Hi blog. a teacher asked me to write about something annoying that happened to me this week. here goes:
I have annoyed myself this week. The feeling descended suddenly, the way it does with lovers or roommates. I didn’t want to hang out with myself nor other people, for fear of annoying them too. Because I then isolated myself and failed to be productive in my alone time, I’m all the more annoyed. This circular dynamic is also, very annoying.
A fly followed me the whole 25-block walk to Trader Joe's. It followed me into the store, buzzing Go back and study! You don't need teriyaki marinated tofu! It even asked, What autonomy are you trying to prove by doing this adulting-role-play? and sometimes even crazier things, like, If you lost ten pounds, your ex-boyfriend probably will never love anyone again, but contradictorily, It is anti-feminist to patronize a health food market? At the checkout, Trader Joe’s uses a bell to herd the customers. I was concurrently doing my mandatory it-will-be-easier-if-i-just-do-it call with my father, whereby I pick up and let him talk for 25-30 minutes every 2 weeks or so, briefly fill him in on my life, and tell him to send my stepmother my best, though I don’t mean it. The stupid bell was giving away the fact that I was doing errands, which is a pet peeve of his, because he likes feeling like a “priority”. Just as I’m finally leaving the place, the double-bagged bags break. I’m left hobbling uphill from 92nd street back towards campus, listening to my father explain his incoherent political ideology with my phone held in between my neck very painfully, cradling not 1, not 2, but THREE separate types of broth I bought to heal the virus I was experiencing.
Oh yes, being sick was annoying too. I have an autoimmune disease, which is honestly more annoying than anything else, so when I get sick, I get Victorian-woman sick — bedridden, nauseous, fevered, needing a chambermaid to blot me with a warm cloth, etc. Anyways, I didn’t even get anything cathartic out of my 72 Hours of Solitude.
Come Monday, I was invited to a beautiful Rosh Hashanah celebration by a new friend whose family was ridiculously, almost insultingly well-adjusted and sophisticated, as were all their friends. I felt like an absolute hick, saying “wow” way too much, and being snickered at for asking if they were art collectors. Apparently they just “picks things up here and there”. Sue me. Thinking about the holiday, I thought my resolution for the new year should be to get a lot less ego-centric. Listen to how much I can write about myself just running errands and being annoyed? It's depressing. And annoying.