To Sleep, Perchance to Cool Off a Bit

Mike and I just had a fight, so I'm at the peak of mad right now: before the point where I go over things more calmly and see things from his point of view as well as mine, before the point where I interpret what he said in anything but the worst possible light, before the point where it's morning and everything from the night before seems kind of silly and unreal.

The fight itself would sound stupid if I told you about it. I've mentioned that he set up this ISP tracking thing for me, so I can see who my anonymous commenters are. But it requires me to ask him to use it for me, which I find a little irritating, just a little. And anyway, tonight I was asking him about two different anonymous comments, one of which I answered and one of which I deleted, and he gave me all the info but failed to mention that they were THE SAME PERSON. And when he DID finally mention that fact, I burst into tears, which I know was kind of dumb, but I felt so overwhelmed already by having to SHADOWBOX, you know? Like, why does the blogging job, unlike most other jobs, involve just TAKING IT from people who get to completely hide themselves? That's so lame. And in this case, knowing that it was ONE commenter and not TWO would have made a BIG difference, and WHAT AM I ASKING MIKE FOR if not that VERY INFORMATION??? And then he said he HAD said so.

Well, anyway, you know how these things go, I presume: sometimes fights have nothing to do with what they seem to be about. It's like trying to describe why a dream was so scary when there wasn't anything inherently scary about it. In this case if I had to say what the fight was Really About, I'd say it was about my feeling that he sets up situations where I'm forced to count on him, but then he doesn't come through. And he'd probably say it was...well, who cares, at this point. I'm not yet ready to try to see things from his point of view. If you want his point of view, or a balanced account of things, wait for daylight.

In the meantime, we're in The Pits of Crapitude, where no one knows what the other one is thinking or how mad the other one is. I know people are always like "Don't go to bed angry!" but frankly that's what works for us: we got to bed angry, and when we wake up we're not mad anymore. We're both firstborns with tempers that burn hot but don't last long. If we try to work it out at 10:00 p.m., NO ONE is going to be happy with the results, but in the morning we're only going to have some embers to poke.

Also in the meantime, I'm re-thinking my comment-identifying situation. If I don't like the results I get when I rely on Mike, obviously the solution is to come up with a way to NOT have to rely on Mike. So I looked into various options, like switching to Wordpress or getting Disqus commenting forms.

But then I realized THIS: that finding out which of my commenters would be vicious to me if they didn't have to give their names has NEVER ONCE made me feel cheerful and happy. All it does is make me think, "Huh. If Person X would sweet-talk when her name's attached to it but then talk shit as soon as she thinks I can't see her, then maybe EVERYONE I KNOW would do the same thing," and that's hardly a useful train of thought, is it?

Sometimes it's satisfying, like when it turns out that four different vicious commenters are all the same person. Or sometimes it's comforting, like when someone says something anonymously that reminds me of someone I know in real life, and it's nice to be able to see that the commenter is from an entirely different part of the country. But what I'd THOUGHT would be awesome would be KNOWING WHO "ANONYMOUS" IS but all that does is depress me. I suppose if I were going to ACT on the information (confront the attacker! put laxatives in her brownies!) it would be one thing, but since all I do is hoard the information to myself, it's useless.

Well. Isn't this cheery. Especially with a nice hot topic on my regular blog, sure to be packed full of depressing anonymous comments. Time for bed.

Unwilling to Drop

I am struggling recently with situations where someone I love very much has views that are repellent to me. My mom, of course, is an excellent example, with her ideas that homosexuality is (1) the mother's fault and (2) in the same league as wanting to marry farm animals or doorknobs. How am I supposed to continue a relationship with someone who could think such awful things? And yet the relationship continues, and happily too.

The recent situation is my Aunt Kathy. OH I love Aunt Kathy! I love her SO MUCH! She comes to visit my mom once or twice a year, and I go over every evening she's there. She's so fun. When she leaves, it's a post-Christmas-letdown feeling.

But my Aunt Kathy thinks President Obama is "in league with the Muslims" (our own country's religion is benevolent and moral, but another country's religion is crazy and scary), and she remarks in an arch tone that the gay best friend is always portrayed in such a positive light in movies (yes, normally the role of best friend is played as EVIL when it's a straight person, so it's weird that the gay best friend would be played as such a positive person!---oh wait), and when she mentions homosexuality it's in the context of the male principal who molested elementary school boys (that's PEDOPHILIA, just as it's pedophilia and not heterosexuality when a male principal molests elementary school girls).

My mom (who doesn't like Obama either, but she is at least able to act as if it's not because he's black and his name is OMINOUSLY UNFAMILIAR) said tentatively, "Well, but it IS good that our country is able to elect a black president," and my Aunt Kathy said, "WHY???? Why would it be???" Well, and if she doesn't know that it's because it means that our country is quite a bit less sickeningly racist as it was a mere 60 years ago, then I don't know who's going to explain it to her.

I don't know how to process these things. It's one thing when someone I know and love doesn't like scented laundry detergent (I love it), or doesn't drink coffee (I do), or doesn't drink alcohol (I do), or doesn't like cats (I do). It's another thing when someone I know and love is racist, or bigoted, or sexist, or religious, or thinks fatness is disgusting and deliberate, or thinks one group of people should be considered lesser than their own group of people, or is HORRIBLY HORRIBLY wrong about something VERY IMPORTANT. It's easy to unsubscribe from a hate-focused blog, or drop an acquaintance who holds an intolerable opinion. It's hard when it's someone I love and am not willing to drop. I don't know how to reconcile it.

The Ravages of Time

You know what's kind of hard? Making a lifetime contract with a man, knowing full well that most men are idiotic babies who value youth and beauty above all else, and that youth and beauty will fade, and that most men are too dim to understand ahead of time the second of those two concepts. And then reaching the mid-to-late thirties, and seeing the beginning of what is clearly a long and unavoidable slope, and knowing that a woman can diet until she is in a state of perpetual hunger, a woman can exercise her thighs down to the muscular bone, a woman can pay too much money for wrinkle creams---but none of those things will prevent the ravages of time from, er, ravaging what is traditionally considered youth and beauty. We're all going to get old, and we can only wait and see if the men we've chosen are the good kind or the other kind. And what makes me want to BARF UP A LUNG is that there are ANY men (let alone as many men as there are) who throw away a partnership/family because they can't make themselves stick around once the youthful type of beauty is gone.