Do you ever wonder if you are the person who sucks the life out of other people's souls? I mean, we all recognize those "friends," who suck the life out of our own souls: people who want to manage us, or own us, or talk about their endless, boring accomplishments without taking a breath; people who are so righteous you want to vomit into their lunch(es), people who whine continuously without a hint of self-mockery.
My social life consists mainly of having lunch with friends and/or acquaintances, but some of them I don't want to see more than once every three years, because of the soul sucking thing.
I have been all of these people at various times. Sometimes, I am telling a story and think why am I telling this story? Often the answer is to show and tell what an extraordinary person I am. Totally soul sucking. Exhausting.
So what am I trying to say that I'm not saying?
Forgive me friends, for those times when I am the one doing the sucking.
No comment on this post (because I adore your writing and can't imagine that you do anything more than make people smile.)
ReplyDeleteI finished The Orphan Master's Son this morning. And my reaction was something like yours - I needed a way to cleanse my mind of North Korea. Granted, this is a novel, and I think (hope) the author took some liberties with fiction vs fact. But, maybe he played it lightly.
A few hours after reading this book,we headed to church, and it was difficult to read Ecclesiastes and not hearken back to what I ad read just three hours earlier.
Lesson learned...on Sundays, read the Good Book. Not novels about seemingly soul-less civilizations.
But thanks so much for the book review which made me READ. I needed this.
I loved this post, my husband is currently in school and we had some of his friends from the nursing program over and one person was doing this. The thing was as she continued on in telling us all these things she thought made her important I could feel myself being drawing in to compete. It made me so frustrated but hopefully I have learned my lesson and the next time I see her can rise above it!
ReplyDeleteSo I think I'm being funny commenting on this post, which means it probably isn't funny at all, but completely soul sucking. But I don't care. I can't find your email address but wanted tell you I just signed a two-book deal with Shadow Mountain. It's my dream come true, one that started in a small class at WIFYR a couple years back with a crazy old lady who told me she believed in my writing even though it was total crap. Thank you, Louise, for giving me the motivation I needed to learn and grow and write write write. :)
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