The Sour Grapes Line

Has this ever happened to you:

You spot, quite by accident, an ad, or the front page of a newspaper, maybe even a poster somewhere with someone you know (or once knew) in it. They have just won some sort of award or have a principal role in a low-budget film or appear in an ad. You see it somewhere or someone you know mentions it to you and it just comes out of nowhere.

There are all sorts of reactions a person could have to this sort of thing, ranging from pleasure or even pride ("I knew him!") to slight bemusement to indifference, but then you cross a certain line into negativity. I call it the "Sour Grapes Line". This is a bitter line. And sour, I guess.

This is when you suddenly feel bad. Maybe you see this person's success as somehow underscoring your own failure (or perceived failure), maybe it's just a person you didn't like and you wanted to be the one THEY spotted in the entertainment section of the newspaper. Maybe they were mean to you a long time ago and mean people don't deserve success, right? Right? Right? Right? (you tend to ask a lot of people this question. You also tend to get left alone at parties a lot)

I don't handle this sort of thing well. In fact, I handle it badly. It's like suddenly swallowing a ball of lead. My stomach just drops and everything in the world seems like it's 5 feet further away from me. I brood and brood and bad memories just come flooding back, and I try to distract myself but as soon as I stop I remember what it was that put me in such a bad mood in the first place.

This is one of the many things I hate about myself, just so you know. Of course, I'm not proud of all this. I should wish for success for others and lord help me I TRY to be positive (this has been my struggle over the past year), but old habits die hard. I am very unskilled at letting shit go. It hold me back enormously in so many ways I can't even begin to describe.

Someday, maybe once I've known you for five or six years and we both happen to be very very drunk, I'll tell you about it.