The Voice of Reason

I cannot help but wonder at what point I became the Voice Of Reason.

On the surface I suppose it seems relatively simple. I'm older than some 75% of my friends and acquaintances, have two children and a relatively stable long-term marriage, so long as DG isn't being A Guy at the moment. If there's something I haven't been through, well ...

That's where it gets more complex. Personally, I can't see how anyone could see me as anything resembling sane and stable. My body is falling apart around me, we're completely broke and struggling to make ends meet, and sometimes it's just Too Much for even me.

There's a LONG running joke. "You gonna be okay?" "Always am." I'm lousy at quitting. I'm good at falling apart, and then picking the pieces back up. In a way, letting yourself fall apart every now and then helps keep your liver from exploding due to everything you bury. I've never met a person capable of letting every single thing slide off their backs without having some problem with the internal pressure it causes.

I have my faults. There's a pretty damn long list of them. To me, they're glaring and brash and rude and unacceptable.

Voice Of Reason, my fat white Irish ass.

Yet consistently, people come to me.

I don't know if they're coming to me for answers. Sure, I've got an answer for everything, and straight answers without some twisted humour cost you a hundred bucks extra. I don't know everything. I don't pretend to know everything, and I sure as hell don't know how to solve everything, either.

I don't know if they come to me because no one else will listen. Listening, I'm good at. Listening without making comments ... now that's another matter entirely. That I can't do.

I don't know if they come to me because I'll tell them they're being silly and that's what they need to hear. I don't know if they come to me to have me validate their own responses, or to provide that extra voice telling them if they're right or wrong to help them make a final decision.

I don't know.

I've never enjoyed politics. Back in the years when I was actively involved in the SCA, I was dragged into the murk of Knowing The Game and playing politics with the big kids. I knew everyone Important and what who was doing to who and all of the behind the scenes crap that really took all of the fun out of it. It didn't stop me from being good at it. I knew how to play it, I learned from some of the best. But I loathed it.

Getting away from it and starting over elsewhere helped for a while, but eventually I found myself in the same position because I was good at it. I walked away again.

I'm the mediator. I always have been. I have problems saying No. I end up in the middle by sheer accident more times than I care to remember.

It happens online a lot. DG has a talent for pissing people off. When he does, they come to me. I don't get that. "Your husband is at it again." "So?" "Well, can't you ..."

No. I can't.

I'd like to think that I'm a somewhat sarcastic and heartless Evil Overlord ... so why the hell do they bring it to me? Because he's better at being an asshole?

I've been through this with RP partners, too. One specific character just made the head of a particular forum foam at the mouth. I mean he HATED my partner to the point of trying to find some 'legal' way to have him banned. There wasn't one, but every time we showed up, I'd spend the next three or four days dealing with the aftermath.

My partner was never once approached over it. Never.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not really complaining about the whole Voice Of Reason thing except on those levels which are just plain silly. If you have a real and serious problem with something that someone else is doing, take it to THEM, particularly if the other person you are trying to get involved has absolutely no idea what is going on.

I just don't fully understand it.

And I feel very, very old sometimes.

I'm not fishing for answers here. I'm not sure that I'd completely believe any answers handed to me anyway. I definitely still have some serious self-esteem problems.

But I'm feeling introspective lately, and this was among the little bubbles that danced around on the surface until it finally nagged me into babbling about it. For those that read my journal for the questionable humour, I should probably apologize. There hasn't been much of that at all lately, and I'm not sure when there will be again.

It's a phase, you know, and I think I'm getting too old to grow out of them quickly.

In the end, though, it's still Just Me, Pretending To Be.