Wednesday 4 November 2009

I'm unravelling!

My closest friends are divided down the middle. There's the Meryl Streeps and the Steven Seagals.

The former lot is always experiencing some manner of dramatic upheaval on any given day. Life is all deep emotions and obscure lyrics. There will be drunk-calling exes, initiating internet flame wars, identifying with Julia Roberts in every role she's ever played and working up phone bills that hurt to even say out loud. Not ones to shy away from a good solid controversy, their currency is tears and pointed Tweets. This faction abides by a more...elastic..code and is all heart because "let's face it, the other way is dead boring."

For the latter, any heightened form of expression is just being unnecessary and they have practically no use for interjections. They believe in emotional decorum and underplaying everything. To them, life would be no less lived, if pointless hugging were to be removed once and for all. Hard to ruffle and harder to please, this is not the lot you want to call when you've done something incredibly stupid. Not because they'll judge you even though they probably will, but because they remain maddeningly even. Something that really makes the Meryl Streep camp lose their shit.

Organically, I'm a Steven Seagal. I'm awful at discussing issues, I'd rather let them ferment until one day someone goes "Hey you!" and I take a knife to their jugular. I loathe confrontations because they feel incredibly stupid and defensive and if there's one thing more uncomfortable than getting defensive, it's watching someone else squirm defensively.
In recent years though, due to prolonged exposure to some of my friends, I've found I can sometimes out-emote Meryl Streep. In The Hours. I get all wimpy and my nose twitches and moderate length impassioned speeches just, you know, ebb from me. On occasion I've had to physically stop myself from seeking out James Blunt on my iTunes.

It's really very confusing. It makes my inner Steven Seagal want to, without a single facial expression, place some lead between my eyes. But I'm afraid this will make Meryl Streep-me go into overdrive analysing my childhood and then it all gets very Wind Beneath My Wings.



Somehow I'd imagined I'd be having more complicated and important thoughts by the time I turned 24. Just goes to show, age is very distantly related to maturity.


* Ten meeelion dollahs to anyone who can tell me where the title of this post is from. Don't pretend you don't care!

2 comments:

PV said...

I've seen the movie a bunch of time so I'm going for... 'The Hours'!!!

Also, I don't get people that think hugging is pointless. At certain times, that's practically all I've gotten by on!

And James Blunt? I judge...I really really judge...

slackerninja said...

Pointless hugging? Well, it depends who you're hugging...