Kids are horrible. Why do we keep making them? –Bob Belcher

I have this bad habit of incessantly trying to find the good in people. I think it’s something about the direction of my study. We are taught that everyone deserves the same opportunities and the same fair treatment. It drives my husband absolutely crazy, this insane need to seek out an individual’s wholesome parts. Because let’s be real: sometimes there just aren’t any, despite how thorough you might have been in looking. For example, find me something legitimately good in Casey Anthony besides being outwardly attractive.

I rest my case.

My husband is always telling me that I am too nice, and I’ll be honest with you: it’s something I’ve heard before. I know my husband loves me but when he says this, it’s in a way that’s almost mildly derogatory, as if it is completely inexplicable that I should go out of my way to be a nice person. It’s frustrating for him because he gets angry when I’m taken advantage of. He wants to snuff out everyone who has ill intentions because he is my husband. I understand this; he wants to protect me.

And while I love him for it, I get frustrated at his propensity to be less caring than I am sometimes. How can he be so blasé about things that while might be small, are still important? He never worries about hurting someone’s feelings because if he didn’t mean it that way, then they shouldn’t take it that way. (I know, it’s the male mentality. I’m not completely naïve to this.) To his credit, he always tells me that the world needs more people like me but, he says, “It also needs people like me to protect and strengthen the people like you.”

And this is why we are probably so compatible. We complement each other, we need each other. We are like strawberries and champagne, guns and Kevlar, anarchy and harmony, jail and much needed rehabilitation. You cannot have one without the other.  

But my thing is that listen, everybody makes mistakes. Everybody breaks the rules, cheats on their diets, and lies to people they love. I mean, if we were all perfect, what would be the point of getting out of bed every day? What would be the point of life? What would there be to learn and experience if we had already perfected it all?

I guess it’s just that in my experience, you almost always attract more bees with honey. My mom raised me that being nice never hurt anyone. I mean, is it really going to kill you to smile at someone? Greet them with a warm hello and act interested in their life? Tell them please and thank you? Forget for two seconds that you live an absolutely miserable existence?

A simple southern way to say kiss my behind, politely tear you apart with “Sweetie, bless your heart”. –LeAnn Rimes, Spitfire

I had this one friend who had absolutely no concept of this. It was like she got some sort of pleasure out of offending people and hurting their feelings. I could never understand it either because in her occupation, she oversaw people. She was the face of a company, someone people first saw when they walked through the door. And she was absolutely goddamn miserable.

She hated her boyfriend (who she was begging to marry) and the level of hatred would vary from day to day. She hated to be intimate with him but she claimed to want five kids. (I heard through the grapevine that she has three now. Or maybe it’s two. Who remembers? #IrishPeopleProblems, am I right? All these people do with their lives is drink and breed.) She hated her job because it was a lot of work and in her defense, very stressful. She hated her alleged “best friend” because she felt like she couldn’t trust her. (And in her defense, she probably couldn’t. I know this because we all worked together once upon a time.) 

She was exasperated with always being the last to know what was going on at work and she resented her “best friend” because they were never on the same page. (And again, to her credit, that kind of nonsense is really annoying and my friend was always the one left looking like an idiot. And she really wasn’t.) 

For a while, I wasn’t really all that crazy about her. She was one of those people who only had really funny, negative things to say about everything and everyone. We worked together in a school and it was like being nice to people was a real chore for her, and that bothered me. But over time, I grew to love her, despite her incessantly negative disposition. 

I began to quickly learn that yes, she was bitchy, but she was also brilliant and thoughtful to those she cared about. She and I soon bonded because we both had this annoying tendency to wallow. (I still do it from time to time, drives my husband crazy.) We could both be cold and sardonic, and we both loved to read. We both had the propensity to be grumpy and snarky, especially because our boss was this gorgeous idiot. (But OMG, she was SUCH an idiot.)

The only difference between us was that while the inclination to be bitter resided in both of us, I could easily lift myself out of it. With her, it was like she just wanted to stay there. She wanted to be miserable. I think she liked it, honestly. She wanted to live this sad, stressful life.

Better to be fake and happy than real and miserable. –Evangeline Lily 

This woman and I bonded a great deal over our frustrations regarding work. (In fact, something that just breaks my black little heart to this day is when I got so angry about the working conditions, (as we worked with children, you can go ahead and use your imaginations) that I told my boss I was “done with this place” and “don’t expect to see me tomorrow because I’m finished with your lies”. I was at home, wallowing in whiskey and my anger when my friend called me. She was nearly inaudible because she was crying so hard. When I asked what was wrong she said, “Katie, I just miss you. I hate being here without you. You’re my ally in this hellhole.”)

There were times when I honestly felt like she was the only one who understood me. She got that I drank my feelings, she knew that I was insecure about my ex moving into Wez’s fire department, she knew that I loved all the kids like they were my own and got irritated that these parents didn’t know how truly lucky they were to have children. Sometimes I felt that our bond was a lot of what kept me there; I couldn’t just leave her. She was my person. Her alleged “best friend” never knew her the way I did and despite it all, she remained faithful to her. Even to this day. And a lot of shenanigans have happened since. (Including, and not to be bitter, that she was the Maid of Honor in my friend’s wedding and she just didn’t show, for whatever reason.)

