Stoking the fire of selectiveness

When Floridian Casey Anthony was charged with the murder and manslaughter of her two year old daughter, Caylee, media went into overdrive, condemning Casey guilty before the trial even began. The internet and news outlets were exploding with outrage and indignation, causing me to remark to a friend that it felt like the Lindy Chamberlain slash trial by media all over again. The only difference this time was that Casey’s jury, unlike Lindy’s, were obviously not influenced and pressured by media attention to find her guilty, no matter what.

When that jury acquitted Casey, hot emotion went beyond boiling point. And suddenly everyone was a legal expert on the criminal justice system, behaving as if they had been in that courtroom, listening to the defence, prosecution and all the evidence presented, how and why the law was wrong and is an ass, and how they can “fix” the legal and jury systems. They forgot that they were getting second-hand information as distilled by media sources. Predictably, social media went into overdrive. Facebook members sent out invites to people to put their porch lights on for Caylee (I received two invitations and declined both, obviously. Also, I don’t have a porch).  Nancy Grace, a former prosecutor of dubious prosecutorial conduct and host of a current affairs show, laid it on thick, stating that “the devil is dancing tonight”.

It has gone so far as people calling for the revocation of the Fifth Amendment which protects people from double jeopardy, and signing a petition at Change.org that is calling to make it a felony for a parent or guardian to not notify law enforcement of a child going missing within 24 hours.

As Radley Balko points out, this would be bad law for several reasons, least of which it would be based on emotion rather than reason and it would be bad policy. There would be “no way for a medical examiner to determine time of death in the sort of narrow window that would be necessary to enforce Caylee’s Law”.

Balko elaborates with a number of questions:

If medical science can’t pinpoint the time of the child’s death to the minute, how else are authorities going to determine it? They can’t ask the parent. A guilty person isn’t going to give you an honest answer, and even an innocent parent may lie if they fear the truth could land them in prison. It also seems safe to assume that a parent’s first instinct upon witnessing the death of a child isn’t to look up at the clock to take note of an official time of death . . . .

There are myriad other problems with the one-hour requirement. What if a child dies while sleeping? When would you start the clock on the parent’s one-hour window to report? From the time the parent discovers the child is dead, or from the time the child actually dies? . . . .  What if a parent or babysitter missed the deadline because she fell asleep at the time the child was playing outside and suffered a fatal accident? . . . .

The portion of the bill that requires a parent to report a missing child within 24 hours is just as fraught with problems. When does that clock start? From the time the child actually gets abducted, gets lost, or is somehow killed, or at the time the parents noticed the child was missing? How do you pinpoint the time that they “noticed”?

Clearly, the Caylee Anthony case was stoked to inflame the emotions of people — and I want to make it clear here that it is tragic and sad what happened to Caylee. No doubt.

But what has been bugging me the most is this: where is the equivalent outrage and emotion over this?

Sudan

Or this?

Child prostitutes

Or this?

Los Angeles, USA

I’m also not seeing the equivalent public grief over Leiby Kletzky, the 8 year old boy who was kidnapped, drugged and suffocated last week in New York City.

The inflaming effect of media coverage on the Casey Anthony trial and acquittal, and the public grief and outrage for Caylee Anthony compared to the examples above, makes me wonder, wonder about people’s sense of reality, selectiveness, perspective and genuineness at times.

Politics! Religion! Twitter! Things you shouldn’t talk about.

• After watching the second Republican Presidential Candidates debate last week, I think we can definitely rule out Newt Gingrich, Tom Pawlenty (after rather high expectations, he turned out to be a hesitant mess), Herman Cain, Ron Paul, and Rick Buttsex Santorum. Mitt Romney was assured and, dare I say it, Presidential looking — because appearance and looks are almost everything when it comes to the Presidency (although I can’t really explain Richard Nixon). But then he goes and ruins it… The surprise, for me at least, was Michele Bachmann: she didn’t sound the conspiracy-driven crackpot that she usually is… but days later, she’s returned to her old self and all is right in the world again.
• I’ve been staying up late (well, later than usual) in recent weeks. I started watching Big Love from the first season and am currently into the fourth season. I realise now that initially I was unconsciously prepared to dislike the Henrickson family for their Independent Mormon fundamentalists beliefs (or, to put a better way, not their beliefs but for being so foolish to believe such things), which includes the belief of plural marriage (polygamy). I found it reprehensible; now I find it incomprehensible but intriguing and I’ve been a little addicted to reading about personal experiences, like this one. Still don’t think it’s the best lifestyle, like open relationships — but that’s just me. Nevertheless, I could totally dig the idea of polyandry. Oh yeah.
• After quitting Twitter (yes, again) over a month ago, I feel FREE! It’s good to get away from the pettiness, the gossiping, the backstabbing, the lies, and the general bullshit that gets filtered through. People are weird: warm and friendly one minute, cold and aloof the next, and you’re left wondering what the fuck happened, what did you do/didn’t do, say/didn’t say. Of particular distaste is finding out that people were bitching about you – even though they don’t know you, never met you, let alone spoken to you. It’s a strange thing that happened to not just me, but others as well. Like I said, people are weird.

