When I was visiting my
brother over
Christmas I had the opportunity to exist in a real live
family again for the first time in a couple years. Living with a bunch of
crazy and
smelly young men isn't really a family although it's entertaining, and living in a
dorm isn't much better, although it also has it's benefits. So while I was visiting over
there my semi-
sister-in-law (it's a long story, there are a lot of those running around) was having a shitty day. This is understandable for a woman at odds with the other people living in her house who also two kids and little to do all day, I've got no complaints, but what was interesting was the way her 7-year-old
daughter reacted. She got very snotty and sort of moped around all afternoon until my brother said
"Tori, you're acting like a brat. I don't like that."
She said,
"But Mom's been grouchy all day and she yelled at me!"
As though if someone annoys you, you've got to pass it on, 'right'? Kind of amazing. This is how everyone operates, even when they won't admit it or don't want to do it.
That's all that seems to be happening to me lately. My dad channels all of his frustration in his whole life into any handy inconvenience no matter how slight (I love the guy, but getting lost with him, even for a few minutes, is annoying). And now, the person I'm staying with is having soap opera with this woman who is upset and possibly genuinely hurting about something and she passed the upset on to him as an insult, and he's passing it on to me now and I'm getting annoyed about gender politics, and my own inability to deal with other people's problems with out appropriating them, and the fact that I didn't eat today.
I don't want to pass this negativity on, where ever it originally came from, but I don't know how to "get rid of" something like that without either passing it on or absorbing it. I don't want to do either. This is something I have to learn, before I go insane.
Less introspection might help as well.