If You Don't Have Something Nice to Say - Tell Me and Leave Everyone Else Alone

Constructive criticism rocks. Of course, I'd prefer a logical argument combined with a nice bottle of wine and plenty of compliments thrown in for balance. But not everyone feels the love. Not everyone feels like making sense.

We all roll our own way.

Except when someone rolls me through someone else. Then I get all kinds of pissed.

Check this out: Wrote a perfectly decent piece on Bio Dad. Heartfelt. Compassionate. Then Pseudo-Relative calls Blood-Relative, getting all judgmental and calling me hateful.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but you'd have to be smoking crack to read hate into what I wrote. To paraphrase a James Cameron film - You should read with better eyes than that. Assbag.

So Blood-Relative gets silk panties in a wad because Pseudo and the rest of the world now knows we're related to an alcoholic.

Right. Cause the Irish last name didn't give that away in the first place.

I know. The horror.

A few days before the Bio Dad post, I wrote about women I admire and mentioned my mother. Any phone calls about me being lovable?

No.

Neither Pseudo nor Blood - nor any other asshole involved - made that call. Not to mention the 900 posts about making the world a better place. No positive feedback of any kind.

Such is the fate of a writer with readers who sometimes can't see past their own negative motives and feel the need to gossip about me like a bunch of high school b*tches.

That's right. I'm talking about you.

Whatever.

In related news, several months ago Extended-Relative called Immediate-Relative all drunk to yell about something I wrote. This led to more than a few fun lectures from Immediate about how disgusting I am. I listened and laughed like a good little girl about how relatives find me disgusting.

It's what I do.

Few weeks later, called Extended's wife to say hello. Cause I keep in touch with the planet - even when said planet pisses me off. We're shootin' the sh*t and she mentions that her husband enjoyed an essay I'd written that day. Thought it was all kinds of great.

Well goddamn, I thought, why didn't he get all drunk and call Immediate with the good news? Turns out I'm not always disgusting! Who knew?

But, again, that phone call wasn't made. Because no one spends an hour talking about how great I am. Not even me. But a 90-minute conversation about how bad I suck? Seems we've all got time for that.

I suppose what I'm saying is this: Leave my beleaguered and close-knit family members alone. They can do nothing about me, much to their chagrin, and are not responsible for my rants. Leave a comment, email directly, or call *me* when you're drunk.

You should know that, regardless, I plan on continuing my same pattern of writing whatever I feel like writing - whether it's about my experiences, my thoughts, my vagina or my politics. So handle it. Or try focusing on the stuff you like.

Or suck it.

Completely up to you.