#rantword

People are all different.  Different people have different breaking points.  While you might have walked six blocks here through the snow, you're used to it.  You've grown up in a climate like this, lived in it for all of your life.  Maybe she's from California, and the prospect of walking two blocks through deep snow first thing in the morning is just unthinkable after these past few weeks.  Maybe she's got a bad leg that acts up in weather like this.  Maybe her brother's sick, and she just wanted one last thing to stress her out.

"Suck it up" is a valid answer sometimes, I'll grant you; it is not always the answer.  You know what it's like to be in a state of misery, so it astounds me that you don't see that someone else might be, too.

I did not know that Beyoncé rules the world, but apparently she does.  This according to many things I've not-really-read-because-why-should-I-care over the last week.

And also, some guy from some reality television show said something stupid, and has been (more or less) fired for it.  This has been happening for ages, except that they've never been famous before.  It wasn't right then, and it wasn't right this time (although I don't agree at all with what he said).   It is no less just or unjust now just because he did it in a magazine instead of through social media.

I think that it's more important that a federal judge found a lot of the spying that has been done through the NSA to be unconstitutional this week.

And that apparently being gay--even knowing about someone who is homosexual and not reporting that to the federal government--is on its way to being declared illegal in Uganda.  

Canadian laws on prostitution were struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada.  Did you know that?  I didn't know that until I skimmed the BBC's website tonight.  (Well, I didn't know the second two things.)  No disrespect meant to kitties, but I'd rather be hearing more about these latter three than the first three.

Maybe with a dose of Princess Monster Truck mixed in there somewhere, because cats are adorable.  It make the world slightly more palatable to know that everyone can still get together, ignore their differences, and squee over a cat (or a puppy or a bunny or something similarly cuddly).  

There's a lot of people complaining about having to work over the holidays--specifically on the holidays.  Then you get the comments, "NO ONE should EVER have to work on Christmas/Thanksgiving".

I'll bite: what about the people who don't celebrate Christmas?  Plenty of Jews, Muslims, pagans, atheists, and people belonging to other assorted religions out there.  Too bad if you wanted to go out on December 25th, 24th, or early on the 26th.  What about the people who aren't from America--they're visiting from another country, for one reason or another?

What about emergency responders?  You're at your family gathering, and great-grandpa collapses of a heart attack.  If you really mean no one should be working, then you're waiting until tomorrow to take you to a hospital.  (Much less anyone who's at the hospital--hope you guys can take care of yourselves for a day.)  The tree lights short circuit and your house catches fire.  Your car skids on snow on the way to your parents' house and takes you into a ditch.  You slip while you're walking in your driveway and break your arm.  Due to poor weather, your flight was delayed and can't leave until the next morning.  Too bad; you've got no firemen, no policemen, no tow truck, no doctors, no 911 dispatchers, no pilots, no hotel staff, no airport staff, and so on.

Well, alright; we should have emergency services working.  But no one else!  What about retail stores and gas stations?

You broke your arm and are released to go home, but you need a prescription for pain medicine filled.  You're one of those people who has to work, and you don't have time to make your own food before you go into work.  You get stuck on the side of the road, and by the time that you make it out, you're so low on gas that you have to get more.  You find out that you have extra guests coming--whether due to an emergency or as a special surprise--and don't have enough food or sheets or presents.  Your brother was just admitted to the hospital, and you wanted to get them something extra--something special to cheer them up.  

Maybe you have to be alone for the holiday, and you don't want to sit around at home and deal with that.  Your mother died a few days ago and no one quite feels like celebrating, much less cooking a big meal.  You're studying abroad and can't get home to your family and friends.  You're stranded.

I'm not saying that I don't have sympathy for people who work through the holidays.  And I'm working Christmas and Thanksgiving this year and next year; maybe on as far as the eye can see.  To put it into simple terms, it does suck.  I'm just saying that there are worse things, that there are reasons to go out on that Thursday in November and the 25th of December that have nothing to do with greed.  

If the important part is spending time with your family, maybe try to arrange something in July, or in March; some other time when you can all get together.  If it's the religious significance, then find another holiday.  Epiphany, Easter, or any bloody day--your religion doesn't stop being important to you after its holiest day.  

Maybe someone's out shopping at 2 a.m. on Black Friday because they worked until 1 a.m. that night, and are working all night the next night, and the next night.  For one night in the year, they can actually go out while they're still awake, on their way home.

And that’s always how simple it is in books, especially in books circa 19th-early 20th century that I grew up reading.  The heroine (or the hero) goes through some experience that makes them decide to suck it up and become an adult instead of continuing to be somewhat childish.  I’ll grant you, you do need to actually make the decision to grow up.  Circumstances may force a body to make certain decisions that lead to more adult-like behavior with no conscious choice expressed until you realize that somewhere in there, you became more mature and have less interest in things that you used to enjoy. 

There is definitely nothing wrong with that.  That’s how life works. 

But in the novels, they never show you the first six times that he decided to quit smoking and returned to cigarettes.  Maybe the first time, but not the next ones.  They’ll mention it in passing, but not how everything built up until dammit, just one.  You’re a hero when you quit, and a quitter for not quitting.  It doesn’t matter if your husband died of cancer, you had three teenage children heading into the adult world, college and graduating to full jobs, and your mother heading into the advance stages of Alzheimer’s while your father refuses to accept responsibility so it somehow falls to you, your sister’s doctor finds a mass in her breasts, and the long hours at work, the car crashes, the casual colds, and then just one smoke will help you feel a little better on these days that never end, that are destroying you and making you crazy.

Why won’t you just quit?  It just takes a little willpower.  Why can’t you just stop and make that decision?  It’s so simple.

