The Vine: June 4, 2004
Dear Sars,
I have longed to be lambasted by you but my common sense works pretty well so I haven’t had anything to ask you. Until now, and even now my common sense says I have done the right thing, but I know that matters of the heart screw with people’s logic and I have longed to feel the brunt of your wordy wrath, so I present you with my issue…
Some time ago I met NT, who seemed quite injured by the world but otherwise nice. We spoke often and I enjoyed our conversation but decided it would not behoove me to get involved with such a damaged individual. I thought about it and decided that was really shitty of me, and that injured and damaged could apply to me and many of the people I know, and that doesn’t negate any of our worthiness of love. So I take the plunge and things go well.
Then NT has an altercation with the family and some nasty things are said and NT calls me for support. I react badly, not to the call for support but to the nastiness of the family, and my rage was misunderstood and it was ugly times. I realize this and apologize and I return to my normally calm and supportive self. Things go well, and in the meantime I start school full-time for the first time in years, and my availability changes and my stressors increase.
We reach a Saturday, I am not well. I have the day to rest and that evening I have a rehearsal for an upcoming concert. NT knows that I am sick. My phone rings at 7:30 AM on a Saturday; it is NT. “Hi,” says NT. “Hi”?! It is 7:30 AM on a Saturday and I am sick as crap and it is 7:30 AM on a SATURDAY?!?! But I stay calm and NT realizes the folly and agrees to call back later. The phone rings again at around 9 AM; it is NT. There have been unpleasantries with the family again. I am calm and soothing and NT has lost the plot. I suggest a walk or something to calm down and NT shrieks at me for attacking just like nasty family. The fu…? I back down. I offer more soothing words and bits of plot and am repeatedly treated like the attacker. Finally I get mad and actually say something nasty but quickly apologize. I am too upset to continue to deal with this (it is after noon now and I need to start moving on to plan B in dealing with my illness before rehearsal, because sleeping it off is apparently not going to happen). I tell NT that I am getting upset and need to take some time to calm down so I can be helpful. NT says okay and we hang up and in the time it takes for me to get to the kitchen from my bed (in my tiny one-bedroom apartment) my phone has rung itself out and caller ID says NT is the culprit.
Now I am mad. I answer the phone and am the attacker I have been accused of being all day. I say things and say things and as my brain screams “stop” my mouth moves on. I was wrong and I apologize and I ask what I can do to help. I ask what I should say or do in the future so I am not confused with the family. I apologize and apologize and I still feel like an ass to this day. No answers are forthcoming. From then on I am overly careful with my words. I overanalyze everything that I say so as not to send double meanings and have NT think that I am trying to be mean. It is misery for me and I say so and then NT thinks that EVERYTHING I say is bad and all conversations become fights. I am at a loss and no solution is forthcoming. I think that maybe over the holiday while I don’t have school to contend with we can reconnect and I can figure out what the frilly heck is going on.
Then I get sick again right before my big voice exam (I am a voice performance major) and have to take an incomplete for the class. I am devastated. It also messes up some of the holiday plans, because I will have to use some of the time at the end of the break to prepare for the voice exam that I will have to take at the beginning of the semester. NT shows no concern for my upset at having to put this off. No concern over the glaring “I” that is standing in the midst of my “A”s on my grade report (acid surges in stomach at the thought). NT’s only concern is that it interferes with NT’s plans.
So I decide to end things. I didn’t like the person that I was within the confines of this relationship. I never knew how to act or what to say and it wore me down and I ended it. Now NT calls all the time and sends cards and emails saying that I didn’t give us a chance. That I am horrible for being a NT-heart-breaker. That I should blow off my school thing and we should use the holiday time to reconnect anyway. My brain and my heart are at odds. My brain says I did the right thing. My heart says maybe I should fight a little harder.
What say you?
Heart vs. Brain
Dear Vote Brain,
Don’t fall for it.NT is messed up, and maybe it’s not his/her fault, maybe it’s a family thing or a chemical thing or whatever, but it’s not getting dealt with healthily, it’s dragging you down too, and at a certain point you have to recognize that a reason for behavior is not an excuse.NT is extraordinarily self-absorbed and volatile, and that’s sad for NT, but your first instinct was to not stick your hand into it, and as it turns out, that instinct was correct.
NT knows that this isn’t really your fault, but NT also knows that he/she can try to turn it around and make it your fault because it’s worked on you before.Don’t take the bait again.Stop picking up the phone, don’t answer the cards or emails, and move on.
Dear Sars,
This may seem like a trivial problem, but my husband and I really don’t know what to do. When we bought our house we decided to get two cats. We both had cats growing up and wanted to add some life to the house. We got a brother and sister and decided to keep them in, since they had each other to play with, and letting cats outside leads to other problems.