On a different tangent, I know some tweeps would argue that Twitter is a great source of comfort for battling loneliness and depression. I don’t disagree, I found sharing common life stressors with others made me feel less alone (although I always prefer actual human contact, face to face communication). That’s good.

But on the other hand, over and over and over, I would see people getting too attached to the online identities; pre-existing depression and anxiety would increase because of an imagined slight because tone and context is lost in 140 characters. People who flirt with others and were told to cease flirting felt rejected and despondent. And don’t get me started when love affairs go sour… Oh, there were so many scenarios, and I admit that on occasion I felt anxious, that whole “Oh my god, I went too far and now they don’t like me because they’re not replying to me!” or “Was that passive-aggressive tweet about me?” My point is, I often thought quietly to myself, “There are some people who shouldn’t be on Twitter… they’re not coping with it well.” It is a concern and I’d be interested to hear what others have to say.

But those aren’t the reasons I quit Twitter. It was simply because I was getting bored and also noticing my attention and concentration spans had gone to shit. A few years ago, Nicholas Carr, referring to Google in particular but which could be applied to Twitter,  wrote:

I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

Bingo. That was exactly what I was experiencing. When studying, I couldn’t concentrate for any longer than 10 minutes before I wanted to “see what was happening on Twitter”. Facebook never bothered me the same way (and someone asked me why. I don’t know why, it just never did). Twitter, I realised, had become an addiction of sorts. I would try shutting down the tab and moving myself to another room, but that was difficult as much of my study is online. When I was on Twitter, I’d be chasing links: listening to YouTube clips that people tweeted, reading links that they posted (even when it wasn’t really a topic I had any particular interest in), following particular hashtag conversations, following other general conversations, and so on.

As Carr notes, this is a widespread phenomenon; many others are experiencing or have experienced this alteration in mental habits. The realisation that I needed to completely quit — since I was incapable of simply shutting down TweetDeck or the tab in which Twitter was open — was the night before an essay was due. Instead, I spent 3 hours following the Marrickville Council debate over the Israeli boycott controversy.

THREE FUCKING HOURS! AND I HAD AN ESSAY DUE THE NEXT DAY! As it was, after the council voted to drop the boycott, the last thing I felt like doing, unsurprisingly, was my essay. I went to bed instead, feeling pissed off and beginning to think it was time to call it a day on Twitter.

So I did.

And that’s why I quit Twitter.

But wait, there’s more.

After I deleted my Twitter account, breaking the automatic response to “see what was happening” was strange and somewhat difficult, but gradually I realised I was starting to read articles and journals for research better — in the sense that I was concentrating easier and without distraction. Even deep thinking about my essays improved, instead of half-arsed thoughts and ideas that I then had to flesh out. Best of all, I’m reading books again. I’ve missed reading the most and it’s been wonderful to sit and read without a wandering mind for a couple of hours at a time.

Meanwhile, Professor David Chalmers, director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University, recently argued that Google was “actually making us smarter” and “turning us into superheroes of the mind”. I don’t disagree that the internet in general has improved our knowledge. I’ve learnt a lot of things online — but I still wonder how much trivia that I’ve read that I’ve retained. Things come at such speed, have I had the time to absorb that knowledge before I move onto the next piece of information or trivia? Still open to debate (with myself). How about you?

On a final note about Twitter: when I started contacting a few people who I wanted to keep in touch with about my intention to quit and explained briefly why, I was surprised at how often they understood, for they also found they were struggling with the same issue of concentration and attention, to various extents. All along I thought it was just me, thinking I didn’t have enough willpower or focus or some such to concentrate on my studies when required.

• This post took a week to write. What was that about improved concentration and attention spans?

