I Want To Be Beige

I wish I could be beige. I wish I didn't have opinions. Opinions just get me in trouble, most of the time. Nobody listens. Nobody wants to hear what anyone else has to say. People talk and talk and talk - on blogs, on message boards, on TV, on talk radio, but all of them only want to hear two words in return... and those two words are "You're right."

I admit, I'm guilty of it too. Being right feels good. But I really do try, at least, when I talk to people or read what they've written, to set aside my own thoughts and really HEAR what they have to say. I try to find the truth in even the most ignorant statement - if nothing else because that's generally the best place to start arguing with them from. I try to quiet my mind and listen to what someone's saying, instead of planning my next attack and hoping they'll shut up before I forget what I'm about to say. God knows, I generally don't succeed at this for long, but I try.

But having opinions - no, having convictions, which I apparently have more than my fair share of - is a real liability. Because people just don't want to hear them, unless they agree with me to begin with, and then what's the point of talking to each other about it? It just pisses people off when I won't back down. Then it gets ugly. Then it starts to hurt.

I finally get it. After 32 years of beating my head against every. available. wall. I get it.

I am going to practice beigitude. I am going to smile and be vapid and say things like, "Do you really think so?" and "Gosh, that's interesting!" and "Have another cookie!" instead of trying to show people (often with their own "truths") that they're wrong. I am going to say, "What do you think?" and I am going to say, "I can see both sides," when asked for my opinion (which happens rarely). When asked directly, I'll breathe, "Gee, I don't know, what do you think?" bat my eyes and flash my cleavage.

And when no one is looking, I'm going to do my own thing anyway, because after all the talk talk talk and bullshit lies and bullshit, everyone's just waiting for me to screw up so that they can give me a big fat I TOLD YOU SO anyway... At least if that's going to happen, I'll have screwed up based on my own truths, rather than having accepted and acted upon someone else's.

I got kicked off of Sparkpeople today after getting into a political discussion on a political message board within the group where I was trying to explain the difference between calling a person ignorant and calling the person's beliefs ignorant (the belief in question being that Obama is the antichrist). I tried to explain that going around proclaiming that sort of thing makes all Christians, myself included, look bad.

Screw them. Screw message boards. Screw opinions, my own included. What difference does it make, any of it? It's all 1s and 0s, as they used to say at AFCA. In the end, after all of them have worn their fingers down to tiny nubs typing vitriol and ignorant bullshit at each other - what have we solved - NOTHING.

I wonder if there would have been more people out in the streets protesting the atrocious things that have happened in this country over the past few years if we weren't all chained to our computers, operating under the illusion that any of this makes any damn difference to anyone. Perhaps the internet is the ultimate tool for crowd control.

It's all 1s and 0s.

It's not even real.

I am going on break (from PB, e-mail, reading blogs, all of it).

I'll be back in a few days.

I am not in a good place.

I need to unplug, unwind, and uncolor myself.

I feel like I've been fighting for years.

I can't fight anymore.

I need to get beige.