Alright, well, so I don’t have to explain the whole situation all over again, I’ll just steal it from Dawn’s blog. Keep in mind some of this is stuff that happened with her specifically, not me, but the situation as a whole is the same for me.
Friday evening I saw Danny sign on and thought hey, I should tell him that I know how to sing Happy Birthday in Spanish now, so we don’t have to sing Feliz Navidad. So I told him and all I got in response was: “Please don’t.” Then he said something about how “you know how it was with your knee? It’s like that” (or something like that). I didn’t understand what he was talking about, but he was typing with perfect grammar and from that and the context, I could tell he was upset or angry about something. So I asked what was up and he said: “Nothing.” Some people don’t know this about me, but I thought that I made it pretty clear. If you are acting like something is wrong and something plainly is, do not tell me that there is “nothing” wrong when I ask you. You do not insult my intelligence like that. I don’t care if you don’t want to talk about it, just say you don’t want to talk about it, but don’t deny that something is bothering you. So his answer kind of annoyed me and I just said, “alright” and left him alone because he wasn’t going to say anything about it anyway. I found out later that he wouldn’t talk to Cam or Tyler, either. I also found out that he had told Nick what was bothering him, so I asked him about it. He said that Danny was feeling stressed out from school and such and that he was tired of the jokes (and such) that we make about him. At any rate, he decided he needed to not associate with us for a while. Well… okay. I decided not to bother engaging him in conversation on Saturday, either (though I don’t think he was around to do so, anyway)
Sunday I slept in for quite a while since it was such a late night. Other than that, I worked on my seminar notes all day. I tried talking to Danny again. I asked if he was feeling any better. I didn’t get a response for quite a while. Eventually he said he didn’t see the message. He asked how I was feeling and that was the extent of our discussion. He never really answered my question. The conversation died after that. Seemed like he was still upset with whatever he was upset about and I was still upset over Saturday, so I didn’t really have the energy to worry nor pursue anything about it. Now, I was still annoyed with him. I was annoyed that he was taking whatever it was out on his friends. I was also annoyed because Tyler was very upset over the whole ordeal (like, very upset, I wanted to punch Danny for making him so upset- however, this is probably because Tyler never shows emotion as it is so when he does, it’s intense). Nothing else really happened on Sunday.
Yesterday I learned some gems, though. Icing on the cake, as it were. It turns out, Danny was only being stand offish and pushing away Cam, Nick, Tyler, and I. Because apparently, we are the ones that cause most of his distress with the amount “we” joke. Which I find… interesting. Considering I’ve been too sick for the past two weeks to make any jokes or jabs at him. On the contrary, I’ve been on the receiving end of so many swine flu jokes, I can’t even begin to count them. I haven’t said jackshit to him for at least two weeks. Now I’m not trying to just stop pinning this on me and say the other three are just as guilty. That’s not what I believe. I know Tyler, for example, doesn’t make too many truly terrible jokes. His jokes are small and easy to get over. The only thing that happens is that sometimes, yes, he can be annoying. But it never lasts. Additionally, Danny is not the only victim. We all make fun of each other. All of us. Including him. He makes jabs at us all the time. For instance, the ever-annoying “At the end of classes!” joke. Sure. It might have been funny the first time. But you know what? It isn’t funny anymore. Actually, it’s downright annoying. Every time he says it, I want to punch him in the face. Don’t blame me if I actually try to have some goddamn time management skills. He’s the one who parties and parties and goes out with friends and clubs and drinks on Friday and Saturday, then complains when he’s stressing out over everything he needs to get done on Sunday. I try to avoid that. And that is why I don’t always opt to hang out. It feels like he can dish it out, but he can’t take it. And I’m really frustrated that he singled out us four as contributing to the cause of his current misery. That he was apparently fine with other people, but not us. It felt like he treated us as if we didn’t have our own problems. I was having a horribly shitty weekend. Unimaginably terrible. To add whatever the hell he was doing onto it was just too much. The magnitude of it all could have been changed if he had just said, “I don’t want to talk about it.” Even if he singled out his issue as still being with us. If he had just said that, then at least I would have known that he acknowledged the problem and wasn’t trying to avoid it or pretend that it didn’t exist.