Everything was okay until the cats were two years old. One day my husband came home from work and found the female dead. He rushed her to the vet but there was nothing to be done. She had some kind of aneurysm and died instantly. Needless to say we were crushed, but finally accepted it.Some months later we decided to let the male cat out because we (foolishly perhaps) felt keeping them inside hadn’t saved Pixie, so now Puddy should enjoy life to the fullest.
Fast forward three years. Puddy disappears sometime in August and hasn’t been seen since. We called all the shelters, hospitals, put up flyers et cetera, to no avail. Again we were totally devastated and decided, “That’s it, no more animals, we’re a jinx.” I have to tell you there were literally weeks of crying, and I still now tear up wondering what happened to Puddy. In three years we lost both our cats, meanwhile everyone we know has cats that live for 12-15 years, or more.
We are now having second thoughts. We really miss having animals in our lives and feel there are so many out there who need good homes. My question (finally!) is, should we get another pet? From the little I’ve told you, does it seem like we have a “good home”?We did have the cats neutered and spayed, gave them shots, took them for regular vet visits et cetera. However we wonder — are we jinxed, and will we inadvertently kill another pet? We constantly go back and forth with this. We can’t decide if we should get one cat, two cats, a dog, a dog and a cat, or nothing at all.
What is your objective opinion on this as an outsider, and a cat lover?
Signed,
Afraid to love and lose again
Dear Afraid,
Honestly, I think you just had some bad luck.You really can’t predict or prevent an aneurysm, and you really can’t tell what’s going to become of an outdoor cat, either — which is one reason to keep them inside, but a lot of the time, they’re fine.
If you feel ready to get another pet, go for it, but it doesn’t sound like you do feel ready; you’re still worried that these cats died through some fault of yours, when really, they didn’t.Again, yes, keeping cats inside gives you better odds, but I think you’re still a little raw emotionally.
Sometimes, pets die prematurely and there isn’t anything you can do.It’s very hard to get past, but your next pet will probably lead a long and happy life.Still, I’d wait until you don’t feel so unsure about it.
Hey Sars,
I wonder if you can help me out on this one, using your practical and wise bent to the fullest.
I am getting married this year and want (I am that old) to invite the people who really represent milestones along my path — the people who’ve made a difference to my life. Unfortunately, there’s one friend whose name on the guest list is causing a problem.
Me and she were best pals throughout the main, personality-forming part of our childhood. In villages where there was nothing, not even a shop or a bar, she and I would hang out on the farms, create our own entertainment and use our imaginations to play amazing games and go on little expeditions.
However. As we grew into teenagers she became more rebellious, though never arsey, nasty rebellious — the worst thing she did was to run away for 48 hours. Am I defending her already? We all do stupid shit, no?
A few years later and I moved back to our area from college and she was pregnant; her partner was a dopehead but a lovely chappie and they went on to have three kids, even with her pissed off because he didn’t get off his arse to earn money in the way she thought he ought. Well, they split up because of that eventually and then…God knows how or when or why it happened…she got into heroin.
It was probably being with three young children in an estate where the stuff is rife — what do you do with yourself in that situation? But heroin, as we all know, is shitty evil nastiness that you can’t escape. She met a bloke, had a fourth child, then he beat her up so badly when he found out she was still on smack while breastfeeding he put her in hospital for an age — even though this guy’s a druggie prick, and had no bloody right, the fuckhead.
She went to rehab, at an enormous cost to her (lovely) parents, and was wonderful for a while — just the same as ever. But she couldn’t resist, and I would never blame her for that. Fuck, I can’t even quit the cigs, let alone that stuff. She is now going back and forth in waves of taking it, taking methadone and weaning herself off, but her bouts of taking the drug, of course, are more noticeable than when she stows herself away, trying her heart out to get clean. She has been caught three times in the last two years, shoplifting to feed her habit and still put clothes on her children’s backs, and my parents have read about this in the local paper (they’ve never even seen a lump of dope before) and now they are worried she will steal from their house on the day — we are having most of the festivities at their house.
I totally understand this. But every time I think about taking her name off the list — her parents are on it and this is a small community — I feel tearful, as if I’m letting her down and betraying her. I still love her to bits and know she’s trying her damnedest against such an awful drug, and I know there are no guarantees in this life, so I’m stuck with this dilemma: a) it would spoil the day if she weren’t invited and b) it would spoil the day if we had to watch her all the time.
Help, Sars, is there any way I can make it all right for everybody? Or should I take either line of discontent? I was toying with the idea of asking her mum if it would be okay to invite her daughter, to gauge her reaction as to whether my friend could cope with a big social occasion when she’s struggling with detox.
