Gift for my Father-in-Law.
My boss has given me a new duty- I now call the account holders whose cards were declined for their charges and say "hey - what's the deal with that?" This is not a job I want but it is a job I turned out to be good at. I don't think that says anything good about me at all. I may have a broad mean streak I can count on in a pinch, but it doesn't come naturally to me to embarrass anyone.
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Privacy and control aren't all they're cracked up to be. I can't seem to confide in the people I want to talk to. Cathy, KC, deb, Baba - all of them have been sent to my emotional Siberia, where the fabric of our relationship is being worn thin and dingy by the elements - and you know they don't have Woolite out there. There's a part of me that wants to lay my head in a lap and cry out the whole stupid story, and I know they want to hear it, would be exactly as sympathetic as I need them to be. I know I can trust them with the truth and that, when they try to pry it out of me, they genuinely want to know what they can do.
But needing them feels gross to me. Needing anyone make me feel fat and slow and plodding and stupid. The truth is, most people really only want to hear your story once - very few people have the emotional toughness to involve themselves, to offer to be the ear you scream into at three in the morning. What most people really want is for you to have your flaws, but the kind that don't really require more than soothing platitudes from them. And therein lies my fear - I take them up on their generous offer to be my ear, and they get so sick of hearing my story they distance themselves with rolls of their eyes or little, barely concealed snickers.
Again, better to have you scoff at the useless minutiae that is diagnostics than to know my truths and reject me as whiny. So, much as I love them, much as I need them right now, I have pushed them into the farthest unreachable corners of my mind where they can't scorch me with their comfort or disinterest.
