My December to Remember: Day Twenty-Two
News: Blake Lively files harassment lawsuit against co-star Justin Baldoni.
Man sets sleeping woman on fire on NYC F train subway and watches as she dies, police later arrest Guatemalan migrant for the crime.
Jeff Bezos denies he’s marrying fiancée Lauren Sanchez in $600M Aspen wedding next weekend.
Outgoing Democratic WV Senator Joe Manchin tears into modern-day Dems, calls them “toxic.”
Georgia woman arrested for trying to get back in her own home after squatter takes it over.
Men and women are both dramatic creatures. I don’t think it’s fair to say one sex is more dramatic than the other. Our version of drama is just different. Women may be more passive aggressive when dealing within their group dynamics. Men might be more direct, but a lack of emotion regulation may make things harder to take. Both can be true. Maybe neither are. Whatever it is, we can’t escape it; we’re always going to take to the stage and duke it out with each other, and it may take an act of God to diffuse what hangs heavy in the air. And the wilder it gets in the leadup to all this being over, I think the best place to watch it unfold is in the audience.
Dad already bought his ticket back to Florida right after the new year. When’s he coming back? “I dunno.” So the boyfriend and I are in charge of the house and the Beemer while he’s gone. All that is neither here nor there. Today we spent nearly 45 minutes speaking with him, talking all about the drama his friend is facing after another one of their friends passed away. I don’t need to get into too many specifics, but Dad’s friend is beside himself, realizing that he and this now-deceased friend may not have been as close as previously thought. And his denial caused him to fight with my father about it over the phone.
Dad seemed exhausted by the conversation, since it sounded like he had to wade through a lot of denial and anger. That could really hurt a person. My boyfriend explained how things tend to come out after someone passes away, since there’s just no reason anything should stay hidden anymore. It’s just another indication on how the case can be made that you truly don’t know anyone, and whatever you don’t know all comes out in the end. The actors all go home when the play is done and become someone you have no earthly idea about.
I get it, though. When you’re confronted with something that blindsides you, denying its existence may be the safest way to preserve the ego. But things are only going to get crazier from here, I think, so there will be a lot to confront here. The strong sense of self and who your real friends are can make all the difference. I need not follow anyone who has to “act” for a living. Act like they’re someone who cares and will use my work (or taxpayer dollars) toward something beneficial for this society we’re supposedly trying to save. Whatever production those people have put on for ages is no longer bringing in the sales. The revenue has dried up. Yet they just won’t drop the curtain yet because it’s too frightening to. Or perhaps they know they’re going to jail once they’ve taken their final bow.
Whatever it is, I think it’s best to heed my father’s advice and to just learn when to stay out of it. You can watch the schadenfreude from afar, but we’re at the point where the theater lights have come on and the ushers are showing you out. It’s over. Let whoever thinks the show must go on yell into a sea of empty seats. Because there’s another show that begins on the 20th, apparently. And maybe that one, this time, will have a happy ending for everyone who believed in it.