But sometimes, I feel that our bond, however strong and meaningful, wasn’t so great for me. She was always angry about something, offended by someone, belittling a parent, or complaining about a staff member. Even though she had moments where she could be well intended and pleasant, she was so inherently grumpy and that made me grumpy. Although a lot of what she said was usually fairly comical, it was difficult to stay in a good mood around her. It was like, she brought me down with her never-ending negativity.  

But this wasn’t what bothered me the most as time went on. What would bother me the more it occurred and the more I thought about it was her tendency to come to me, complaining about her best friend (because I would agree with almost all of it), and then run right back to her best friend’s desk. Like a wild hawk to his handler. 

And then that night, she would run over to her house, hang out with her and her family, and have a goddamn cooking or baking party. She would go on a double date with her, even though she allegedly thought her best friend’s husband was an arrogant, obnoxious, woman chaser. (Which he totally was.) It used to bother me to the point where I almost didn’t trust her sometimes. It was just so pathetic the way she would run right back to her. 

I would get so frustrated because to be honest, I couldn’t be sure who she was misleading. Was she playing me to validate her feelings? Was she playing her best friend because she was so desperate that for whatever reason, she couldn’t risk losing her? Was she just two-faced and untrustworthy? I will probably never know.

But as more and more time went on, I began to feel betrayed by her. I started to feel like I just couldn’t trust her. I started to feel like maybe she would tell me these things because I would almost always take her side. I think she might have thought that I would venture from classroom to classroom, sewing disharmony and turning everyone against her best friend. In so doing, making her the one everyone trusted, the one that everyone sided with during Center feuds, and the one all the girls went to with their enormous amount of problems. 

I could never be sure if it was a popularity thing with her or if she was just trying to keep the girls on her good side to make her job easier. But what I could never understand was how she could allegedly hate everyone so profusely and then play nice to their face. Including, more specifically, her “best friend” whose life she was desperately, incessantly attempting to be a part of. 

Moral of the Crazy: It’s one of those things that will always bother me. How can I be certain that our friendship was even genuine if she was always running around complaining about the woman who was allegedly her stupid best friend? I try to tell myself that the friendship we had was a legitimate one and that maybe, as with most people in my life, she just felt like I was someone she could vent her frustrations to. And rightfully so, I suppose, as I’m always telling people, “I’m a vault.” You can trust me, I tell them, I’m a vault.

I guess I just don’t understand that propensity to be a negative, nasty individual. What purpose does it serve? Today I was at the gym with my husband and he put his arm around me because I was crying. Some man said to us, “Hey guys, this is a family gym.” Do you know what that comment did to me? It made my stomach hurt. It embarrassed me because I felt like I offended someone, and then it embarrassed me again because my husband’s response in my ear was, “Yo, get off my nuts.” 

It will never make sense to me, this apparent inability to be a respectful individual. My neuroses come to a head every time someone is rude to me or makes a snarky remark, like it will somehow make them look or feel better. I don’t understand this. Being nice to people is cool as shit. Being approachable, warm, and welcoming is an endearing trait that makes one admirable. I try to tell myself that every time I get my feelings hurt because someone woke up on the wrong side of the futon. I try to tell myself that I’m a good person for just letting those comments and glares go by. Who am I? I think to myself, who are any of us to know what a person is dealing with on any given day? 

One time, when I was at my old job, there was some sort of miscommunication with a customer’s payment and she was charged twice. Coincidentally, this particular customer had a burr in her saddle to begin with because her friend had once dated my boss. Like really, who gives a shit? Am I right?

Anyway, she called the store absolutely irrationally cussing me out. Because I’m sensitive and annoying, I was on the verge of tears. How could this woman attack me like that over the phone? I needed ice for the verbal slap. Seriously.

I text messaged my boss and told him what happened. I asked him what I should do, how I should handle it. He gave me further instructions and then sent me a follow-up text that read: I’m sorry she spoke to you that way. I don’t understand how people think it’s appropriate to communicate like that. It’s not, it’s disgusting.

Let me tell you something, friends. It is disgusting. Unless someone stole your car, ran over your dog, or murdered your mother for a cheeseburger (God forbid!), you don’t talk to people like that. I don’t care. And similarly with my aforementioned friend, it was like it was the only way she knew how to converse with people. She had to bring them down, maybe to lift herself up, in order to appropriately function in society.

Listen, no.

I don’t care if I’m too nice because I would rather say that I took the high road, that at least I was nice about it, that at least I spoke to someone like they were a human being when I was telling them how angry I was. And you know what, I’m much more likely to listen to someone who respects me enough to communicate effectively with me than someone who cusses at me because they’re frustrated at something else. (Enter in why I left my ex-boyfriend.) 

If I’m guilty of something, let it be that I was too caring, too sincere, and too agreeable to hurt someone else’s feelings. Let it be that I would rather tread carefully than eat my words. Let it be that I would rather think clearly and say something I mean to say in a respectful way, than say something I can never take back. Let it be that I’m sensitive and cry when people yell at me, than grow equally hoarse with rage, simply because I can. Let it be that I would rather have my Dior mascara run, than run my mouth.

I guess what I’m saying is something I’ve said before: Be good to each other, because we don’t all look like some of the places we’ve been. 

 

And maybe buy some waterproof mascara. 

He don't exist in this world, So he just twists and he twirls, Spirals and spins till he hurls himself into rage, And it's destroying him slowly, Cause he does not even know me, even though he sees me everywhere he goes. –Eminem, Bully