Tired of your Bitchin'

I was sitting here tonight feeling bad for someone who is struggling to make ends meet.  I was feeling guilty about all the good things that I have in my life:  a house, a car, some spare cash to play with if I want.  Oh, yeah, I felt bad and guilty-- with none of the behavior that makes you feel good before you start to feel bad and guilty.

However, I started to analyze this situation more closely and I started to get angry.  It seems there are a lot of people who bitch about these things and their horrible problems on Facebook.  A couple of weeks ago it really started to become apparent.  Mostly because I saw this post which can only be described as an “oh woe is me” post and I was just not in the mood to read about it, to have it bring me down.  I was going to “unfriend” this person who really isn’t a friend anyway because I never see them anywhere other than on facebook, bitching.  I stopped myself from hitting the “unfriend” button because –and yeah this was my actual thought – I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.  I’ve recently been called mean for unfriending people and cold-hearted for totally writing them off my life.  But really, what obligation do I have to sit around and listen to them bitch and moan?

Am I mean because I fixed my own fucked up life and continue to work through my own demons and don’t want to spend my time reading the complaints of others who I know aren’t doing anything to fix their issues?   I’m not going to pick on anyone one person, but let me tell you that I work three jobs to pay off debt that I had which really shouldn’t have been mine.  If I were a single mother who wasn’t getting child support, I would work three jobs to make sure my kid had whatever he/she needed.  I would not be having my nails done, driving a gas guzzling car, choosing to purchase big screen televisions over paying the rent, or going out for drinks with the girls rather than feeding my kids.    So really, I have to sit there and read this drivel, knowing what I know about these people, and being “nice” means I have to pretend it doesn’t piss me off?  Do I have to diminish my accomplishments because someone is playing the victim card?  And if I don’t am I being mean?

I cry BULLSHIT!!

I believe now is where we cue the whining:  “I’ve been through some horrible stuff.”

Hey news flash, so has everyone else.  Other people though don’t dwell on it.  Other people keep moving on.  Other people don’t piss and moan; other people pick themselves up and keep moving without raining on the parades of others.  If some of these people would stop thinking about themselves long enough to look around they’d realize that their “stuff” isn’t half as bad as other people’s “stuff.”  And when you look at the things that other people have survived you really have to secretly admit that you are thanking whatever diety you believe in that that person wasn’t you. Actually, perhaps these people truly believe no one suffers something bad unless it’s plastered all over the internet.

There’s the 5 year old Iraqi boy who was grabbed by masked men on the streets of Baghdad, doused in gasoline, and set on fire.   But here they are on facebook bitching (via their $400 phone by the way) about the food stamps being a day late and HOW DARE the government allow that to happen?

Think about the US Representative Gabby Giffords who was meeting people and shaking hands only to get shot in the head by a crazy man and had to learn to talk again and still faces years of therapy to recover.  Or James Brady who was standing next to Ronald Reagon when he was shot in the head, paralyzed and left on the sidewalk while secret service agents rushed the President to the hospital.  These two people will never be the same.

Yet, they continue to bitch.  They have their health, their relatives and loved ones aren’t dying around them, and they survived every day that came before.  Other people suffer with sickness and chronic pain, they bury people they love, or they get driven over by a truck—just today a man died while working on the Ohio Turnpike because a tractor trailer carrying caustic materials hit him and two others.  Hey, but thank goodness you people are still alive and breathing able to bitch on Facebook about how horrible your lives are via your computer or your phone.  How dare people question YOUR pain or your decision to have your nails done or your hair done or go out for a drink with the girls/guys?

Here’s a newsflash—most of us who have the money to do something special for ourselves have it because we work 40 hours a week and more than one job.  We don’t have the things you have because we have to pay for them.  So you watch your big screen while we watch our 20 inch –I suppose you need the nicer TV because you’re home on your ass watching more than we are.  So sad you can’t join me at the fancy restaurant for some upscale dining because you got your nails done and your hair done while I washed the gray right out of my hair for $4.95 and used a coupon on top of that – sure, I understand that you can’t do that because your hair is “sensitive.”

The world owes you NOTHING, people.  You want something, do what my Daddy told me when I was a kid – go out and work for what you want and take it.  If you stand on the porch waiting for FEMA to bring you a bottle of water instead of walking down to the Walmart at the end of the block, you’re going to die of thirst.  You’re not going to die because of who you are; you’re going to die because you didn’t get off the frickin’ porch!

Oh yes, and now I’m mean again.  Because how dare I say something like this?  Don’t I understand the suffering?  You know what?  I actually do.  I’ve had some serious shit happen to me in my 40+ years.  I just don’t think bitching about it is going to somehow create a vortex in time and take it all away.  It’s there.  I watched my best friend get hit by a car when I was five years old and I’m haunted by the image of her shoe rolling across the pavement and by me laughing because I thought she lost her shoe and a car ran over it—then the woman jumps out of her car screaming and I see the body.  I had some bad men do some bad stuff to me when I was just a wee little thing.  I’ve been emotionally and mentally abused to the point where I thought I’d be better off just killing myself.  I tried.  Of course, when I tried, it wasn’t just to get attention, I meant it.  I wasn’t going to leave a note or stupid shit like that; thank goodness there was part of me that saw another way out.  I fell in love with the wrong man.  I forgot who I was.  I ended up in a financial gutter.  I’ve had my heart broken.  I’ve worked 16 hour days and had to get up the next morning and do it again when I would have preferred to collect a government check and sit at home to play Wii and order pizza.

So, I’m not going to read your crap on Facebook.  Call me mean.  Screw you.  I’m happy.  And if someone else is happy, I hope that they don’t let you rain on their parade because if they’re happy they earned it, they sought it out and they can own it.  There’s no shame in happy or money or freedom.   I got mine.  I’m tired of people who think they deserve the same things I worked for without putting in the work….not only the same things, but the best of things.  Not just a phone, but a smart phone.  Not just a TV, but a big TV.  And it’s time people stopped being nice and let some of these people know—there’s real suffering, there’s real poor, and there’s real pain.  There’s people who can’t escape these things and yet there still out there, crawling down the road for the pride of getting their own frigging bottle of water while you stand there and cry about not having one brought to you and cry louder because people who tell you to do something for yourself are just being mean. 

Some people actually do have it rough.  This is about the people who want to be victims, who live to be victims, who never make any effort to do more because they don’t want to do anything they don’t like.  Guess what, in the grown up world, we’d all like to be sitting on the porch drinking Pina Coladas mixed up by our own personal government bartenders.  Be a grown up.  Stop calling me mean because I refuse to help anyone who doesn’t help themselves.  And to all those people who I “unfriended” recently in life and Facebook:  I don’t hate you, I am just tired of your wallowing in self pity and tired of you using bad things as an excuse to not do anything.  Life is about sacrifices.  Those of us who make them; get stuff you don’t.