Stamp of Disapproval

If you look them up in a psychology text book, the symptoms are exactly the same for spending time with your family and being criminally insane. Every day I'm home I find myself swinging from tears of anguish to manic laughter in seconds for no discernible reason, other than the fact my family are hard work. 

I've been home for two days so far hoping to spend some quality time with them over the Christmas season. Two days that's forty-eight hours, people spend longer together cramped in cars when travelling across America and still manage to maintain composure and not smother each other, the same cannot be said for us. 

Their body language shows a strong likelihood that strangulation is due to take place.  
Within the last three hours alone, three of us have headed for the knife drawer and the urge to lob a bottle of Brandy over the back of someone's head has hit an all time high. My father is walking places out of fear one of us has cut the breaks on his van and my sister's temper tantrums are sometimes over in moments and other times last long enough for my parents to almost finish the paperwork to give her up for adoption.

One argument today between my mother and I was particularly pointless. The following documents how it all initiated.

Mother: "Patrick, how much would you reckon a book of stamps cost?"
Me: "I don't know? Stamps are like 55c so for a book of ten €5.50?"
Mother: "Stamps are actually 68c each." She was telling me this with a lot of attitude.
Me: "Okay".
Mother: "I've had to send thirty cards this year so I'm spending a fortune on stamps."
Me: "So? Don't bother sending them if you're going to complain about it."
Mother: "And I suppose you never complain about anything."
Me: "That's not the point I was making."
Mother: "Last year most of your father's family left their cards down at your grandmother's and we had to collect ours, they didn't bother with stamps."
Me: "I doubt they put that much thought into it."
Mother: "I might do that with their cards this year, save myself the cost."
Me: "Sound." I thought it was a stupid theory, but I was sick of talking to her.
Mother: "And you know it's ludicrous forking out money to send a few greeting cards to the neighbours. I can give them theirs when I see them."
Me: "You cannot be serious."
Mother: "Yes, we are in a recession after all people will understand." As if I wasn't aware the entire country was in recession.
Me: "Sure you could just drive around to each house yourself, diesel is dead cheap nowadays."
Mother: "No need for the cheek."
Me: "You're just sad if you are actually thinking seriously about this."
Mother: "Excuse me." World War III.

Funny how when you are away from people for so long you forget how they can be. I'm back to work on the 27th, thankfully I love them each enough to find a way to control this kind of erratic behaviour until then. 

We're all just holding out for the turkey, it's like The Hunger Games. 

Transphobia at First-Hand

I have never really spoken about transgender rights and issues before but something happened the other day that really got me thinking about the whole subject and society's view on it.

I was out for lunch with a friend last Monday, it was around midday and as you can imagine the lunch rush hour was prominent and the place we were in was packed. Half way through our meal a male-to-female transgender woman walked into the restaurant with her friend. She looked to be in the early stages of her transitioning so (in the least offensive way possible) you could tell she wasn't a biological woman.

There was a family seated next to us, a middle-aged mother and father out with their teenage son who was seated opposite to them, at first they all seemed to be enjoying each other's company and their lunch. Instantly they completely dropped whatever they were discussing as her entrance had grasped their attention. All over the restaurant you could hear them talking about her, talking about how weird she was, making constant distasteful jokes, questioning why "he" couldn't just be wearing normal men's clothes, disputing which bathroom "it" would use and how uncomfortable they were with the entire situation. I was disgusted, the three of them are adults at the end of the day, two of them parents. Had they no sense? Where was their respect for this person? I don't know if this was transphobia or just incredible ignorance.


It made me very sad to see that this was literally the most exciting thing that has ever happened to these people just because there was a transgender woman in the same building as them.

I felt so sorry for this poor girl. I have so much respect for anyone who can go out of the norm and stand out like that just to be themselves. It really, really annoys me when people talk about and judge something they know absolutely nothing about, they don't understand trans people, they don't understand what it feels like to be in the wrong body, they don't understand why someone would want to transition into the other gender. Yet they still feel the need to push their stupidly naive opinion onto others. 

It's the twenty-first century for God's sake, nothing any more is completely black and white, educate yourself transgender people are a solid part of our society, if someone isn't happy in their own gender surely they themselves can control their own destiny, they're the only ones equipped to choose what they want to do with their body and life. I consider myself a man , I was born physically male and and identify as one and thankfully it's never been a concern, but there is people out there who feel they were assigned the wrong gender at birth. These poor people who are trapped in the wrong bodies and want to be the other sex, not only do they have to battle with themselves wondering if they are gay or if they truly want to be the other gender or not, but they also face so many difficult legal battles, undergo the most excruciating surgeries (if that's an option they decide to go for), face all these emotional roller-coasters that we couldn't even dare imagine.  Some of them end up losing the support of their family and closest friends just to reach a stage where they feel like the person on the inside. Then after all this they still have to deal with society and all these bastards who judge them so ignorantly.

