You know what?

[conuly]

It's not my fault if you feel guilty over your choices. You think you don't eat as healthily as me? That's your problem, not mine.

You think I'm judging you for not eating as heathily as I do? Maybe I am, and maybe I'm not, but, again - your reaction to this perceived judgment is not my problem and it's not my fault.

I take no responsibility for other people's feelings, certainly not when I judge those feelings to be, frankly, absurd.

If I make (say) a comment that I find carrying my nieces in a sling to be more comfortable than the alternatives, that's hardly a statement that *you* don't love your children. And if you want to construe it as such, go right on ahead, but don't expect me to fall on my knees and pleadingly sob for forgiveness.

And if you sit around and whine how I and others make you feel unwelcome for your choices, well, guess what? Those choices are your responsibility - they sure as hell aren't mine.

Here's another newsflash: I don't know you? Then I don't care. I don't care if you drink, and I don't care if your drinking is totally excusable because of your shitty life, and I don't care if you rot your liver drinking, and I don't care about the excuses you think will make me apologise for my short-sightedness in saying "I never drink alchohol". My choice not to drink has nothing to do with any of the choices you make in your own life - which is good, because I don't care enough about you to necessarily make the right choices for you.

(Here's the part where, if I cared, I'd go on and on about how I don't drink because I dislike the smell of alchohol, and how it's in no way a moral choice. But guess what? I don't feel I have to defend my choice to not drink. I don't have to defend *any* of my choices - they are what they are. And for me to say "I don't drink" is not, despite your claims to the contrary, an attack on anybody who has ever accidentally overindulged. No, really!)

If you make a choice, and you think it was the right choice, great! You don't need to defend yourself to me just because I've made different choices. And even if I've made different choices and am totally judging or mocking you for the choices you've made, you *still* shouldn't defend those choices to me, because I don't care. I'm not going to read your defense and suddenly become a caring individual. I probably won't think much of it, in fact. And if you're secure in your choices, then your opinion should be the only one that matters. Certainly, I can't imagine why you care about the opinion of some random stranger.

Oh, and if you made a choice, and think it's the wrong choice? Deal with your issues on your own time. I don't need to spend my life listening to you whine about how you know it was the right choice when, by your persistance on the subject, you make me suspect that you really think it wasn't. (Not that I'm likely to say that to you, because I'm not a damn mindreader, but sometimes, really, the lady doth protest too much.)

In short, my acceptance or non-acceptance of your life doesn't change whether your choices were right or wrong. Take some responsibility for your own damn feelings instead of trying to lay all the blame on others.

Thank you.

Comments

[conuly]

A lot of the times I run across it, they really don't - but to hear them talk, they're only getting out of being damned to hell by their clever tongues! Like it's my problem.