The other night I had dinner with my friend A. and when she got to the restaurant I had already ordered a margarita. She was grumpy and I said get a margarita and let me hear all about it. We didn’t actually talk about the thing that made her grumpy that afternoon because the wound was still raw, but we did get some good conversation in and it was good conversation and not just Rant A followed by Rant B followed up with Spleen Venting 1, 2 and 3.
The boiled down point of the evening (at least in my mind) is this…why is it that certain family members seem less and less likeable the older we get? Why is it that we both have members of our families who feel that it is OK to dump on everyone else and use guilt, anger and other passive aggressive behaviour to get what they want and damn everyone else? Has this cycle been going on for generations and we never noticed because we were kids when it was happening to our parents or is this something new?
I’m a fairly perceptive person and I never remember hearing (even when I wasn’t supposed to listen to what my parents were saying) my parents complain about in-laws, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, etc. treating them like dirt. So I don’t understand how we got to a place where the people who are supposed to love you the most treat you the worst. If everyone sort of chuckles into their sleeves or hangs their head when they hear that then why isn’t something done about it? I’m not talking grand gestures just that promise you make to yourself that you aren’t going to be like that when you grow up. And, you don’t need to be 5 when you make that promise. You can be 25, 35 or 45…I believe we’re all growing up until the day we die.