Somewhere down in Texas…

Random thoughts:

• You would think that, for me at least, reading my old diary and older posts on this blog would be encouraging and perhaps uplifting, because I’ve come so far. It’s not. It’s fucking depressing! I read back and I’m thinking, “Fucken hell, maybe I should have been or tried to be tougher, stronger, less whiney.” Then I kind of berate myself for being too tough. I have to remind myself that my depression has been very real and that I am still prone to what I call “mini-downs” (because in comparison to the past, they are mini and short-lived episodes of feeling blue). Yet, I can’t help feeling tough on myself. Anyway, I’m sure soon I’ll get over this weird sort of existential crisis or whatever the fuck this is! Just feeling annoyed with myself.

• I realise that there are some people who are just incapable of the old clich: “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes”. Maybe I’m one of them from time to time. It’s just that sometimes trying to make someone understand how you feel or how they make you feel is fucking impossible — and it’s not because you’re not explaining it properly or clearly, but because they can’t step out of their own “me, me, me” mindset and at least consider what the other person is saying and feeling, considering someone else’s perspective.

• I miss my cat. I very nearly bought a puppy the other day. Yes, I know a dog isn’t a cat. I just miss having a little animal to cuddle and care for. Soon. Soon I’ll get a job, a house and have a garden and get a cat and a dog.

• Except first I have put my overseas travel plans back on the agenda. I’ve invested a huge chunk of my tax return so that’s something to be happy about. I’m excited. The name Truth or Consequences in New Mexico enthrals me. It might turn out to be disappointing, but at least I’ve been there. And I want to see someone attempt to eat one of these whilst in Amarillo, Texas.

• Speaking of Texas…

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo…

…and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.

– Richard Wright, American Hunger

For weeks now, I’ve started writing and only got as far as one sentence or one paragraph. I know what I want to say. I just don’t know how to say it. Every writer and blogger, great and small, stumble on this frustrating writer’s block from time to time.

In my case, it’s been an internal struggle: do I keep on writing about where my head’s at now? This blog started as a therapeutic exercise when I was at my lowest, to spill my confused and hurting thoughts out as I struggled to regain control on my life and my depression and anxiety. It’s not for everyone, but for me writing was a beacon in  the darkness of pain and black fog.

The past few months I’ve realised I’ve come a long way from where I was a year ago. The URL of this blog is A Fresh Start in August, started almost a year ago — it’s been nearly a year since I cracked it from emotional exhaustion, depression and anxiety, and had to learn how to look after myself again and deal with unresolved issues that I’d been carrying around for far too long.

Some time ago, I was asked why I write such a personal blog. It was never a conscious decision. It was never intended to be a woe-is-me blog, seeking validation or attention. I was hesitant about being public but I soon realised that I had to write publicly because it was the only way I was going to be honest with myself.

By being public, I couldn’t whitewash anything this way. I had to be honest because I knew if I started making excuses or diminishing or justifying issues, I would feel like a liar or someone with her head buried in the sand, unwilling to be honest. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to start making excuses and justifying myself to anyone, including strangers. I had this (probably irrational) fear that if I was public, I would be seen as a fibber if I started writing less than honestly. I just felt more compelled to be brutally honest with myself while writing publicly. I don’t know if that makes sense. I don’t really understand why it is so. It just is.

At my wretched moments, I would sit down and just let it flow. I rarely had to stop and think about how I wanted to write something. I hardly ever edited a post once it was written, save for correcting typos. It was all there, out in the open, all my hurt and sadness and despair. When I read back on those earlier posts the other day, it was like reading another person’s pain and misery and I could feel my heart breaking for her. Me.

Wow, that was me. That was when I realised just how far I’ve come. It’s taken nearly a year to reach this stage and I still have the occasional off-days but they’re short-lived. I’ve learnt how to stop dwelling and put things into perspective. There’s no magic cure, other than time. It took time for me to get here and realise that I always have to get perspective when I start becoming too self-centred.

In the past few months, I’ve had some really genuinely happy moments, for no reason at all. If anything, I probably shouldn’t have had much to be happy about: I was single (not that that matters, many single people are very happy, so I’m not sure why I include this point), I have no real assets to speak of, I was returning to Sydney because I had to (another story in itself but not an interesting one), I had no job, and I’d turned 35. Yet, I was happy. Happier than I’d been in years.

