I am feeling a little upset and inclined to blow things out of proportion today. For example, I mailed a package at the post office, and the post office guy kept making brusque remarks to me (for example, I said, “Oh, hello, good morning! Can you tell me which form I should use if…” and he cut me off and said “Small one” abruptly and in an unfriendly tone of voice, and then turned around and walked away before I could ask my next question) and I managed to get my feelings hurt by it, which, why does this happen? Do he and I have the kind of relationship where I could view his brusqueness as a symbolic sign of underlying relationship issues? No. Is this clearly Not Personal? Yes. But it makes me feel bad, and makes ME want to make HIM feel bad. But instead I acted EVEN MORE polite and deferential, because THAT will show him.

I think one reason I’m feeling a little touchy is the book I just finished:

(photo from Amazon.com)

Life Drawing, by Robin Black. It just made me feel bad from beginning to end. Every emotion I felt while reading it was negative, and most of those feelings were cringing anticipation: the foreshadowing was so thick I started feeling teased and resentful. I nearly stopped reading it, just out of spite: “You want to draw this out as long as possible? I’ll show YOU: I can SKIP TO THE END, and you can’t do anything about it!” I ended up feeling yucky and wishing I HAD stopped reading it. It’s just, I remembered really liking If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This. Maybe I’m misremembering, or maybe that book was a different style, or maybe it’s that I like the dreary/suffering/doomed style better in short-story form.