"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
I hate that line as much as I love it. I love it because it's the first sentence of a novel I love. I hate it because, frankly, it's full of charlotte russe. There is nothing original about misery. What's amazing is that any of us ever manage to be happy even for a few minutes at a stretch.
Obviously Tolstoy was writing in the dark ages, before Facebook was invented. But even then -- didn't he notice how complainers never have anything new to say? Like, ever?
I sure as hell don't. Here's a partial list of my current complaints. If you can't identify with at least three of them, check your pulse. And then check what planet you're from.
1. Money. Don't have enough of it.
2. Don't have enough money due to two layoffs in the past ten years due to the crap economy.
3. Which leads to marital bickering.
4. As if we'd get along just perfectly if we had all the money in the world.
5. Because, hello? Married.
6. Also: teenager gives me total 'tude about schoolwork.
7. And doing his chores.
8. Like, all one of them.
9. Seriously, he does freakin' nothing around here.
10. Note to offspring: Having to wipe down your bathroom counter and make your bed every morning is not cause for putting Amnesty International on speed-dial.
11. Anyway.
12. Mother-in-law: Nice, but sometimes annoying.
13. Well, she's from the suburbs.
(14. I am, too. But at least I left.)
(15. Seriously, she visits us out here in the big bad city and goes into anaphylactic shock because she has to freakin' parallel park sometimes.)
(16. At least she stopped bugging us about buying a house instead of just renting like the slackers we clearly are, after I explained that around here, even condos start at $600,000.)
(17. And that was ten years ago.)
18. And don't get me started on those wacky freeloading cousins of my husband's.
19. Who "can't afford" to pay their rent, in spite of judicious daily investments at Starbucks.
20. Seriously: They go there every day.
21. I buy tea leaves in bulk, fer hell's sake.
22. Speaking of family: My parents? Psycho.
23. Strange siblings, too.
24. And have I mentioned my noisy and/or bizarre neighbors?
25. Plus, the drivers around here? Homicidal and/or suicidal.
26. Facebook drama.
27. Frenemies.
28. Should I kill my child by not buying organic? Or kill my budget by buying it?
29. I never get enough sleep.
30. If I bitched about the stuff I have to do around here as much as my kid moans about his stuff, I would never stop screaming.
31. Hedgehogs are illegal as pets in our state. And we're, like, the only state that's true about.
32. I could go on. But what's the bloody point?
Fairly reeks of originality, right? Okay, the bit about hedgehogs was a little unexpected. But the rest? Welcome to America.
So not only am I really bummed out today -- I'm bummed out and boring.
Take this as a warning: If the person you hear whining has anything unusual to say, he's probably lying.
I once knew (online) a guy whose life-complaints centered around his children, who were twin sons suffering from Cystic Fibrosis they'd inherited from their mother (who had died years earlier, leaving the complainer a wistful widower). He was homeschooling the kids, which he could afford to do full-time because he was rich from having spent his working life as a lawyer, plus his wife had come from a really wealthy family and of course had left him all her moolah.
That guy? Total fraud. Faked his own death and that of his kids when he got tired of the whole charade.
Trust me. When misery is that interesting, the people involved are too busy living through it to chat.