Part 5
Do you know what makes my blood boil? More than people telling me what to do, more than hearing for the third time this week from my sister that I need to “go on a juice cleanse”? More than watching someone else eat the last bit of chocolate in the house?
Jealous idiots putting other people down to make themselves feel better. I just don’t get it. I mean, I get the urge. We all have that little devil feeling when we see other people going ahead when we’re insecure and whatever. But – you don’t indulge that thing.
And I love indulging myself. So if I’m saying it, you know it’s a big no no.
What’s caused me to go off on this rant, you may ask?
Well, not two hours ago, I was on the phone talking to a friend – yes, I have friends. Don’t be rude. Anyway, she’s this sweet, helpful type and people love to take advantage of her. I’ll be mature enough to admit that I wanted to take advantage of her a little the first time I met her. She just makes it so easy, with her overly-helpful “Sure!” that she chirps at everyone who asks her for something.
I felt bad, though. Which proves that I’m not a total demon and that the people I’m judging are worse than me. Today, Soph – the lil girlie who keeps getting taken advantage of – came up to me in my cubicle and asked me for my opinion on something. She asked me if her work was up to standard.
Soph, by the way, is actually overqualified for her position but she’s not the best at sticking up for herself. If she worked in my little bit of hell, the old cows I work with would eat her alive. Instead, she works for an easygoing guy who, as bosses go, is pretty decent.
Which is why, at first I was so confused by why she’d ask me such a thing. Eventually, I got it out from her that one of her ‘friends’ had come up to her office for lunch and ‘accidentally’ glanced at her work. The way Soph tells it, this hero was astonished by how many mistakes she’d made and magnanimously offered to fix them.
Translation: the woman felt insecure and decided to take her personal issues out on our resident ray of sunshine to make herself feel more powerful. Soph, being Soph, came to me to check whether or not she was missing something when she got back an identical document to the one that had been lifted from her desk by manicured talons.
She’s too nice and one day, someone’s gonna flatten her like a pancake. To be honest… I worry about Soph a bit. She’s grown on me in the past few months and she’s the nicest person in the place by far.
She was so sad today. I thought she was about to cry when I broke the bad news. But all she did was get up, thank me for my help, and leave.
I know for a fact she’s not gonna confront this woman. She’s probably still gonna do her those same favours that she’s been doing for so long without an ounce of payback or even gratitude.
And one day, when she’s had enough, Soph is gonna explode and turn into a hot, shrieking mess.
…or maybe that’s just me projecting.
Not the point. The point is – people who insult ya under the guise of helping? 11 times out of 10, they’re jealous. So you should just take it as a compliment that you’re doing good.
God, I’m so weird. I’m ‘talking’ to a freaking screen, basically.
Whatever, I had to talk to someone. And talking to the Hurricane won’t help, she’s still in preaching advice mode. If I talked to her, she’d just babble about sabr. I still don’t know why she’s so obsessed with patience. Specifically, me making patience. I mean, she’s the one called Sabira.
Our parents were very much for the virtues. She’s Sabira, I’m Tayyiba. Neither of us match our names. She’s impatient, I’m disagreeable. Maybe if our parents had picked easier names ot live up to, we would’ve been better people.
Who can know?
Anyway, I can’t talk to Hurricane Sabira because she’ll just make me feel guilty for being ungrateful. I’ve told her before that the lectures only make me more ungrateful but she deliberately ignores that and continues dispensing them like the world’s worst vending machine.
If only I could find her power button and turn her off…
It just occurred to me that by putting up both our names online, I’ve made it twelve billion times easier for Sabira to find this thing.
Crud.
The drama that would unfold if she read all of this. She knows most of it since I’ve never bothered to pretend to be something I’m not. I don’t have the energy for it. But still… It’s kinda mean.
Should I stop?
Maybe I should. This thing isn’t doing me that much good anyway.
…
It is good to feel like I’m talking to someone.
Someone who can’t judge me for the more awful stuff I say and can’t point out when I’m being unfair or illogical or ungrateful or… countless other things that I apparently am.
But I don’t wanna rock the boat. Sabira and I actually bonded the other night over a shared loathing of one of our uncles. He’s the one who handled my grandfather’s will. And the one who lost almost all the money my grandfather had so painstakingly saved by delegating (read: abandoning out of laziness) the distribution of everything to the first, cheapest lawyer he could find.
I think it took less than two days for all that money, and the newly stinking rich lawyer, to disappear. Permanently.
My uncle, by the way, always maintains that it wasn’t his fault and no one should judge him because he’d gone mad with grief. Never mind that he hadn’t seen my grandfather at that point for months.
But let’s leave that rant for… well, never. Since I’m not going to keep putting out this stuff.
The Imperfect Muslimah 