The app for independent voices
I’ve spent years trying to please people who never spared a thought for me. Lately, as I make different choices about my social obligations, I can almost see a shadow of my old self, accommodating, hospitable, conversational, wanting to slip back into the same tired dynamics.
There was the relation who taxed my patience with such indefatigable accounts of her own ill-usage that one might almost have pitied her, had she not, with admirable consistency, inflicted upon me precisely the grievances she bewailed. There was the gentleman who carried on every conversation as if delivering a proclamation to the nation, yet professed himself “attacked” the very moment I ventured a sentiment not entirely suited to his vanity. And there was the soused talker who took every social liberty with me, entirely unchecked, yet would not extend the simple courtesy of allowing me to use her bathroom.
They were shitty to me, and I endured it far too long in the name of family.
Now I know better: there are too many kind, generous, truly decent people in this world to waste another breath accommodating the ones who aren’t.
So I take the Jane Austen approach: step back, raise an eyebrow, and regard the whole scene from a polite distance — with a difference of countenance, an ear for the social comedy, and the serene assurance of a woman who has finally chosen her own peace, and means to keep it.
