There are times like now when I feel compelled to write, but my hands are unfocused and my brain refuses to choose a specific path in which to travel.  So I sit here feeling random things slosh around in my mind.  In and of itself it is an interesting experience to just sit and listen to the idioms that float to the surface if I chose to quietly watch the pool of instead of stirring it up, but it keeps me from specific goals. If I do more of these writings, I think I'll call them raindrops.  Little pieces of liquid that make up the ocean inside my head.  They may give you clarity, but they are just small parts of a larger whole. Right now I'm angry.  I've had my buttons pushed a great deal as of late and I'm finally bending under the  strain.  Inside of my head is a monster, a being of dark tendriled anger that I fooled myself into thinking I had caged years ago.  Over the past few months it laughed at me, opened up the bars of its prison with a feather touch, tapped my nose and then walked back into the cage.  I'd never come so close to losing my temper before, and had always convinced myself that I had it well contained. I do not get along with many people, I do not like crowds.  Oh I can be sweet and sociable with the rest of them but I don't think it's my calling.  I don't think I have an obligation to greet the masses.  How can I be called to do something that gives me so much misery? But I divert from my point... The reason why I do not  get along with people is because I am easily irritated.  I lack patience.  I am annoyed by selfishness, rudeness, egotism, arrogance, and immaturity.  If I meet someone who falls into these categories I avoid them at all costs, because speaking or dealing with someone with these qualities would soon grate upon me. I like to psychoanalyze; it's interesting to probe into the minds of people and find out why they do or become certain things.  Oddly, I find that a sheltered and well-to-do upbringing quite often results in a spoiled and self-centered child.  A sheltered child becomes an adult incapable of dealing with life and who expects problems to be solved for them by others.  A child who got everything they ever asked for expects it from their friends or marital relations as well.  When you are raised to believe the world revolves around you, you tend to still follow that belief to adulthood until someone pulls your train off its rails. Normally life has a way of doing this for you at the proper time.  But there's still a few who slip through the cracks.  The people who are spoiled into adulthood.  The people who remain children until potentially the day they die.  They manage to cling by finding people who are willing to take care of them, who put  up with them, and who pamper them with gifts.  Excuses are made about why they deserve the special treatment, either because of mental trauma or physical problems.  It sickens me. The thing that makes this so personal is that I deal with these people so often.  they are either people I know at work, or relations of friends.  work has granted me patience, but a selfish part of me wishes it could tear the cancer away from my friend and leave only the part that I like.  I tamp this part down as deep as I can, but the black monster in the cage of my mind uses it to grease the hinges of its prison for a swifter escape. I wonder if there isn't another way.  Is it any better that I lie and pretend that I like someone when I would be perfectly happy if I never saw or spoke to said person again?  Would it be better of I spoke my mind to ears that probably would not listen?  Honesty is such a sharp blade, and it can sometimes cut the one who holds it more deeply than the one it is being swung against. It still hurts.  It aggravates me to think I could solve a problem if I spoke up, or that the solution is just a hair away.  But if I try, if I reach for it I could make a  friendship crash down on me.  I'm pulled to act, but I'm forced to sit still for fear that my actions would invariably cause more harm than good. One of the lessons I learned as an adult was that problems do not get solved in an instant, nor are there always easy and quick solutions.  I don't have to like it though. -03-99