Dreaming of Zihuatanejo

The new apartment saga continues. When my flat mate & I moved to the new apartment, we were faced by the mother of all questions (well, at least as far as new houses / apartments go) - who gets the master bedroom?

Being two individuals who detest confrontation above all else (makes for a peaceful, if at times too full of passive-aggressive door-banging behavior), neither of us wanted to come out and say – I want it! If an outsider observed us at that time, he’d have nominated us for the Nobel Peace Prize or slammed our heads together. Both of us repeated our own versions of “You pick whatever room you want. Am OK with anything. After all we work so late – I just need a place to sleep.” At least in my head, the thinking was somewhat different, ranging from “Oh God, Oh God, please pick the smaller room’ to ‘Why don’t you say you want the bigger room. That way, I can fight for it, and try to win it fair & square!’

This happens way too often for my liking. When I was a child, I had no problems staking my claim on all sorts of things. Of late, some gosh-awful age-related gene’s gotten activated, and I have this overwhelming urge to do the ‘right thing’. Unfortunately, the old genes haven’t been completely inactivated. Result: I feel the simultaneous need to do what I know I ought to do, as well as what I truly want to do. A damn confusing state to be in.

In some cases, the goody-goody feeling you get when you do the 'right' thing is better than the alternative. An example would be not insisting on watching a movie when the Chithi finale (or whatever soap they now have in India) is on. Even I realize that something like the Chithi series finale is a very big deal, and butting in would be petty.

In other cases, this decision is not so easy. The whole of last week, I could talk of nothing but the Half Blood Prince to all and sundry, even when some of my audience showed visible signs of agony (the yawn suppressed for the 39th time, the urge to holler 'Grow up, will ya? It’s only a BOOK. For CHILDREN. Just LET IT GO.' kept under strict control, lame attempts at changing the subject, the works...) Not all of my friends are JKR fanatics, and I know that. Just chose to ignore that for a week, that's all.

There’s nothing wrong with this state of imbalance, except that my mind expects to either receive or pay some form of compensation after the fact. When I feel that I’ve just acted ‘better than a saint would’, I automatically climb up a pedestal, and expect to be worshipped, at least by the parties involved. And life being as it is, of course, this doesn’t happen. And I go around resenting the world at large and that person in particular. When I’ve been selfish, I spend at least a week thinking up suitable ‘return gifts’ or dreading what blood-money I may be demanded to cough up…

The long and short of it – I got the bigger room. And I’m still cowering under the guilt. Why is it that I seem only capable of feeling guilt or resentment? For once, I would give anything to simply take a generous gesture at face value, be grateful, and move on. And just for kicks, I’d also like, at least once, to be generous, and not feel like a martyr.

# posted by DoZ @ Wednesday, July 27, 2005