Recently, I've rediscovered the power of prayer. I haven't rediscovered faith along with it, remaining firmly unconvinced, but I have rediscovered its power to make you feel like you're doing something. Sure, in prayer it's still up to some benevolent deity, one I like to imagine as a nebulous, shimmering cloud that smells like donuts, but at least you've put in a request. Lately, I was worried about appearing greedy if I asked for specific things like an awesome job at Lush, a swimmer boyfriend, or flawless French. So I've been asking God to send me what I can handle, and what will make me happy.
Unfortunately, I have sadly concluded that God's a dick.* And it all started Tuesday with a harmless little self-deprecating joke. I have to read a Brave New World for a class, and changed my status to "Protagitron feels like an Alpha-Minus in an Epsilon body." Sure, I should have known better. I wasn't trolling for compliments or sympathy, but there's a little worm of self-hatred there. Of course, I found this e-mail from Q in my inbox when I got home:
"why would you ever say you have the body of an epsilon? you are beautiful. hearing that kind of stuff just makes me angry. I don't expect you to aim to please me but your words do have an effect on others."Oh, sure, it doesn't seem that bad. He meant well, right? He called me beautiful, right? Well, that's part of what bothered me. I always think that's bullshit, and I still think so even when my friends or my family say it. I have eyes, and ears, and a brain. And when I see myself, and see the way others treat me, I know that I'm not beautiful. It used to bother me a lot more than it does now, and well, it still does sometimes. Still- don't lie to me. Or engage in some lame everyone's a precious, beautiful snowflake crap. But that wasn't the only thing. It was that patronizing tone. I felt like a daughter who's being scolded by her father here, not a friend. I didn't need the after-school lesson on how the power of words, and I don't need to hear how angry he is. Oh, and I particularly didn't need this coming from the same guy who made me cry many months ago. Which is pretty much what I told him over chat, and guilted him for dumping this on me on an already crappy day.
Which I regret doing. I should have been kinder to Q in retrospect. Although my feelings for him are laced from time to time with bitterness, I still have a genuine fondness for him. What I admire about Q, and it's not his taste in television, but his seemingly unconscious faith that the world is a fine place that will be good to him. And others. I think he means very well, even when it ends up hurting other people. And I also think I made him feel bad. I suppose we're fine now. But every so often, I wonder if this is the best it's ever going to get for me- dealing with misunderstandings and vague insults from friends, and never anything else. And then I throw another prayer up to God, that if that's the case, to give me a bottle of JD in my hands and a true crime marathon on A&E.
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