatiently, sure, but that would not make my answer come any sooner, and it would only serve to make me more stressed out, more upset, and more impatient than I already am.

So, I'm going to sit and wait. I will keep my phone glued by my side and be patient for as long as I physically can until I become a warped and girly version of the Incredible Hulk, in which my inner child will come tumbling uncontrollably out and I will probably throw a temper tantrum, which I absolutely still do (I am entirely ashamed to admit this, but I promise I do it completely away from other people, and it usually consists of throwing something unbreakable and sobbing hysterically. Please note that this has never happened at the result of impatience. I have only ever known myself to throw an adult temper tantrum when I have done something incredibly, epically stupid and probably knew that it was a bad idea before I did it, yet I proceeded anyway. I think that's probably a decent reason.). In my slight experience, the longer I have had to wait for something, the better it ended up being when it arrived. so maybe I'll end up having to wait a week, and it will all turn out beautifully. I guess I just have to wait.

Day Twenty-Four: A Chronicle of Pinching Pennies

After almost a month of writing, I had an epiphany today. In the midst of all this ridiculous apartment-hunting, budgeting, and adding the numbers over and over, I had the thought that approaching my new life and the challenges that come with it might make a decent blog. I could write about starting out; about saving, calling the cable company, cooking for myself, cleaning my bathrooms, and building Ikea furniture. Okay, so it sounds about as exciting as morning church services on TV. But who knows? It might make for some fun and interesting reading at my own expense. Consider the possibilities.

Hopefully, I've been a little persuasive so far. If not, this may change some minds. On Sunday, as I previously mentioned, I was in an absolutely terrible mood. The storms of female times hung over my head and rained on anyone I tried to involve in conversation. Everyone who opened their mouth in my general direction was talking entirely too much. Needless to say, I was about as warm and inviting as a gila monster. I was definitely not in the mood to trudge out in the rain and look at an apartment. And then, my boyfriend called and I become an absolute disgrace. Cue the ominous music.

Bless his soul, he's nothing if not honest with me. After hearing my girlish groaning and childish stomping that I was absolutely not going to burden myself with looking at a potential place to live because I was too stressed out, he said something to the effect of, "...about what? Go. Go see it. You need to go see it, and you're as ready as you're going to be to start looking. Just go look at it." That's all it took. The flood gates opened, and I was a blubbering, incomprehensible mess. He was at a complete loss for words. My mom got annoyed at him for not supporting me, and annoyed at me that I was going out anyway. In ten minutes, I managed to send everyone in my life into a tizzy. Ah, the power of female ways. This was not a good way to start a new leg of my life.

So although I've leveled out since then and I don't feel nearly as stressed out, I'm still on a pretty rocky road with this apartment-hunting mess. I might make this a full-time writing topic if it's interesting enough, or I might not. But it's definitely a possibility.

Day Eight: Lucky Me, I Found a New Emotion Today...

I think throughout this whole happy experiment, I've been pretty honest about my likes and dislikes on a wide range of topics. And with my efforts put forth, I'm relatively confident that I've been able to keep my mouth shut on strong social topics. Sure, I'm a big fan of analyzing and criticizing the behavior of other people, but when it comes to the truly controversial things, I like to stay far, far away. Mostly, this is because I'm too lazy to put up a fight.


But alas, I think I'm going to break that rule today, and I hope this will be the one and only time. So bear with me, this might be interesting.


It bears noting that I am not particularly easily offended when it comes to social jokes and commentary. Like many people, I enjoy a good tasteless joke. And I understand that people with disabilities, maladies, and psychological issues have challenges in their lives that are difficult to overcome, and sometimes more difficult to convey to others. But for the first time in the short years I've lived today, I was on the other side of the joke and I actually had a taste of how it feels.


This morning I was listening to a talk show, and the guest being interviewed was discussing the nature of his specific job, and how he gives others advice on dealing with social situations. Then, he brought up an example: a woman had written to him seeking advice on dealing with a specific malady and when and how she should explain it to others she encountered. The guest, who (like most people) was unfamiliar with her problem, did some research on it, didn't understand how it was a big deal, and actually saw it as an asset. I was momentarily stunned for a variety of reasons.


First of all, I was in shock that someone else who shared my problem was actually a topic of conversation. The problem we share (which is not an STD, thank you very much. I feel the need to make that clear so there's no doubt.) is quite rare and understudied, and as a result, hearing about anyone else who has it in a public forum like that is a little shocking. Secondly, I was a little hurt, that this guest, who claimed to be an expert on such things, could not sufficiently do research. It's not a difficult problem to understand, given five minutes of honest reading, yet somehow this genius managed to miss the entire point of why the problem is actually a problem and not just a condition with a name. Thank you, Asshole.


For the first time in my life, I knew how it felt for people to completely and totally not understand. But at the same time, I wasn't in the slightest bit angry. How could I get angry at people who were very simply just misinformed? Granted, I was a little miffed that the guy whose job was to sufficiently answer this woman's question who reached out to him for advice was clearly too busy and do five minutes of honest research so he might actually help someone, but I got over that pretty quickly.


It was just a very interesting experience. Those brief two minutes that made me feel emotions I hadn't ever felt before gave me a whole new view into a world I'd never seen. I had a flash of cognizance that made me understand why people fight for awareness for stupid diseases that no one has heard of, and why people put stupid magnetic ribbons on their cars. They don't always want people to donate money, or go on charity walks, or go to stupid rallies (though they often do, very much so). Sometimes, they don't even need people to try to understand, because if they don't directly have the problem or are affected by it, such an understanding really isn't possible. They just want people not to misunderstand. They want to hear "wow, that must be terrible," and know that their sympathizer actually means it.
 
Honestly, I would rather stab myself in the eye with a plastic fork than preach about the rights of others. Sometimes, life just makes you think differently about things than you would have been able to think before.