The Cranky Couch.

[Artemisia]

It just scares me because I'm either making things harder for others or I'm upsetting others without meaning to.

[BlairFan]

Personally, I have found a book that's very helpful in matters of assertiveness. It's "When I Say No, I Feel Guilty" by Manuel Smith. It's over 40 years old, but it's still in print. It shows how to avoid being manipulated by others, while maintaining one's own attitude in a composed, undisturbed way. It's helped me and I hope you may too.

[Artemisia]

The problem is not so much that I have a problem saying 'no'. I have a problem getting argumentative. Even when I am trying to correct someone about misinformation they may have, I can get belligerent, dismissive and rude when I'm overly anxious.

[mikbuster]

I tend to go more towards trolling online when I'm doing that kind of thing. Like, I'm good at being perfectly polite and managing to make the other person angry, which is nice for really hateful people that deserve it, but less so for others.

[BlairFan]

Well, one can always say/post something like, "Well, we will have to agree that we disagree on this matter/issue." Then if the other person gets unpleasant, I would just move on.

[Dirty n Evil]

I've never completely gotten out of my depression that I fell into while unemployed - I've improved, but it's sitting on me heavier now than it has for a long time and it's remained at a pretty strong level. It's been enough that it's interfered with my writing, and I haven't written anything in over three weeks. So last night, I decided I was just going to write. Not towards my story, but write to get back into the flow of writing. Stretch out the figurative writing muscles, as it were.

So, I thought that something lighter hearted and playful would be more conducive to writing than something serious and dire. I don't wonder for very long of what point of view I should write about because to the front of my mind pops one of my favorite fantasy game characters that I've run - he's a half elf bard, a playful little skirt chaser. I think that it'll be fun writing from his perspective for a while, perhaps a young version of him just getting started on the big adventures of his life. Something fluffy.

After two hours of writing, I stopped to look at what had come out... and it was the most maudlin, existentially introspective piece I think I could imagine for this character. He's literately sitting on top of a large hill somewhere between night and evening while thinking on his father (who died before he was born), feeling the effects of having drunk too much and sobering up slowly, and how it's about time that he started out for the next town because while he's fallen into bed with a nice young lady and that's been fun, that night she got all huffy because she tried to yank his chain and became upset when he didn't immediately heel. I was horrified at what I'd done to him.

I know I'm all stressed about falling into part-time at my job, but I'm trying to be positive by wanting to better dedicate some of that extra time to writing - but not if I only end up writing out stuff like this. It's really gotten into my head... have I been so miserable for so long that I can no longer empathize with happiness?

[Dirty n Evil]

I had just finished reading a book highly recommended by a friend, Feed by M. T. Anderson. It was a young adult novel, and I really liked the message as it showed by example the path we're headed down in our world with rampant consumerism and how we're allowing ourselves to become distracted by the constant entertainment of instant gratification that the internet provides.

What really bothers me is in the book there is a romance between the two main characters, but the young lady develops a fault in her cybernetic implant that connects her to the online world and it starts corrupting her entire brain. And when she can no longer hide the obvious signs of its decay, the boy avoids her. I get that it's important to be written that way, to show that he's so accustomed to a world where he can surround himself with all the good feelings he wants that something negative is easier to ignore... but it really hurt reading that. He lies to her saying that he never receives her messages, he deletes her messages without even reading them. She's sharing so much with him as she feels her life drifting away and he is doing his best to distance himself from her without causing conflict. Now... he comes to see her before she dies. Her father alerts the boy to let her know that she's fading fast, and he comes back to see her again. But she's developed enough glitches that most of her memory has degraded, she can't even move anymore. He can't tell if she can even hear him, or understand him at this point.

And I'm feeling so low already, that reading such a serious and depressing story hurt. When I saw it was going down a bad direction, I set it aside for almost two weeks... and I always intended to finish it, but just couldn't bring myself to pick it up again. I did so tonight, and got to the last page... and dammit, I'm so angry at the boy in the story I want to cry. I know it's because of my own high value of love and caring, and how much I want for something like he had. Even if it was bound to end far too soon and sadly, he just... gave up. Only realizing how important she was to him when it was too late. It made me mad. I'm still mad.