Whaddya reckon?
Struggling Bride
Dear Bride,
I’d worry more about her pitching a scene because she’s nodding than about her stealing the silver, but if it’s really that that has you worried…can’t your parents just lock their shit up?Seriously.If they plan to have all and sundry trooping through the house all weekend, they should do that anyway.Take their jewelry and the good silver to the bank, hide everything else in the basement, get rented furniture, end of story.
So, if it’s just that, invite her…and if it’s more that you think you’ll spend the whole day bracing for disaster, I guess I should tell you to consider leaving her off the list, because I don’t know if you want to ask for that kind of trouble on your wedding day…but where I come from, the marriage isn’t official until someone gets drunk and breaks a bone/knocks the cake over/mortally offends the groom’s mom, and besides, she’s your friend.Sometimes you just have to trust people to put their best foot forward, and I bet that that your doing so on this particular day would mean a lot to her.
Dear Sars,
I’ve read and enjoyed your column for a long time (I
haven’t quite followed it since its inception,
although I have fond memories of the Dawson’s Wrap
website). I have a problem which you may have
encountered before but which may seem a bit strange:
I’m paranoid about nuclear war.
This doesn’t look all that bizarre at first, I know.
After 9/11, it would be a reasonable worry. It’s not
like there are many fans of nuclear war running
around. However, with me, it’s been an obsession for
several years long predating 9/11. It may have
something to do with the fact that I was born on the
day (not the date) the Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima,
but whatever the reason, it’s become a preoccupation I
can’t shake. Some days, it seems like every day I
close my eyes I see a mushroom cloud behind my
eyelids. Loud noises terrify me. I can’t even stay in
the room when people start discussing things like
ballistic missile defence in the abstract.
To top it
off, for the past six or seven years on and off and
sometimes with a frightening regularity, I have had
horrifying dreams that have a perfectly normal “plot”
with a nightmarish nuclear holocaust tacked on to the
end. Unlike other people, I find it difficult then to
project my thoughts far into the future because of my
own inner conviction that there is no future.
The fear itself recedes or comes into prominence,
depending. It doesn’t really affect the conduct of my
daily life that much, except for experiencing a high
level of anxiety whenever I go without news of the
world for a long time.
A lot of this has its own sick, Dr.
Strangelove-flavour hilarity, I admit. I also believe
that in all other respects, I’m a pretty conventional
person with a good brain, a few modest talents, caring
friends, a good childhood, a stable background with
loving parents, a career path I’m pursuing, and a
fairly stable emotional life free from concerns over
money or relationships. This fear of mine hasn’t
exactly “taken over my life”: it’s more like a mental
rut or a cycle of thinking I can’t escape. On the
other hand, because I’m an introvert who spends a lot
of time in her head, when my mental landscape is
dominated by something it affects me a lot more.
My mother has wisely advised me not to worry about
things I can’t change, and while I would like to take
her advice, “easier said than done.” I did bring this
issue up in passing when I was in counselling last
year, but my counsellor didn’t make much of it and I
was afraid to talk about it in detail for fear of
being thought crazy. I’m not sure if counselling is
necessary or not for this, or if there are other
avenues I could pursue.
Any advice you could offer would be much appreciated.
Paranoid
Dear Paranoid,
Well, you go to counselling because of things in your head that sound crazy.I think it’s time to go back and get this sorted out, because you go to great lengths to say that it hasn’t affected your quality of life, but clearly it has; maybe it hasn’t affected your day-to-day ability to get things done, but you shouldn’t have to settle for that.
It’s an irrational phobia, but the good news is that very effective therapies exist for that; you just have to avail yourself of them.I know it’s hard to admit to something like this, but hell, you admitted it to me, and trust me, your counselor has heard weirder.Go back to counselling, or get a recommendation for a therapist who specializes in these things.There’s no need to continue like this just because you “can.”
Dear Sarah,
A conversation between a male (M) and a female (F) at a party goes as
follows:
M: Well, I’d better go and see about finding myself a chickee.
F: “A chickee”?What do you mean by that?
M: You know, one of those subhumans with a hole.
Both conversants were in full control of their mental faculties; neither
had been drinking.Is there any interpretation of that last line that is
not demeaning to women?
Best regards,
The Matroid
Dear Matroid,
No, there isn’t, although “demeaning to” isn’t the term I’d use.”Creepily afraid of and hostile to,” maybe, or “pathetically insecure about.”The real demeanee here is the utterer of the line himself, because…ew.
Tags: boys (and girls) cats etiquette friendships health and beauty
