Letter of Irritation, Girly-Girl Edition

Dear Otherwise Good and Nice Boy,

When I say I am going to hang out at home and call it an early night (yes, on a SATURDAY NIGHT), I mean it. No matter how sweet and charming and sexy and caring and cool and funny and smart I think you are, I am probably not going to be persuaded to change my mind. In fact, I do not want to be persuaded.

I am not being coy. I really do want to get into my flannel pj pants and outrageously large, mismatched wool sweater (it's 16 degrees fahrenheit outside) at about 7 p.m. and curl up with my chihuahua and a glass of red wine and finally watch Marie Antoinette, which I wanted to see in the theaters until reviewers convinced me it was a girlish mistake. And then I really do want to be in bed by 10 p.m. and maybe read a little of this book and be asleep by midnight on the outside.

And if I want to spend a Girl's Night In with Sofia and Kirstin and Martha and the Princess Puttalily Fandango (Chunk-o-Pup's name when she's feeling fancy on a Saturday night), I do not need to be ridiculed. Making fun of me in a playful affectionate ("You are so goofy and pathetic but it's cute because I know how punch drunk this month has left you") way is one thing, but making fun of me in a kind of belligerent and coercive way? Unh uh, not okay. Do you really want to shame me into hanging out with you?

See, I know when I need me some me time. I know how and when I need to take it. I know that tomorrow I will wake up refreshed and happy. I know that I will end up having LOVED every irreverent and visually absorbing minute of Marie Antoinette. I know that I will have really enjoyed that Southgate opens her novel with this Wilt Chamberlain quotation: "Everything is habit-forming, so make sure what you do is what you want to be doing." I know I will make some coffee and Irish oatmeal in my sunny kitchen. I know I will do a little morning reading and find this and feel real excitement for the coming Spring. I know I will feel a little more ready to face a positively bone-crushing March with its no less than a million and fourteen academic commitments.

Your contribution to my evening and my morning will have been to introduce a little bit of worry that maybe I will die alone because maybe I am lame and boring and pathetic. And then I will worry for you because I will be concerned that I hurt your feelings and I will see the beginning of the end of an otherwise very nice sort of friendship and I will fret that you are pushing my buttons and that everyone KNOWS what happens when my buttons are pushed. And then I will worry a little bit about my buttons and if they are neurotic or narcissistic or irrational buttons.

In the end, though, I think I will decide that my buttons are just fine, thank you very much, and I will get another cup of coffee and curl up under my puffy pink comforter and forget to be irritated about anything at all because I am happy by myself and with myself. And that really is worth something, isn't it?

Yours,

Medusa