#2: Out for blood
A word of advice:
The upcoming collection of words is out for blood.
Now, why is that? It’s not a bad place here, like I said.
There are a lot of nice people around, humans, monsters, what have you…!
Last week only, I was that jerk bypassing all the other people in my mall’s waiting line because I only had this one package of medicine (for my head!). And I was in a hurry, it made sense, you see. No one really complained all that much –
Only, there was this one pretty girl, way younger than me probably, who suddenly went on-screen my mental radar, pushing that sentence in my proverbial face: “You are a prick, you know? It’s not like you couldn’t have asked first?!”
This little episode begs two question – to me, at least: Would I even have remembered it, if it wasn’t for some catalogue beauty? And most importantly, why is everyone else just avoiding any real contact at any cost?
Let’s talk about passive aggressive behaviour for a moment. It’s the thing that everyone here apparently adopted as our favorite childhood pet and just couldn’t let go of. Our parents bought it for us one birthday and they put it right beside our little beds, and it took a long hard stare into our eyes every night. We are taught to be nice, to not take stuff seriously, to grow over it. That’s the adult way: Interacting on socially complex symbolical levels, because hostility is what you take resort to as kids.
Us, playing the easy cards of “that’s not what I meant”, “you misunderstood me”, “I never meant that”, “Let’s forget it, okay?”, that’s passive aggressive. The advice to “get over it”, to “live on”, that isn’t instructive or soothing to any degree; it’s merely the statement of a desired result. Me, adding all those strangers to my Fictionbook friendlist without asking who the sprock they even are. Your Ex texting you nicely “great to hear from you. Hope you are fine”-fullstop. That’s passive aggression. All those people we are politely ignoring every day, because we wrote their stories in our heads long before. But they are “alright with us”.
Please, don’t be nice to me!
Don’t assume that it’s okay that I don’t even remember your name, little counter girl. Don’t try to respect my privacy so much that you won’t call me after midnight when you are in trouble. Don’t tell me ‘everything’s fine’ when it’s clearly not.
I won’t kill you. I might be a pain in the ass, maybe, maybe I’ll think you are too. I might hurt your pride, I might break your heart.
But we could all share a little moment of aggression, once in a while.
I am not fiction
Baruch Caan