Nastiness

I don't enjoy being nasty to people. I doubt most people do. But sometimes the pressure of the daily grind, the cold, or city living get a whole lot of emotions percolating and you need an outlet.

This week has been particularly grating. Talking to and receiving a substantial amount of scornful animosity from women creeping into old age. I've been taking, what feels like, a disproportional amount of calls from sour, bitter, unhappy, angry, entitled, unreasonable old ladies. Interacting with them is poisonous. I can feel their attitudes infecting me and I feel the impetus to lash out. It's unpleasant. I don't like feeling angry and don't like to be put in a position where I interact with aggression.

The feelings get stirred up and have to go somewhere. You have to release the pressure or the boiler explodes. Humor is the solvent. I've got friends with sharp and wicked senses of humor and a couple times this week used them as conduits to alleviate the bad juju. I can say nasty things to Tisher, not at him but about others or in general, biting things, tee off on this or that and say things I have no belief in, and he can laugh and commiserate without judgement, and there's no residue, it's forgotten. I chatted with Brunlieb a couple times this week and jokingly confronted him and challenged him about a couple things. He's got a considerable dark streak hidden under his unassuming lovable exterior and we went back and forth saying, what could be considered, some hateful shit. It was all in fun, or if not all was of no consequences, reflected no genuine malice.

It's nice to have friends you can rail at or to. The world can be an ugly place and no matter how hard you try to have it roll off your back it can effect you. It's good to have a place to channel that negativity, to dissipate it with laughs, to let yourself go with someone safe, to revel in it for a moment then let it go.

Don't keep it to yourself, don't revel in it for long. Negativity is toxic and thrives in the dark, secret, lonely places.