The Teased

Gossip:  To talk about someone else's private or personal business, especially in a way that spreads that information.

I'm fascinated by how itchy my trigger finger is when it comes to my family.  I pride myself on at least working on my tolerance and understanding with people in general but, man, does that go out the window when it comes to my blood relatives.  I think that part of the phenomenon is that there's such a large body of work that I can access.  When someone I know doesn't treat me very well I'm pretty good at giving them the benefit of the doubt.  Even when my toes get trampled more than once I find that whatever anger and pissiness and desire for revenge I hork up evaporates like mist in the morning sun when the opportunity presents itself for me to deliver a crippling blow.  It isn't worth my peace of mind.  I take a lot because I don't get the satisfaction that I used to with silly little emotional victories, often over people I barely know or don't care that much about.

But with my family I have the patience of a shrew.  If you step on my toes a couple of times or a couple of dozen times I can default to patience but if you do it a few hundred thousand times I wise up.  The problem for me is that I almost never feel good when I do the retaliation thing even if I deserve to do it and the family member who is the target of my witty barbed witticism deserves it richly.  I hate that I've developed a conscience, however weak and vestigial it might be.

One of my blood relative families has it awfully good in our material world.  This is really neither here nor there and none of my concern - it certainly isn't any of my business - but they seem to think that this affords them a higher position in the human pecking order.  Again, none of my business but they trot out this opinion in my presence far too often.  My belief is that if you're talking about other people behind their backs then you're talking about me behind my back.  I play it close to the vest with gossipers - I don't want to give them any more ammunition than I have to.

A lot of the time people that engage in mean-spirited teasing are very thin skinned about getting teased themselves.  And I notice that they hide behind a veneer of innocence and tease and tease and tease, exclaiming: "Hey, why are you getting upset?  I'm just joking!" when the teasing becomes too much for the teased.

I may be too far gone to do much beyond cope with these relationships.