I can only suggest that’s because after learning a lot about myself, going to Brisbane and living there for 7 months and a series of incidents while in Brisbane forced me to open up my eyes and examine my behaviour, my reaction to others and how far I am prepared to go when dealing with robust and delicate relationships and acquaintances. I realised that I needed to put up boundaries for my sake and to never lose perspective. I now follow yet another motto:

Don’t make someone your #1 if you’re their #2

Simple steps. Logical steps. Common sense. I lost sight for a long time. I like to think I’m regaining it — or maybe even learning them for the first time.

I think this is why I’ve had trouble finding something to write lately,  because progress has been made. Is it because we’re at our most creative when we’re sad? That’s certainly a common theory.

Even so, I’ve had comments and feedback that have been wonderful and affirming, giving me a different perspective that I’d never have otherwise considered. I didn’t always agree but the beauty of it all was that it made me see things in a different light. I’ve been surprised by the number of people who have contacted me privately to tell me they could relate on some level. Others have told me that my writing has helped them, which has surprised me even more. I don’t know how it could have helped anyone because I was merely writing while I was floundering around in the dark, trying to find my own way. I really don’t understand that, I don’t understand how.

But all of you, every single one of you gave me strength in your own way. Some of you I know very well, others I know not so well — but (cue the maudlin violins) you’ve all helped me in some way.

Thank you.

Song for a Sunday

Months and months ago, this song was something I couldn’t listen to because it struck a chord inside while I was crying and hurting inside. It wasn’t necessarily the lyrics or the music or Etta James’ voice, but the whole package. It was a song at that time that perfectly captured how I was feeling. It was doubly galling as it is a song I absolutely love, although I can’t pin-point why. It’s one of those songs I could listen to over and over and never get sick of (as is the case with most of Etta James’ songs).

It wasn’t until the past week that I finally listened to this song again and realised I still love it. Sure, it reminded me of that time in my life, like certain songs remind us of a time or a place or a person. But it was a great feeling that I could listen to it without it hurting me anymore. Instead, it gave me joy. Joy because the pain has been so great that I savour happiness and good times with greater appreciation now. I still get the sads, still get melancholy sometimes and recently was going through a very rough patch (from which I think I’ve come through), but now I know I can be sad and I know there will be happy days ahead. I know that I can ride it through and I will get there. And I’m going to love it all the more.

He has a point… to a point

My face is not my business? It’s public property? I’m not sure I agree with that. Read on and ask if other parts of my or your body is public property? (I know some of you will be thinking of smart-arse/dirty responses; I have already, too.)

In my e-mail inbox today from Rabbi Aron Moss comes this:

Question of the Week: A quick question… my friends often tell me to smile more. But how can one always just smile and be happy if (not so) deep down one has pressing troubles, worries and problems to deal with? Must I smile when I am not in the mood?

Answer:

What has smiling to do with your mood? What has the look on your face to do with the feelings in your heart?

Your face is not your business. It is public property.  You only have to look at your own face once briefly in the morning. Everyone else has to look at your face all day. So just because you are in a bad mood or going through a rough patch, doesn’t mean everyone else has to be brought down too. The people around you deserve to be greeted with a pleasant face.

Of course, smiling is not only for the benefit of others, but for your own benefit too. The number one cause of misery is not life’s troubles but rather self-absorption. The more you think about yourself and your predicament, the more you marinate in self-pity, the more miserable you become.

On the other hand, when you look outside of yourself, look around you and see how you can be of service to others when you smile not because you are in the mood but because others deserve to be smiled at, you start to feel upbeat and light again.

This is not to say that there are never any real reasons to be sad, or that smiling is a magical cure for depression. The point is that smiling is a duty you have to others. And when you focus on your duties rather than your difficulties, you are on the road to happiness.

Good Shabbos,

Rabbi Moss.

It is true: when I feel down and glum but force myself to smile at someone, whether a stranger or not, I do feel marginally better. And, of course, when people smile at me, I feel a kick up the arse to get out of my misery and smile back. Smile and the world smiles back at you, as the cliche goes.

But I still can’t get past the part about my face being none of my business. It is. What I do with it is ultimately up to me — I am not obliged to smile like a chimp on speed at everyone I come across. Why am I? Says who? Just as the rest of my body is my business. How do you separate your face from your body?

Hmm.

Anyway, it’s Friday — SMILE!

America the ….?

