SCRIBE'S LASTEST ENDURED CRITICISM...

Hi. How are ya? Oh, that’s too bad, I hope things get better. Me? Eh, can’t complain…well, actually I’m not allowed to complain so I don’t bother. Apparently everything that could possibly fulfill a human being has befallen me so I need to shut up and let others wallow in their own misery.

So, this is going to be a rather cold and dispassionate entry where I tell you why I am a horrible, horrible person.

As near I can tell, it stems from the fact that I don’t experience jealousy regarding what others have and I do not. For some reason, one of the major tenants of every major religion on the planet is either wrong or simply does not apply when it comes to me. I am a horrible person because I’m not jealous of other people and the lives they lead.

You’re probably wondering why I’m bringing this up – actually, you’re probably experiencing the old fourth paragraph eye-glaze and clicking onto something infinitely more interesting, in which case I don’t blame you…are they gone?

Good. Fuck them. Buncha fair-weather taint sniffers.

Now that we’re alone, I shall continue. How can I couch this in rhetoric so no prying eyes will be able to know who or what I am talking about? Ah, yes…

I was talking about what a little sell-out bitch-ass whore my former friend Ed is with (former although teetering back into deserving the name) EFB. Regular readers (all two of you remaining) might remember that this was the guy who stabbed me in the back during a low point among low points about three eyars ago. He basically chose the chick with the rack over his friend of a decade and in effect rendered himself totally untrustworthy. I still maintain a connection with his punk ass because she seems to like being friends with him and his woman and because I believe in keeping one’s enemies close for purposes I shan’t reveal this day.

She launched into this annoying diatribe about how he probably changed his opinion of me because of my then irresponsible and self-destructive behavior. I responded by telling her that frankly it was none of his goddam business how I chose to live my life and that I shouldn’t feel any pressure to change because of him. That, I said, is supposed to be what differentiates friendship from romantic bond. She disagreed because she has so many friends and so much experience with…oh, right. Scratch that part. Permit me to rephrase:

In a purely theoretical reply, she said real friends are supposed to judge us in some tough- love-spur-you-toward-positive-action-sense. She was, of course, wrong. Real friends are there for us as part of a support system that can take over in cases where no other system is functioning…sort of like a backup family member. In other words, although close friends should feel comfortable being honest and forthright with each other, they should rarely if ever use what they know about their friends as weapons or as a method of disregarding them. If they do, they have crossed over from friend to antagonist and msut be dealt with accordingly.

For example: I have a friend who refuses to get a job despite the fact that his wife works. Do I “approve” of this? It’s not my place or right to approve. However, I have a negative opinion of this and have told him so. We are still as close as ever and never once did I tell his wife that maybe it was time for her to move on or anything like that. That’s for her friends to say. Even if she and I were friends, he and I have a longer history and so he deserves the respect of his earned seniority. EFB doesn’t understand this because she doesn’t have any friendships of long-lasting quality that have been truly tested.

When I told her I no longer care for Ed she hinted that I felt that he’d passed me by in life because he has a great job and a (slightly) larger home with far less property than I do. As insulting as it was to have it implied that I felt “passed by” by someone who lived with his mom and dad until he was thirty so he could go to school and move out when finished while notsuffering a fucking thing or a single setback, it was baffling as well. This may sound strange especially to female ears, but I don’t compare myself to others. I have no interest in what the Joneses are doing and, in fact, despise the Jonses and whatever spiritually and morally bankrupt path they allowed to choose them.

So, ain’t no hatin’ goin’ on up in heah!

This is nothing I am proud of. It is just me. Blame my mother, I suppose, who instilled in me the pervasive belief that no one is superior or inferior to anyone else, regardless of their lack of social class or ambition. That doesn’t mean there aren’t people for whom we will have disdain, but if someone isn’t doing anything worse than not trying to match the lives of others, that person is not someone to look down upon. Perhaps she felt this way because her brother, my uncle, was so much the opposite.

To be fair, the argument can be made that the truly materially successful among us are indeed those personality types that seek to emulate what they see and possibly acquire more. EFB thinks these people are wonderful. In her mind, this is how one acquires the life we should all aspire to having…well, those of us that fit within a certain limited framework of intelligence, social background and ruthlessness.

Apparently, I lack ambition because I don’t want to be like Ed, a person working in the Finance department of an automotive firm that is laying people off left and right. Because I choose not to live the whitebread fantasy he embraces wholeheartedly, I am somehow lower than him.

Hmm. Okay. Let’s examine this for a moment, shall we? Indulge me, dammit!

I am a person whose father died when he was just twenty and whose mother's health had already begn deteriorating by then. Within a year or more she was wheelchair bound and my entire life was based around taking care of her throughout most of my twenties. Despite her being a profesisonal and having a decent social security disability and retirement income, money was tight and whatever meager earnings I made went right into the pocket of her homecare medical assistant because Blue Cross wouldn't provide that service for anyone under 65. I watched my mother fall apart gradually until one final seizure destroyed her mind and took her body a few weeks later. During all this, I somehow found a way to maintain a relationship, keep writing and attend school which I usually paid for. Now I maintain the home she originally purchased which was not willed to me so that caused a protracted legal issue and lost the love of my life right before all that started. Yet, despite it all, my novel came out last month and the one and only thing I believed I could do well -WRITE - continues to receive positive responses online and on paper.

Passed me by? Fuck her and fuck him too. The only thing that little bitch passed by were his nuts. He hasn't experienced loss or a single stumbling block. Far as I'm concerned, we're not even on the same level.

I will not be made to feel like shit because I don't succumb to envy! There was another guy who didn't succumb to envy either. He had long hair and funny ideas and people created a religion around him that lasts even today.

That's right! I'm talking about the Big Lebowski!

Can you believe this shit??? Is it me?