And then I thought, I am misbehaving.
It took four days of tantrums to see it. The first tantrum was a doozy. Lots of back and forth Fuck You's at high decibel. Felt pretty good to give the long simmering, bubbling, steaming, stinky vat of frustration a cleansing. Or to unleash the beast, really. We all have one. The Dali Llama and Mother Teresa both.
Then the moment became a pattern, not as loud and with a much better vocabulary but nonetheless. By the fourth day it was entirely unattractive and now I can't stop.
There is this thing now, I interact with people. I've not done so for years. So there are surprises. This is a surprise. I thought I'd better - mastered? - myself. Or that I was in better command of myself, or that I'd grown up. Nope.
Reacting to others means I have expectations from others, or it means I have some sense of entitlement of a different outcome, or I have privilege of view. Of course the other person also believes these things but I can't control or change them so how do you not get walked all over while not engaging in any of this? I've never been smart or fast enough, the well thought out comeback occurs me three days later, or the resolution anyway.
I'm okay with this final frontier, being in command of myself fully, wholly. I'm not sure I can live long enough to realize it. It falls into the category of relationships: I never understood their purpose so I can't have one. What are we allowed to expect from this other ever-present thing attached to us? Same with the source of my tantrums. Is that what being fully realized is - that people can fuck with you and you let it go? Take advantage to no consequence? Walk all over you minus a peep? Punish your ears with error of perception?
Something in me says, Yes, this is what being grown up is. Allowing all that, saying nothing, moving on, buttons intact. Living above it. This is exactly what being grown up is. That I even see it as someone fucking with me is the error. They are not fucking with me, they are simply Fucks. Everywhere they go, Fucks. I happen to be in that path, so it's my turn. I can engage them and thus BE them, or not and not.