End the sarcasm.

We’re too willing to prescribe treatments, we backseat physicians.  Why won’t you grow up?  Why won’t you stop smoking?  Why won’t you stop eating unhealthy foods?  Why won’t you just cheer up?  Why won’t you stop running?  Why won’t you exercise?  This is all your fault. 

Which is not to say that one should not take responsibility for one’s own actions.  It is not to say that we should indulge in perpetual childhood.  But I am saying that when everything in your life is shit, your single vice—that is currently unpopular—gives everyone the right to comment on your life, whether or not they understand.  Snap judgments, thoughtless words, and they’re taken aback if you don’t accept their words with a smile and a kind thought.  Your day is a little bit worse—as if you don’t know that you just behaved in an embarrassing fashion, giggling too loudly in public with your friends like you’re still sixteen.  As if you didn’t look at your weight on the scale that morning and regret that pizza you split last night.  As if you don’t see the billboards on the highway telling you how awful smoking is and what exactly it will do to your throat.  Thanks for the reminder.  And as far as they’re concerned, why are you so rude?  They’re just trying to help.  They know that quitting is hard; their husband went through it after an emphysema diagnosis five years ago, and it took that scare—and the desire not to make things worse—to manage it.  They were being sympathetic, trying to give you that push that might help you out, to let you know that they’d support you through the hell that you would go through around the end of your fifth day or first week or second hour.

I emphasize smoking here because while obesity is also a big evil in the public eye, while people are aware of the dangers of alcoholism, you have the anti-smoking ads everywhere, the laws about smoking anywhere in public, enormous scare-tactic ads on the cigarette boxes themselves, and yes, even billboards on the interstate highways with very sick people on them.  Mandatory ads on DVDs that tell you—self-righteously—that smoking isn’t glamorous.  But make no word of beer or shots or rum or whiskey.  And no, it’s not healthy.  It’s not good.  Secondhand smoke kills; I’m not denying that.

So do drunk drivers.  So does overeating.  So does just playing around with your friends or yelling at your kids and being so distracted by the stupid thing that Mike just did that you don’t notice you’re hitting ninety and veering into the next lane.  So do gun accidents.  So does not watching when you’re going as you cross the street. 

Every once in a while, people do unintelligent things, thoughtless things.  Sometimes they kill; sometimes they just upset another person. 

And so you won’t grow up on the word of your sister, your cousin, your best friend, your brother-in-law, your father, your pastor.  You won’t get help just because they think you should; it was on the news yesterday about another person who died from bad cholesterol, another drunk driver who killed a pedestrian, another cancer patient who succumbed to their disease.  You will get help when you’re already thinking about it and something pops you over the edge.  It’s unlikely to be the same pamphlets that you’ve seen dozens of times or the same statistics that have been rattled off in your direction for years. 

You’re the only one who can say it.  “I shall have to grow up”, and you should not forget what came before; do not let it weaken you, do not let it give you the excuse to backslide, but remember that you have said this before, that it is not always as easy as just this.  You did not decide it out of the blue on the basis of a small incident.  You first had to come to the place that gave you the strength to try, whether for the first time or the twenty-fifth.  Remember it all, and especially—once you are grown up, once you have decided to follow a strict diet and exercise regimen, once you have chosen to follow a path, and continued it through to the end—do not harshly judge those who take a different path than you.  You never struggled with mental illness, but you had to be tutored in algebra, you had to Google how to get your car to stop honking its own horn, you had to try to quit drinking three times before you finally managed it and now every day is still a battle.  You never picked up a cigarette, but you envy those who manage to participate in social interactions without any sign of anxiety.  You are famous, but wish that the paparazzi would stop stalking you, stop trying to peer inside of your blinds as you change your clothes, that strangers would stop threatening your mother just to get at you.

There's nothing.

Death is the end, and it's hard, and it's lonely, and I would change that if I could.

A Card is one more thing to open, is one more little thing that you have to go through.  

Now, around Christmas, you may not mind, you know, people like their Christmas cards.  And if you're in the hospital, it's been a long time, and you're sick, or you've got a broken leg or something, something that doesn't prohibit you from thinking normally but does mean that you can't really do anything physically--you have to be there--sure, I can see another card being welcome.  

But in general--with sympathy cards, congratulations cards and everything?  

The store-bought ones always look too pithy; they try too hard, either to be too serious or to be too funny.  Either they go out of their way to make a joke about it, whether or not it should be joked about, or they go out of their way to be flowery, insincere in their regrets.  

None of their words are mine; I'd rather use mine, my own words.  

Well, you could write your own card.  I don't want to write my own card, because on the card, my words also sound insincere.  How many times can you say "I'm sorry"?  How many times can you say "Congratulations"?  

Definitely don't mix those two up.  

But I can only write, "I'm sorry", "My thoughts are with you", "My sympathy to you", and I can only write it so many different ways before it begins to sound redundant, especially in the flood of other things that I'm sure you have received, you who are grieving, you who are hurting, you who are celebrating some enormous achievement.  

So I'd rather wait and say it in person.  In person, I can put some emotion into my voice, even though I don't normally manage to do so.  And in person, I can hug you--I can hold you, I can clasp your hand.  Any gesture that I make on a card will be strictly written, strictly artificial.  A gesture that I make in person may seem forced, but is at least real.  

It's why I don't send cards.  It's why I don't call right away, either.  Adding another burden to someone's list of things that they have to deal with, when they're dealing with an extreme loss or they're dealing with an extreme accomplishment--

It's an expression of sympathy, and I presume they do appreciate that, but at the same time, I'd rather wait and offer it to them on a day when everyone else is not, on a day when they might need it more.