Rainy Reprieve

I can't even feel bitchy right now with the grey weather and rain beating evenly down all around and on our metal roof. Alone at home while my wife is halfway across the country, I just finished eating a slice of special hometown pizza (Canadian bacon, pesto and mushroom) and gave up on getting the taxes done and mailed "on time".

The shift in weather to fall means outside noise is softened now by closed windows, reducing a lot of my overstimulated rubbed-raw and trespassed-upon bitch-triggers.

I've also been thinking a lot about the difference between guilt and shame, and putting a lot of things that normally make me feel inordinately bad about myself into a healthier less-catastrophic less-odious perspective.

Helping that was watching episode one of The Great Courses "Psychology" course where the instructor described flipping someone off who, unbeknownst to her, had just paid for her family's entire meal after they almost crashed cars into each other. Her point was that we often assign incorrect meanings and motivations to events when there is not enough evidence to actually know for sure what someone else is thinking and why they behaved a certain way. We ascribe ill will and take things personally that have nothing to do with us or were even motivated by kindness rather than shittiness.

This anecdote helped remind me to do less judging and to be less defensive and less self-centered, but also it just helps sometimes to hear someone admit to really being a bitch and remember people are doing bitch-ass things all over the place all the time. They are not bad people or actually "bitches" ... it's just what most of us do at one time or another and we all need help and reminders and forgiveness to reduce the suffering we cause and experience. It doesn't help to feel ashamed or to assign exaggerated disproportionate guiltiness to every little lost temper and misunderstanding. It is just human to misunderstand and be misunderstood.

It DOES help to listen to the rain, though. And to rewatch Moonstruck when you're supposed to be doing the taxes. 

Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn't know this either, but love don't make things nice - it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and *die*. The storybooks are *bullshit*. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and *get* in my bed!

When Rose says, "Old man, you give those dogs another piece of my food and I'm gonna kick you 'til you're dead!" you have to forgive yourself for some of the shitty-ass things you've said. Because you understand why, and those are just the kind of words that so often come between ti amo. We're none of us monsters for that: just imperfect humans, wolves and animals.