Gotta love Cary
Today’s dilemma: someone is feeling lonely — her friends and family are elsewhere, and her husband works opposite hours. Should she just give up and be a loner?
Cary’s ever so useful answer, which totally doesn’t feed into my neuroses:
Go visit your mother, tell your siblings you’re desperate and you need them to visit you, speak to your friends and pretend you’re totally happy but make plans to visit them, as family is loyal no matter what, but friends are only loyal if you’re funny.
Why do I read this crap?
December 12th, 2006 at 3:43 pm
Ye-es. Family is… um. Well… okay, “loyal” is one way to put it.
But why do you want to spend time with people who really don’t want to be there, but are there out of obligation to some Grand Ideal (of, say, Family, which is, let’s face it, less realistic than a Norman Rockwell version of Christmas)?
Oh, and while I’m pissed off at this totally erroneous view of the world: why are they “friends” (as opposed to, say, acquaintances) if they’re only loyal when you’re funny?
(Okay, yeah, so I am maybe just a wee bit… anti-family. And alone in this opinion. But I see so few families that are really going to be an *improvement* on loneliness, and pretending they are because That’s the Way Family Is Supposed To Be doesn’t help anyone.)
(Clearly I do not have an extended family. So maybe I should just get off my soapbox.)
December 12th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
Well, that family likely is loyal, based on the letter. I mean, I’m not against family, I like mine (mostly), but his stuff about friends? They won’t come if you say you are unhappy and lonely? That’s not friends.