Twingey: Open Letter to Close Friends

I’m not good at silence. I’m not good at mellow.

I per­form them excel­lently. But, if some­one else in such a mood, I must fix the prob­lem. Which is dif­fi­cult when the prob­lem does not exist.

So, yes. When you’re Mellow, I am slightly dis­tressed. This dis­tress is noth­ing that I can­not man­age. Rather, I should learn to cope and work around — with­out sound­ing hyper and perky as I am prone to do when some­one needs Fixing.

Which is what the real prob­lem is. I fix peo­ple. That’s just what I do. When I can­not fix some­one, I am… not at fault… but some­thing along those lines. Somewhat incompetent?

There are peo­ple whom I can­not always fix. These peo­ple are annoy­ing. Some of them I refuse to be around. Lots of them. Most, actu­ally — I have enough Projects in my life, I don’t need to invite new ones. I can spot them almost imme­di­ately. Nonetheless, I keep some around. If I’m keep­ing you around, then I have rea­sons. and I’m rather stub­born. I gen­er­ally like my rea­sons. So you’re kinda stuck.

So you can apol­o­gize all you want for being mel­low, that’s okay. That’s a nat­ural response too, much like my mater­nal twinges of “Must! Fix! Mellow!” You can apol­o­gize, I’ll just twinge and go “It’s okay, dear!” You’ve the right to be mel­low with­out my demand­ing that I be able to fix you.

okie?