Missing Opportunities

In my last post, I overlooked an opportunity for a better Fact of the Day for that post. So I used it for this one. The tidbit about the humans and kittens up there.

I seem to be missing a lot of opportunities. For instance, today I saw a cousin I don't often see. She's an adult with her own family. I've always liked her. She's pretty, elegant, calm, nice, friendly, accepting, and sweet, in a really stable way that keeps me from fearing that her darkside will surface and try to kill me. She seems very intelligent and real. In general, people are idiots and fakes, and I hate them for it. I sometimes can't believe any intelligent, real people exist, but then I meet people like my cousin. She doesn't seem to be TRYING or putting on a show of being nice, for the sake of being polite. She seems genuinely kind. She doesn't seem secretly depressed (as so many in my family seem to be) or not-so-secretly depressed or hidden-but-pretty-obviously depressed or any degree of depressed. Or any degree of angry. Or any degree of anxious. I know I'm making her sound all perfect, but she's not any degree of judgmental or snobbish or self-righteous either. Not as far as I've seen, but I admit I haven't seen that much of her.

You see, whenever I "visit" my cousin, I just sit there kind of nervously and try both to avoid looking at her and to look at her enough to be polite. I say nothing unless she speaks to me first. I feel intimidated by her. Not because she's intimidating, but because I'm so used to being surrounded by people I can't stand that I don't know how to react when I'm around someone I like. I'm used to people who ignore me or act like snobs or jerks or morons. I'm also used to people who are friendly even though I don't particularly like or trust them and don't want to commit to being friends with them. I'm somehow both used to that situation and terribly uncomfortable in it because I have to hit the magic mark of nice-enough-not-to-hurt-their-feelings-but-not-enough-to-make-them-want-to-be-friends. With my cousin, it's similar but different. (I think my bad social skills are showing. From this, you'd think I can't get along with ANYONE. . .I can! I can!. . .Convinced yet?. . .I can! I can! Fine, I can't.) (1) I feel weird being around someone I don't despise. And (2) I really don't want her think I don't like her, which is liable to happen with the confused, nervous way I act around her these days. It's uncomfortable. I can't cope around people I like, and I'm squandering opportunities to make non-enemies.

By the way, if someone acts fake to you, they're insulting your intelligence and disrespecting you, since they would have to really respect you to act themself around you. If they pretend to be nice to you, they usually hate you. If they pretend to be mean to you, they usually fear you. If they pretend to want to take care of you, they usually look down on you like an insect both slimy and hairy.