Being Fashionable

(Avid readers, I promise a real post about my real life is coming soon.)

Apparently, blog-hating is in vogue.

After a long and uncomfortable calme d'inquietude (archaic French, don't bother looking it up, try to infer) with a certain former friend of mine, it's come to my attention that she's been talking about me by name in her MySpace blog. For easy reference, the "gay pothead" she's referring to isn't me. Of those two things, I am only one, and I think the conclusion's fairly easy to draw.

But, aside from a few glaring capitalization and grammatical errors, she's got some of the facts a little off. Not that's she's wrong: all of those things are true, or at the very least, could be. What disturbs me is the horrible number of omissions she's made.

So, in the interest of furthering the fine art of blog-hating, my little dugong (here, in case anyone needs to look that up), here are some pointers.

Firstly: I do admire your adherence to the truth in the first few bits of your assault on me: I do know everything. And I damn well certainly think I do, as well. But honey, you couldn't be further from the truth when you say it doesn't matter what you say to me. It definitely does matter: without you, I wouldn't have anything to serve as the subject of minimal contemplation and more substantial amounts of chuckling before I go to bed some nights. So the assertion that what you say doesn't matter is completely unfounded. The same joys you provide me are the same joys you provide to many others.

Secondly: Here's where we start to run into some problems. Where you say that people talking crap about me always come and tell me. Yes, by my own admission, that happens most of the time. But if it doesn't, I have a lovely surprise for you: I don't care. I invite you to scroll down a bit and read the rest of this blog, here, and try to wrap your sirenian brain (see wikipedia link above) around the endless piss and vinegar I self-deprecatingly spew out about myself on a daily basis. Though your tone lends a bit of sarcasm to the sentence in question, your diatribe largely ignores the fact that there are few, if any, things that anyone could say about me that are worse than the things I say about myself.

To go off on those, for a minute: You totally forgot to mention that I only have a sense of direction when I don't have any other viable life choices left. And, come on? The fact that I tend to trust everything and everyone except my own emotions, often to my detriment? I totally left that one open for you and you missed it. Let's not forget the past run-ins I've had with alcohol and substance abuse, the heartbreaks I've caused and suffered, and how the guilt I associate with them is often deeply rooted in a sense of personal inadequacy. Throughout the course of our friendship, I gave you gold. I feel just in demanding a little courtesy on your part- please use my contributions to the best of your ability.

Lastly, I wholeheartedly embrace your suggestion to believe what I want! Seriously, that's wonderful. I like being encouraged to pursue my own thoughts and ideas. Comments like that help me reaffirm my faith in my own belief system. Sometimes, it's just the little things in life that make the biggest differences. Just like Twinkies, yeah?

My final problem, though, leaps into the spotlight when you tell me to get real. You seem to have misapplied the best of the resources available to you; including but not limited to years' worth of memories, intimate conversations, and a crippled-yet-still-extant ability to self-actualize and see traces of that in others. To break it down:

I am neurotic. I am insecure. I have low-self esteem. I am the king of Too Much Information. I think I know it all, and when I say I do, I mean it. I am stubborn. I make mistakes, and stick by them until the very last possible minute. I have been known to say nasty things about people, and I take responsibility for those things. I have faith, (occasionally too much, as evidenced by the travails of attempting to reason with you), that those with whom I surround myself do the same.

Like before, your attempts to hurt my feelings or make me doubt my friends (and myself) have failed. I hope, in the future, you can take some of the pointers here and write something truly incisive, something that does draw as much blood as I think you were hoping for.

I am grossly offended, though, by the suggestion that I am not, in fact, real. Though I doubt my own existence from time to time, there is nothing fictitious about how I am in touch with my own feelings, how I ultimately respect the people I care about, or how I live my life. One's internal view of all those things is all that really matters in life, aside from looking outside of oneself to find new ways to learn and love. As such, your suggestion to get real is one of the flimsiest things you've ever said to me- I'm as real as they get. I hope that one day, discounting an untimely encounter between your back and a speedboat, you will eventually be able to say the same about yourself.

(DB) out.

Author's note: No dugongs, or surprisingly enough, bottles of wine, were harmed in the writing of this entry.