Oh TWITTER. I love you, Twitter. I especially love you when 140 characters dissolve into a bizzaro conversation that was half funny and half serious and all WEIRD, and I'm being too vague here, so let me back this up a bit.
Last night, I was feeling very confessional on Twitter, which I am wont to do in certain situations. These situations are usually when I'm feeling EXQUISITELY sorry for myself, with self-pity just OOZING from every pore, and hell, if I can't be the teensiest, tiniest bit passive aggressive on Twitter, where in the name of God's pantaloons can I? So last night I had a bit of a Twitter overload. Let me explain, I swear, I'm getting somewhere with this.
It all started with this:
Which is entirely true. I think it goes for everyone, in different ways. We crave validation, unless a person is such a raging narcissist that he or she is content sitting alone, smugly thinking "I am the awesomest thing since the invention of awesome, and therefore do not need validation from others, because I am my biggest fan."
I am not one of those people.
Okay, so I write this tweet. And I become IMMEDIATELY MORTIFIED. I mean, how pathetic can I sound? The whole thing smacks of fishing for compliments, which in all honesty, I was not trying to do. The tweet was a thinly veiled passive aggressive lashing out at a PARTICULAR PERSON who, frankly, never validates me, and therefore I am OBSESSED with making this person validate me through...I don't know, psychic (psycho) mind control or, say, passive aggressive tweets. It's shameless, it's pathetic, and more importantly, IT NEVER WORKS. Never! And I DO feel like grabbing this person by the shoulders, shaking them soundly, and screeching "VALIDATE ME!" in their face. (see how I avoid proper pronouns there? I may be crazy, but I'm crafty as well.)
So I sit here, mortified beyond belief as SO MANY wonderful people on Twitter say lovely things to me that would certainly validate anyone who WASN'T trying to be slick in her attempt to get a particular person to comply with said begging for validation, and I immediately have to follow it up with an apology, because if there's one thing I am SUPER GOOD AT, it's apologizing for everything I do.
Oh, and I DID feel like an ass. But what did the wonderful people on Twitter do? They reassured me that everyone craves validation and that I WASN'T an ass, and that made me feel like even MORE of an ass, so I clarified AGAIN, because I cannot stop digging a hole once I begin.
Ah, there's the rub. Thank you, @littlefluffycat, for encouraging me to clarify my psychotic ramblings and get to the real point of all of this, which is that there are a few, very few, specific people in my life in one way or another who have no interest or desire to validate my emotions and therefore I have devoted my life to getting them to do EXACTLY THAT, because I love torturing myself emotionally. Because, if you're new to this blog, I have ISSUES.
It was at this point that I decided ENOUGH with the passive aggressive, let's bring some funny, and also comment on the nature of blogging and what is popular (webcam girls, boobs) and what is not popular (psychotic ramblings from spinsters in New Jersey) and so I made this grand announcement.
i was NOT being serious here. For one, no one wants to see Miss Banshee do that, and another thing, it would give my poor dad heart failure, and I did NOT go to grad school to become a webcam girl, dammit, but I was commenting on the frustration of being a blogger and writing something like the "Lost Boys and Girls" piece from yesterday and getting minimal feedback, when I KNOW if I just did a sexy dance for YouTube, my stats would explode and I would feel so much better about myself. (NOT REALLY.) From here, a conversation started with my new Twitter pal @seanbradford who was VERY EAGER to encourage me to yes, YES, abandon all hope, forget the emotional stuff, GIT NEKKID INSTEAD! (He was not serious about this, of course, but it made for a great, and hilarious back and forth) so I continued with my declarations of abandoning the blog as a sounding board for my emotions and making it about boobs.
This tweet alarmed my poor internetty pal @pkactus, who begged me not to do such a thing, so I reassured him, through more self-abasement, that this was not the case, because I'd make a lousy hussy, mostly because I am incapable of walking in high heels without falling down. And we all know that hussies have to be able to walk in heels.
THEN the spammy follower alerts started. What hath I wrought? It was then that I realized something that I had not taken into consideration prior to this whole rant.
And it did. Make me lose a lot of followers. And gain a lot of spammers! So all was going extraordinarily well, in a "not at all" kind of way. It was then that I realized how I had gotten on this tangent to begin with, and, because I cannot leave well enough alone, nor can I shut up when the joke has gone on too long, NOR can I help myself when it comes to teasingly and not seriously at ALL placing blame on others, which NEVER translates properly and gets me in a LOT of hot water because I am a MORON, I had to write this:
Mr Ebert, sir? I was just joking. And since you didn't respond, and have probably stopped following me on Twitter and definitely stopped reading this blog (I don't blame you in the slightest) let me say in front of the entirety of the internet that I am sorry that I roped you into this psychotic babble that honestly FELT funny at the time, but in the morning light as I am writing this, is not funny at ALL. So, sir, I am sorry. Please don't hate me, I'm extremely unstable and fragile.
It was then, after THAT little piece of crazy, that I realized what I had been doing all freaking night, and had the ONLY good idea of the evening, and proclaimed this throughout Twitterland, much to the delight of all the remaining people following me:
And I went to bed. Thank Jebuddah. And that's the story of last night on Twitter, how it started off with self-abasement, rapidly spiraled into something bordering on porny, and ended, as it ALWAYS DOES, with me making a complete and total foolish ass out of myself, which, if you've survived this entry for this long (well done!) should come as no surprise. I'm thinking of knitting a pair of very sturdy mittens to wear when I am on the internet, so I cannot type this lunacy or anything resembling it EVER AGAIN.