When they see that you genuinely don’t care, and they realize that they’re not going to get a rise out of you, people tend to either up the ante and go for the jugular, implode in their own zeal for a reaction of some sort, or confusedly retreat in awkward motions of apology or pretend. Whatever the result, I’m already beyond the bitterness or bother, and it still seems to flummox those who have found great sport with agitating me to the point of retaliation.
There was a time when fighting back would have given me just as much satisfaction as it gave them – my own thirst for being right a perfect match for their thirst for forcing my hand. The unhealthiest sort of symbiosis set in perpetual motion. Staying in that merry-go-round would have gotten me more than dizzy, and almost ended up grinding me to a halt. Mixing metaphors like the jumbled mess of a mind during Mercury in retrograde is the province of mad genius. Surely I’m onto something here, even if I can’t quite make total sense of it. I feel an ease in this new view, a freedom, and a sense of renewed purpose. It pours out of me creatively, and instead of directing energy and effort to those who seem hellbent in fucking with me, I can put it into more productive endeavors, such as a new project, and these daily blog entries – a mini-project, sometimes, unto themselves.
