(Hoo boy, my first Pit rant/first OP. Forgive me if my vitriol isn’t, well, vitriolic enough.)
Dear Friend,
I suspect you are at this very minute preparing a rant about me and my lack of gratitude for your Christmas gift to me. I would like to humbly submit that there is a reason that I didn’t fall down in joy and begin kissing your feet when you gave it to me.
To be blunter, what in the fuckin’ world possessed you to think that four tiny individually-wrapped chocolate squares constituted a Christmas gift?! Even had I not noticed the day after you gave them to me that they cost a total of $1.50, there is still something, well, insultingly chintzy about basically giving somebody a candy bar as a gift. Don’t get me wrong – chocolate is a good gift. However, typically a “gift” portion of chocolate is more than can be reasonably eaten at a sitting.
Look, seriously – we haven’t really talked that much since I left the state. I didn’t expect to get a gift from you, honestly, and I wouldn’t have been angry if you’d gotten me nothing. But it’s downright insulting to get something not only cheap but utterly thoughtless! It’s like tipping the waiter a quarter; obviously you felt obliged to buy me a gift, but you didn’t feel obliged to actually care about what it was or spend anything other than the absolute minimum of time, consideration, or energy.
I know you didn’t have that much time or money to buy things, and I respect that. But all of the other people in our group of mutual friends got custom drawings from you, for god’s sake! I know these are basically free and don’t take you any time; why the hell did you give me a dumb, worthless gift instead of taking five minutes away from your busy whatever-the-hell-you-do-all-day to write me a “hey, I’m giving people art, anything you’d like?” e-mail?
I shouldn’t be surprised, really. When somebody has to take the brunt of your malicious obliviousness to other people and their emotions, it’s me. I mean, for fuck’s sake, you didn’t even return my calls until I told you point-blank that I had urgent news! And then, after giving me the courtesy of delivering said urgent news, you launched right into your same banal conversation about how hard it is to be you! (I imagine I should count myself lucky that you didn’t bother with your “oh, but I’m so wonderful and special and beloved by all, but you, Europa, will die alone” insinuations this time around.) I know for a fact that you don’t do this to the rest of them; why do you use me? And why the hell do I keep putting up with it?
Take your chocolate and shove it.
Sincerely,
Me