I just cannot grasp the concept that people still don't get that gender expression and gender identity are two complete different things, your body, your genitalia doesn't define who you are. It's what's on the inside that counts. There's a whole spectrum out there, people need to understand this. For example, some people are androgynous and just want to be whatever gender they associate with themselves that day, or often don't even don't want to be linked with a gender at all, they are just a human being.

All these people sacrifice so much just to be the person they want to be. Last Monday was there any point in these people being mean or disrespectful? Was she hurting anyone? What was so different about her eating her lunch than any of the rest of us? Just because she might not have been as passable as others doesn't seem like a valid reason to me. 


Fur Real?

I have bad news: The world sucks, and it’s your fault. I don’t know why you’re surprised. You saw the Facebook post. All you had to do was click 'like' to fight breast cancer. Or maybe it was to heighten awareness of diabetes or to show opposition to domestic violence. Whatever it was, you didn't do it, and that makes you a monster. Somewhere, a semi-illiterate drunk is saying to himself, “I wasn't going to beat my wife, but nobody shared that picture of a coloured ribbon, so now I have to”.

The reason I'm attempting to make you feel bad is because I feel bad myself. The other day I did something awful, something a lot worse than not sharing an explicit image on social media, I destroyed a mother-son relationship.

Cue the Titanic theme song.

I've been home the last few days for study week, obviously everything except study has manifested. On Tuesday my mother and I were in the living room. We were chatting about her work field, she's a home carer. She has this one patient with a cat called Kitty, I told my brother months ago that the woman was called Kitty and never mentioned the cat. This private joke is exclusively on him, no one else knows about it. Mid-conversation he walks in, I started to manipulate things to my own advantage.

Me: "How was Kitty today?"
Mother: "Yeah grand, she seemed slightly quieter than normal."
Me: "She's used to you coming in now?" 
Mother: "She is, sure when I first come in she likes me to rub her."
Brother: "Rub her?" There was a shred of discomfort in his tone of voice.
Mother: "Yeah it calms her down, let's her know I'm not a threat to her home."
Me: "Do you have to feed her?"
Mother: "No, obviously that's not in my job description. Funnily enough she seems to like the rain."
Brother: "Who the hell loves the rain?" He's beginning to realise this isn't your standard pensioner. 
Mother: "Kitty does, she is a weird one though never seen one like her before."
Brother: "How?" He seemed very apprehensive to what answer would follow. 
Mother: "Well usually they're not too friendly I don't have much time for them but this one in particular would almost go for you depending on her mood. She makes me anxious." Yes James, my mother the home-carer hates the elderly. 
Me: "They're supposed to be very clean though."
Mother: "Yeah you should see her lovely black fur coat, it's immaculate."
Brother: "Coat?" At this point most likely picturing this extravagant, swanky senior that sleeps with a pin-knife under her diamond coated ostrich pillow.
Mother: "Yeah beautiful soft thing."
Me: "You've never been asked to wash her?"
Mother: "No, no, she cleans herself out in the garden, very cute."
Brother: "What the fuck? Does she not be cold?"
Mother: "No, I leave her out there, she dries herself then and comes back in."
Brother: "The poor thing."
Mother: "Sure the other day I saw her rolling around in the grass, not my fault she can't keep herself tidy."
Brother: "She seems weird."
Mother: "At least she's stopped catching mice herself out in the shed, it used to disgust me seeing that first thing in the morning."
Brother: "Bullshit."
Mother: "No, I spotted her catching them with her bare hands." A retired martial artist?


I had to leave the room at this point, I couldn't hold in any more laughter. He now firmly believes my mother has lost all her core nurturing capabilities and that an eighty-nine year old woman could be featured on the next season of Shipwrecked. 

It's been five days since and he still looks at my mother differently, lately he's showering a lot more and isn't as boisterous around the house. He has asked me various times if I have noticed her new 'no nonsense' style of parenting. Of course, absolutely nothing has changed. He's even expressed a large interest in the back stories of my mother's other patients, hoping that there could be a chapter two somewhere and that more of them could be defying the odds.

I have a feeling this misleading and meddling may well come back to bite me later, if not Kitty will.

Don't be deceived, she's really hard as nails.
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