There are so many stories of romance gone wrong... and maybe I could tolerate it a bit better if I had some in my life. But there isn't, so I want to read about a romance going right once in a while. I need it, to keep hope.

[mikbuster]

I wish I could help, but the thing it keeps making me think is how would you react? That always seems to be where my mind goes in a story. I am pretty sure that you would have made much different choices in that boy's place, and I think that's pretty awesome.

[Tenjen]

Not to mention he ends up dating that girl who modified her entire body with the current...aesthetic standard. brrrr. he just sunk further as one of the Eloi while the world gets worse

[Dirty n Evil]

Thank you, Mik. I guess that part of why I'm so upset is because my ex did have multiple health issues that involved me changing my life in a dozen different ways. While she never had it diagnosed, I have learned after she left me that she had a form of epilepsy that caused her to hallucinate. She would have extended petite mal seizures where she would simply drift off and be caught up in whatever hallucination her mind was creating... and they were often unpleasant. On more than one occasion, she would drift out of these hallucinations and call me at my job and begged me to come home. Because even when she couldn't realize I was there, there must have been subconscious ways that she knew I was there - and it helped her relax, to slip out of the seizure. And I risked my job by clocking out then and there to drive like a demon to be there for her.

She also had very bad asthma. Even walking quickly on a cold day would trigger an asthma attack. But I found out that sometimes, so would a hallucination. One of the worst moments of my life was waking up to hear her choking for breath because she had a nightmare that triggered an epileptic attack that in turn triggered an asthma attack. That's when I discovered that by trying to breath for her, doing that aspect of CPR can help quickly settle an asthma attack. I normally sleep like a rock, barely aware of the world around me as I have my own vivid but unpleasant dreams. When we were together, I learned to sleep lightly because I had to for her. The slightest change in her breathing would wake me up, worrying she was okay. I felt like there were times I shook her and asked her anxiously if she was okay when it was simply that she was having a particularly intense dream, not a hallucination, and I was being a pest.

Yeah, it would be tough. I know I would cry a lot. But if I were in his place, I think it would be difficult keeping me from being by her side every second of the day.

EDIT: Ninja'ed by the Lynx. Yeah, the main character ended up dating another of his friends, just as another way to distance and distract himself from his more sincere romantic interest because dying was so negative. Grrrr.

[Artemisia]

I recognize elements of that story in other stories I've read over the years...the 'joys' of having spend my whole life involved in stories. But, yeah, I hate romances like that. Unfortunately, it seems hard to avoid them in lesbian literature...

[Tenjen]

People doing fiction seem to have trouble writing gay couples not ending tragicly

[yiraheerai]

That's something I could not read. I've already had a few triggered attacks from FANFICTION, of all things. I have to admit that, while I know how to grin and bear it, I'm one of those people who would try to avoid the bad mostly because I know that the bad stuff can equal suicidal thoughts for me >___> I can name a few things I'm not proud of ignoring partially because of that and partially because I don't have a clue how to help. It's definitely not that I don't care. I care a lot. I just.. don't know what to do.

What those people think of me for that, I'll probably never know. :\

Today was.. irritating. That's about it, really. I woke up from a nap and all of a sudden, everything ever irritates me. Tycho wanting outside constantly irritated me. HIm sniffing at a specific patch of grass irritated me. Dad leaving the tv on even though he left the house while I was sleeping irritated me. I mean, it's not like I'm going to be watching it so why not turn it off? Going to my grandmother's for a combo birthday party for my mom and dad irritated me. EVERYTHING IRRITATES RIGHT NOW.

[TellusEidolon]

People doing fiction seem to have trouble writing gay couples not ending tragicly

I think The Black Magician trilogy did it right.

One of the major characters was gay and ended up in a happy relationship during the third book.

[yiraheerai]

I've written down two different rants and ended up deleting them. It's too much family information and I don't really know how to go into it without explaining some frustrating family dynamics.

Just.. Fucking MERS and coddling mothers.