{"id":2440,"date":"2013-05-10T11:17:14","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T11:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/?p=2440"},"modified":"2013-05-10T11:17:14","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T11:17:14","slug":"im-going-to-be-an-impressively-self-involved-aunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/2013\/05\/10\/im-going-to-be-an-impressively-self-involved-aunt\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m going to be an impressively self-involved aunt."},"content":{"rendered":"

I hardly need to actually write a post, since I just gave everything away in the title, and I’ve already explained how I’m basically a supermassive black hole of self-involvement<\/a>. But, well, I’m going to anyway. I got permission, and I haven’t written anything in a while.
\n<\/p>\n

Today–yesterday, really, since it’s after midnight–was a pretty bad day, mentally. It was a pretty uneventful day, but I woke up slightly more down than yesterday, and everything felt so unbelievably pointless. Hyperbole and a Half<\/a> came back, and that just felt like ‘one more thing’ — one more thing to remind me that everything I do is just going to be viewed as a pale imitation of better, more popular things. <\/p>\n

Basically wallowing in self-pity. Not really even interested anything. Depression. <\/p>\n

And I’m still kinda down there. Perhaps, when I feel a little better, I’ll be able to articulate what it’s like. I have some drawings already.<\/p>\n

I’m mentioning this for a reason. It goes to state of mind at the moment Facebook threw a messenger window at me. <\/p>\n

From my sister. <\/p>\n

Hey.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I stared for a moment, not entirely sure what I was seeing. This isn’t the usual ‘person I get messages from’ — an incredibly short list of people, and I identify them all by their little profile pictures. Eventually, it clicked: my sister. So: ‘Hi. What.’<\/p>\n

Then: Wow, that sounds really short of me. What the hell, me? Why the fuck are you responding to people like that? It’s not like you’re doing anything. It’s not like you’re<\/i> ever doing anything. Oh look, dummy, there’s a reply. Pay attention.<\/i><\/p>\n

I wanted to tell you something. Is now a good time?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

‘Probably. What’s up?’ Meanwhile: That sounds bad. It could be bad. Haven’t heard from my parents today. Did something happen? Something probably happened. That’d be about right for today….<\/i><\/p>\n

Now, absolutely no pressure on you in any way, but because you are my sister, I want you to know. I’m pregnant.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh-kay. Not parents. But…wait, pressure? What? What does that mean? Is something expected of me? What’s expected of me? I don’t understand. I’m supposed to be feeling something here. Sister. Pregnant. What am I supposed to say here? I have no reference for this. Shit, better say something….<\/i> <\/p>\n

I asked her, ‘Planned or surprise?’ Because I needed time. <\/p>\n

I don’t know if it’s something normal people do, or if it’s just a function of the whole anxiety thing, but I’ve got this, like, simulation thing in my head. It’s mostly a worst-case-scenario simulator. It takes up a lot of imagination processing power, the bloated piece of shit, but I don’t seem to be able to uninstall it, let alone keep it from running on startup. I decided it would be useful, though, so I cleared out whatever was running through it right then — probably the potential future conversation in which someone else who lives here notices that I’m on my second run-through of Doctor Who in a row and decides it’s time to have a serious chat with me about it. <\/p>\n

Run simulation: conversation with sister regarding pregnancy announcement.<\/p>\n

Which I will illustrate crappily with a dialogue tree. Kinda from a game I’ve never even encountered in real life.<\/p>\n

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Not much difference between, ‘Oh’ and ‘Okay’. They’d be my standard responses to everything. They are probably not societally acceptable responses to a pregnancy announcement — especially a planned one.<\/p>\n

Planned rules out abortion. Can’t mention that. Too touchy with absolutely everyone, and I can’t fucking deal with that today. <\/p>\n

That leaves ‘Ritual sacrifice,’ ‘Concern for cat’, and ‘Yay.’<\/p>\n

Picture a tiny, frazzled version of me playing with an Iron Man style Computer of Awesomeness at this point, and just sorta swiping those options away [because my version is lazy and more Android than crumple-and-toss] and rearranging the rest and staring at them. Because not even my own brain can settle on one image or format — that’s probably why it doesn’t fucking work<\/i>. <\/p>\n

Cat-response-simulation: Yes, of course, I would be more interested in a cat than anything else, wouldn’t I? Everyone expected as much from me. Expected in a disappointed sort of way. No, can’t deal with that, even if it’s imagined. <\/p>\n

Ritual sacrifice? Where did that come from? Too much time researching the Satanic Panic. Ooh, that brings up ritual sexual abuse. That can be touchy. Pedophillia. I’d basically be accusing my sister of premeditated child abuse, even if she didn’t take it that way. That sounds like badness. <\/p>\n

‘Yay’, then, or do I need to come up with more? Is ‘yay’ the societally expected response? It’s understated enough that it might not come across as a lie. What else do I know about these things? Let’s see: You don’t want to appear too thrilled, because then people know you’re faking it. But you don’t want to be unthrilled. That’s why no ‘Okay’ or ‘Oh’. <\/p>\n

But what about the fact that everyone knows I hate kids, and don’t want them? Does ‘Yay’ fit into that? <\/p>\n

Yes. I think it does. It seems to, anyway. A person who dislikes children can be happy for a sibling who wants children. <\/p>\n

A person who isn’t dead inside, anyway.<\/p>\n

Gotta be more than ‘Yay’, though. Need a framework. Need to transition between the previous answer and my response. Ooh, I know: ‘That’s good, then. Yay.’<\/p>\n

Elapsed time between her response and mine? Seconds. The minute hadn’t even changed over yet. I checked the timestamp.<\/p>\n

I asked if our parents knew: yes. Then I said I had to go for a little bit, and mentioned that, if my response was disappointing in any way, it was because I’m beyond emotionally blunted, and I don’t have a template to fall back on for this sort of situation. <\/p>\n

She expected me to say, ‘Okay’. <\/p>\n

So that’s almost a win, except I’m not really seeing anything as a win today. I’m too busy feeling like everything is absolutely pointless.<\/p>\n

Everything. If I think of it, it’s either stupid or doomed to incompletion. If I try, I’ll fail. And all I can do is shallowly fake my way through what few conversations I have, just to keep things tolerably even. Because I’m already drowning — making waves is not a good idea. <\/p>\n

Posting about it here kinda defeats that, though. Which, of course, means I’ve failed at yet another thing. <\/p>\n

Don’t care, though. I’d rather get it out, and if I can fake productivity this way, then I might as well. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hardly need to actually write a post, since I just gave everything away in the title, and I’ve already explained how I’m basically a supermassive black hole of self-involvement. But, well, I’m going to anyway. I got permission, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[193,44,205,145,208],"class_list":["post-2440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bib","tag-adventures-in-anxiety","tag-bad-day","tag-depression","tag-real-life","tag-self-involvement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3bMfN-Dm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2440"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2445,"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440\/revisions\/2445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}