What they really want

 

I am always surprised when someone asks a question, especially a very specific question about how to do, or find something.

So often what they really want is just to receive some sort of commiseration or even just a chance to complain.

They don't want to try anything new, or do any sort of research.

Sometimes they just want you to do it for them, or make their problem go away without any help from them.

They don't seem to understand that if you do not change what you are doing, the results will usually not change either. You will have the same problems you have now.

Once in a while nature takes over and things do change, but not always for the best.

I say this knowing it will not change the people who need to read it, but because it helps me relieve my frustration with them.

Coping skills

Coping skills are often life long ways of getting things done that are difficult, or unpleasant.

My main coping skill is to just do the thing right now and not put it off or prolong the agony.

My sister's is to pretend it doesn't exist.

She uses her poor hearing and perverse stubbornness to avoid learning anything new because she has cultivated a way of coping that doesn't involve reading directions or straining her mind in any way. Instead she manipulates people into feeling sorry for her, so they will do it for her, or at least take charge and relieve her of any real responsibility.

She cultivates love by buying things. Whether it is from second hand stores, garage sales, or using charge cards, she likes to provide things she thinks other people want or need. However if they need something that she doesn't want to provide, or feels incapable of providing, her response is very passive aggressive and can be dangerously neglectful.

She lacks the confidence to do the right thing if it means challenging anyone in any way. Instead, she will commit to things she really does not want to do and in the end either "forgets" or does poorly. That can be truly destructive if one is a parent or caretaker.

As she ages these things become a larger part of her personality and cause both her and those around her much unhappiness.

As I age I am experiencing many mobility problems. Asking for help is hard for me, but not always a choice anymore. Since my children are scattered coast to coast and far away from me, I rely more on the family left here and my sister is the primary person available. 

Our personalities clash!

Race to the grave

All her life she considered herself the sickly one, the one with asthma, the puny one, the runt.

She dedicated her life to work. It came above and before everything else. 

Work was noble, especially if you were working and still sick as a dog.

Now, in her seventies, she struggles to maintain her image.

If you are sick. She is sicker.

If your knee, ankle, whatever are swollen and sore, hers is worse.

And yet, no matter how sick she is, or how much pain she professes, she continues to work, to wash windows for friends friends, to mow the lawn, walk the dog, shop, to eat what she pleases and play.

With no repercussions at all. 

So, if you cannot put any weight on your foot, know that if she were you she would be toe dancing at the met.

Who will win this race to the grave?

Who is the sickest?

Who is really ill?

The winner loses all.

 

She is a poet

 

Words flow out of her in rhapsodies of sound. She lives to perform, to feel adored and her talent displays a sophistication, sarcasm and wit that many love.

She is a writer, turning words into feelings, scenes into pictures that fill the mind like Kodak moments.

It is a talent inspired by her intelligence, need, and total lack of discretion when it comes to truth.

If she can think it, she can write it and make you believe it really happened.

Those abuses, rapes, put downs, and hardships are figments of a needy mind. A mind that will do absolutely anything to get what she wants. 

Her bright smile and bubbly persona rakes in money by the truck loads for charity.

Her ruthless ways leave a trail of human desolation in her wake.

She is a poet, a writer, a weaver of words, juggling feelings to distract you from the reality of her vicious engineering of a life based on getting what she wants or getting even if she doesn't. An emotional vampire who prefers to leave her victims withered and dead along the side of the road, fodder for her future forays into fantasy.

My style

 

What is it about a thing that makes it so attractive that I can enjoy looking at it for decades?

I realize that certain shapes and colors evoke warm feelings for me. The curve of a bridge, the satisfying roundness of pieces, the combination of colors, white on white, or blues, grays, and greens, mixed together in pleasing natural scenes.

Each of these preferences is pretty specific and yet it carries through an entire room seamlessly.

I suppose you can call it, my style.

Things

 

I am both the most sentimental person and the least sentimental person you may ever have met.

I seem to carelessly dispose of many things without even a thought. 

And yet, there are things I assign great value to.

These things stand the test of time. I loved them when I acquired them and I continue to love them now. I actually cannot imagine a time when these particular things will not bring me joy. 

Joy is the operative word. Simply looking at these things, or thinking about when I got them, or why I got them, brings me joy.

Some of them cost a great deal (for me,) but the cost was definitely worth it. Both then and now. Others simply mean something to me that they may not and never will mean to you.

They stand the test of time. I loved them thirty years ago and I still love them.

I have one shirt that is nearly forty years old. I loved it when I bought it. It has fit me through a hundred pounds difference in weight, and even now, tattered and torn, I continue to love, and wear, it! I have little or no attachment to any of my other clothing.

I write this because I am looking around my apartment, the one I expect to live in until I die or am too feeble to maintain and realize most of the things in my living/dining room fall into the category of these beloved things. I have surrounded myself with beauty and joy.

I suspect that is one of the necessary parts of aging. Physically life gets harder and harder, but emotionally it becomes sweeter and more beautiful. The balance makes it tolerable.

Need

 

The older I grow the less tolerance I have for needy people.

Need, once your basic ones are met and you have air to breathe, food to eat, decent shelter and the opportunities to make your life better, seems like a selfish trait to have.

I see people who need attention so much they are willing to substitute weird, odd, or bizarre for confident, popular, talented, even intelligent.

People who will do absolutely anything to get people to notice them, whether that is falling off a bike, making a scene in school, or church, or any other public place.

People who pretend that being different is all it takes to be cool.

People who cant, or don't want to, put in the work to do something worthwhile, to succeed, to stand out for their hard earned accomplishments.

These same people will complain and whine and moan and groan about how unfair the world is, or how mean and unkind other people are.  The world can be unfair and people can be mean, but feeling sorry for yourself will not change that.

I respect people more, who take even baby steps towards actually correcting their problems. Even admitting they have a problem is a step forward. Self blindness is not an asset. It is a character flaw.

There is no shame in being imperfect, but denying reality is shameful.