Have you ever notice those strange moments when you suddenly hear a particular phrase, a particular word, a particular name or a particular place a lot in a short period of time? Your friends who don’t know each other might suddenly start mentioning it in the same timeframe, or you might be thinking or reading about something then see it on TV, or a rarely-used word might suddenly start being used by everyone? You think to yourself, “Goodness, I was just talking about that, thinking about that, reading about that, listening to that…”

Then, as quickly it appears, it disappears.

And so it has been in the past week for me. This time it’s not a topic that’s unusual, but just the number of people whose only common thread is their friendship or acquaintance with me. The topic? Well, not a topic as such but more of a sentiment: America is fucked and so are the Americans.

I have no idea where it came from. It just kept coming up in conversation and it’s been quite strong, hence the strangeness of it all. Anti-American sentiment is nothing new, I hear something negative nearly every day, but I wasn’t expecting it to come up in conversation with people I know.

What made it odder still was it wasn’t just American foreign policy that was the target of scorn, but the American people and the American culture as well. It was getting so that I was getting rather uncomfortable about it — what’s with the hate? What’s with the generalisations? The stereotyping? The idea that all Americans are a bunch of rednecks?

Because I know Americans as a whole aren’t like that. C’mon! Please! Be logical! Be sensible! 63.4 million people who voted for Obama can’t be wrong! (Yes, I have the hots for Obama. It’s not a well-kept secret.) I personally know a number of Americans who are progressive and open-minded and hated the direction their country was going during the Bush/Cheney years. Some of my best friends are Americans!

It was in the middle of this strange, but short-lived, phenomenon that I started, coincidentally, reading Stephen Fry in America.

Fry’s introduction made me think how the English and Australians have similar attitudes to Americans. He writes about the attitudes of his fellow Englishmen (and women) toward Americans — attitudes that were much the same I’d been experiencing here. It is an interesting hypothetical insight from a supremely intelligent and funny Pom.

I have often felt a hot flare of shame inside me when I listen to my fellow Britons casually jeering at the perceived depth of American ignorance, American crassness, American isolationism, American materialism, American lack of irony and American vulgarity. Aside from the sheer rudeness of such open and unapologetic mockery, it seems to me to reveal very little about America and a great deal about the rather feeble need of some Britons to feel superior. All right, they seem to be saying, we no longer have an Empire, power, prestige or respect in the world, but we do have ‘taste’ and ‘subtlety’ and ‘broad general knowledge’, unlike those poor Yanks.

…

Such Britons hug themselves with the thought that they are more cosmopolitan and sophisticated than Americans because they think they know more about geography and world culture, as if firstly being cosmpolitan and sophisticated can be scored in a quiz and as if secondly (and much more importantly) being cosmpolitan and sophisticated is in any way desirable or admirable to begin with. Sophistication is not a moral quality, nor is it (unless one is mad) a criterion by which one would choose one’s friends. Why do we like people? Because they are knowledgeable, cosmopolitan and sophisticated? No, because they are charming, kind, considerate, exciting to be with, amusing… there is a long list, but knowing what the capital of Kazakhstan is will not be on it. Unless, as I repeat, you are mad.

The truth is, we are offended by the clear fact that so many Americans know and care so very little about us. How dare they not know who our Prime Minister is, or be so indifferent as to believe that Wales is an island off the coast of Scotland? …

It was the last paragraph that particularly got me. I’ve been just as guilty as my fellow Australians in bitching that Americans don’t know where Australia is, thinking that Australia was just a tiny tiny little island, believing us when we tell them that kangaroos hop down our busy city streets, that we have koalas as pets in our lounge room, that we don’t have skyscrapers and motorways but live in shanties in the “outback”. I remember being in a Yahoo chatroom in the olden days telling a bunch of Americans that we don’t have toilet sanitation but that we shit in holes in the ground  we dug up. Their response was hilarious — until one American guy came in and told them I was bullshitting them. Oooh, the anger! I left in a hurry.

American foreign policy and even some of their internal/national policies often leave us aghast and angry. The Christian Right are just simply bigoted and awful. But let’s leave the anger there and not blame the people themselves.

Except for those dumb fucks who voted for Bush/Cheney in the first place, of course.

While swimming in the pool

Just as there are

apples and oranges

day and night

good and bad

yin and yang

man and woman

so too there are two kinds of people: those who fear emotional intimacy and those who fear emotional indifference.

Discuss.

Happy Chanukah

Tonight, the first candle on the menorah is to be lit for Chanukah. I have a menorah but no menorah candles. Oh well.