I was absolutely, positively livid with the way he handled the entire situation and that he felt so incredibly victimized. If it was getting to be that bad, then tell us. Exploding (or imploding) like this is the wrong thing to do when you’re not on top of your emotions, like Danny. He has a harder time dealing with his emotions than the rest of us. Cam and I bottle our emotions, which I know is bad, but in the end, we do deal with them. Our blogs, as you can obviously tell, are part of our outlets so that we don’t lose control. Sure we can’t fix everything with them, but it helps and we deal with them in a way that has minimum impact on other people, especially our friends. Tyler just chooses to experience as little emotion as possible, unless it’s happiness. As we can see from this situation, he’s inexperienced with them and handles them poorly when they do get overwhelming, but again, in a way that doesn’t affect the rest of us. I like to think that he just chooses to look to the positive more than the negative, which is what makes him so easy to be around.
Long story short, I’m still really quite pissed off with Danny. Although, I don’t feel like discussing this issue with him because I have a feeling that it would be as hopeless as trying to convince my dad of certain things this weekend. Whether this is logical or true at all will remain to be seen (probably never), but that’s how I feel. I’m in such a hopeless state that I don’t even want to begin to approach it. It wouldn’t be beneficial. I don’t know how long I’ll be mad. But in the meantime, it’s grin and bear it. I don’t want to talk to him about it, because no one in the world is possible of being upset other than Danny when Danny is upset about something and I don’t feel like dealing with that right now, or ever.
Anyway, other stuff is Danny and Tyler were emailing back and forth talking about it, and Tyler was pretty enraged (for him) about the whole thing, to the point of yelling and swearing, which he has every right to do. For those who don’t know Tyler, him yelling and swearing in anger is the relative equivalent of me being angry enough to hit someone. Basically, Tyler never asks anything from Danny, never takes anything, and yet he is always there for him when he needs help or is depressed. Then, Danny just cut him out, which hurt him a lot after all he does for him. Tyler didn’t deserve that at all, regardless of whatever happened to tick Danny off. Danny should say something, not just leave, just like he said Dawn should have said something to him about the “End of classes” thing.
I tried talking to Danny about it the other night to explain that he’s getting mad at us for something he actively participates in, and never shows any indication of having a problem with. And now, it’s as if it’s alright until it becomes a problem for him, at which point it’s bad, but as long as he isn’t affected by it, then it’s fine, which isn’t fair. I ended up making the realization last night that he’s kinda like Dawn’s dad in that regard. (We won’t go into her dad. It’s her stuff to deal with and share, and not my place to talk about it.) He seems to treat events and people and react to them based on how they affect him, directly or indirectly. Thus, until he’s affected by the usual exchanges we all make, he participates in it and has no problem with it. And it’s not like he’s even the main one to deal with it; Tyler and Dawn take the brunt of it, followed probably by Sarika and me, and THEN him, and then Nick.
The “End of classes!” joke Dawn mentioned is a good example. It would have been fine if it was a once-in-a-while thing. Both Tyler and I used it a few times. But, it was only a few times, and then we just let it go. He, however, used it religiously for about 2 or 3 months, almost every time he was talking about Dawn. That kind of frequency is what made it annoying. Again, there was referring to me as “The Jerk!” Once in a while, I don’t have a problem with it. I can laugh at it and even join in on it and not mind. But, he spent a few months on it, addressing me as it as often as my own name, whereas occasionally Dawn would use it, but she dropped it after two or three times. That makes it annoying. However, neither Dawn nor I ever got mad at him for it, despite how much it annoyed us, because that’s just how the group is. We’re lovingly abusive, if that makes any sense.
Apparently, Kiernan started getting frustrated with coddling Danny as well, which we heard from FINA Chris, which makes sense. Both Dawn and I feel like Danny is unable to make himself happy, and needs other people and other things to do it for him. This ties back in to how things are experienced relative to how they affect him: it’s like he treats people as if they’re there to interact with his life, not like his life and our lives intersect and join at some points, but ultimately are separate experiences and it’s not like him suddenly cutting off doesn’t cut out something from the rest of us.
Anyway, that’s the main drama there. I don’t even feel like going into everything with Chris’ life right now. I’ll update that story once it’s a little more cemented in what’s happening. Most of you already know what’s happening because I’ve talked about it as it happens, anyway.
I’m also learning how to do HDR photos, though I need to actually get time to try it out. I’m going to need to fiddle with the settings on my camera to get it to work, since I can only take photos in three exposures, rather than 5 or 7 or even 9 like on some more expensive cameras. I’ll just have to use the tripod and be really careful when I change settings and take a lot of pictures. It should pay off, though, because they look awesome.
