Excerpts From My Life ♥︎

『Bitch!』

8. October 2019

Dear Reader,

     Today's letter will not be a letter. It will be a rant (you lowkey asking: when is it not?).

     It will be a rant for the sake of being mean. Reader's discretion advised – because I will be swearing, downgrading, and blaspheming the shit out of people who think that doing impolite things are okay as long as they have kind intentions. 

     To quote Kate Chopin, "a kind intention or a cruel intention [makes] the act seem no less a crime," so if you don't want to witness me going ballistic, please kindly leave and let me boil until I tip over. 

     Here goes.

♔ ♔ ♔

     Yesterday some boy — and I say "some" because he was a fucking stranger — came up to my table at Starbucks (where I was enjoying the new oreo cheesecake and doing some writing), grabbed my coffee, snapped the lid off, and shoved a straw from who knows where inside it. As if I was incapable of seeing or better yet walking to the front to get one for myself.

     "You don't want to spill that all over your laptop," he said. "I'm just looking out for you."

     And then he topped it off with a wink and sat down without even bothering to ask because hey, it's a free country, am I right? A country where you don't have any basic manners when you talk to a stranger. 

     "Thank you—" I told him, giving him a smile to reign in my rising anger (but he must have thought this was a sign because he smiled back) 

     "—But I'd like to be alone," I finished, taking out the straw he shoved inside my drink and putting it on top of the tissue. For the record: do you know why I didn't put a straw since the getgo? Because it was a fucking sip-thru. 

     "Oh come on, let me keep you company. I'm really funny!" He smiled. And then he stroked my hand. 

     And I'd had it. 

     I screamed for him to go the hell away, and he got up with a start, gave me a weird look, and said, "Damn, you could have just told me to go! Geez, what a bitch..." And then we walked away. 

     What. The. Fuck.

     Didn't I tell him to go, though? Didn't I smile and politely tell him I'd like to be fucking alone? Didn't I? DIDN'T I?

     And he heard the nerve to call me a bitch?

     That was annoying, alright. But it didn't piss me off as much as it should have. At first, I was like, what an asshole. And I was going to let it go. 

     But then the major reality dawned on me. 

     Someone was always telling me why they shoved a straw in my drink. Metaphorically speaking... 

     And I was always letting it go. As if I'd been desensitized to it. 

     In psychology, you call this habituation. Habituation is a process where someone is exposed so much to a certain stimulus, that you eventually block it from affecting you. That's where the word habit comes from. 

     And when I realized how I'd gotten habituated to this rudeness — this presumptuous and blind persistence of some people to always meddle with me — I started seething.