Today, the weekly email from Rabbi Moss of Nefesh arrived in his subscribers’ inboxes. I laughed when I read the question: it could have been written by me. I liked it so much that I’m going to reprint it here. It doesn’t matter what you believe or don’t believe, Jewish or not, it’s a reminder that if we don’t look after ourselves, we become stagnant and unhappy. And sometimes change is good, as I have personally found, so I respectfully disagree with Rabbi Moss a little on that point. Still, the main point is about a soul change — regardless of where I go or stay, that’s what I need as well.

Question of the Week:

My life has come to a standstill. I’m bored at work, and my relationship is going nowhere. I think I need a change of scenery. Should I move away, or do you think a career change will be enough?

Answer:

There’s only one problem with changing scenery. Wherever you go, you’ll still be there. Even if everything around you changes – your address, your job, your partner, your car – as long as you are the same old you, you will be living the same old life.

The human soul has a deep need for growth. Stagnation is poison to the soul. What was good enough yesterday is insufficient for today, and the me of the past will not satisfy us in the future. We need to be constantly adding new insights, facing new challenges and charting new territory. To achieve this, we need not go anywhere. We need just to look inside ourselves and change our inner scenery.

You don’t need a career move. You need a soul move. Embark on some new challenges in your spiritual life. Go and buy an inspiring and meaningful book and read a little every day. Feed your mind with new ideas. Challenge yourself to work on a character weakness, like being more patient with your kids or with your parents, or thinking before you speak. Take on a new mitzvah, like putting on Tefillin in the morning or saying a blessing before and after eating.

The changes need not be big and dramatic, but they must be consistent. We learn this lesson from the Chanukah candles.

On the first night of Chanukah we light one candle, on the second two, and we continue to add one new candle each night, until the eighth and final night when we light eight candles. This means that what was enough yesterday is not enough today. If on the fourth night of Chanukah I light four candles, I have fulfilled the mitzvah perfectly. But if I light the same four candles on the fifth night, I am lacking, I have fallen behind. Every new day requires another new candle.

If you aren’t growing spiritually, if you haven’t added more light, you are stagnating and falling. Not even a new iPhone can fill that void. But if you just add one candle, a single spiritual challenge and one solitary step further in your soul journey, then you have changed from within, and the whole world changes with you.

Good Shabbos and Happy Chanukah,
Rabbi Moss

Oversensitive?

Friends who have known me for a long time know that I have a “thing” about what people consider is “weird”. By whose definition are we going with when we consider something “weird”? What is “weird” is subjective.

For example, Person A says something that they don’t consider “weird” but is admittedly random or quirky, while Person B thinks it’s “weird”. But Person C might think it’s funny and not weird and goes with it.

I sometimes find myself being Person A. No doubt I have a quirky sense of humour and say things to shock or just be totally random and come out of left field. I like spontaneity and can be impulsive (within reason). Life’s boring without randomness and unexpectedness (is that a word? If not, it is now).

So when I say something totally crazy and the person I’m talking to looks at me as if I really AM weird and/or says “That’s weird” or “You’re weird”, I can’t help but think two things:

1. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME!!!1!! NO ONE GETS ME!!!1!! SOB!!!1!!

2. Ouch. I’m weird? I don’t think I am but it’s my sense of humour and if you don’t like it, then why are we talking? I don’t think I’m weird because … well, this is me, it’s normal.

I tell myself to stop being so fucking oversensitive because it probably was a “weird” thing to say (to them), but then I think of Person C who laughs along and replies with some crazy talk and doesn’t look at me oddly, so it must be Person B’s problem.

I also think to myself, OK, I’m possibly freaking Person B out, I better rein myself in and stop being so … well, weird, whatever that is. But at the same time, I feel a bit of frustration that I can’t just be myself. Sure, not everything I say is going to be thigh-slapping hilarious (and often it’s not, if ever, but “weird”?) but for the love of God, just tolerate my quirkiness because you might find it funny. Or not. Either way, don’t say “weird”, because it can be the thing that makes me not be myself. I don’t want to have to suppress myself!

“Quirky” is cool. “Quirky” is a good thing and to tell someone they’re “quirky” is a compliment. “Weird” is harsher and veers off into intolerance. “Oh my God, you’re too weird, I have to get out of here.” That’s how it comes across to me — and I don’t want anyone to leave! But I want to be accepted for who I am and I don’t want to have to worry about acting “normal” — whatever that is.

But then again, maybe I’m just being oversensitive and overanalysing.

Most likely.