Vitriolic Vituperation

This is a Crab-Like Spiny Orb Weaver. This spider lives in my backyard. The exquisite arachnid not only does not bite me, but also eat gobs of other bugs that do like to bite my flesh and suck my blood. Thus, CrabLikeSpinyOrbWeaver is not only totally hot, but also one of my favorite Key West carnivores...and don't its markings make it look happy? Of course, what looks happy could just as easily be Nature mocking me for my lack of superhero silk-production glands in my backside. Like she already mocks me for my marrow-rich bones, incapable of easy flight. Damn you, Nature! I'll mutate yet!

Just you wait.

I get kinda confused sometimes about, about...y'know about a lot of things. Anyone who can see several different perspectives at once is bound to get a little turned around now and again. Lately, though, like over the last several years, magnified over the last several months, I've been getting tied up in the Justice of Balance.

How much Beautiful can outweigh or balance how much Awful?
And how awful is it if you're learning stuff from it? How beautiful if it's hurting you?
And isn't there always, always, always a vast expanse of Grey Plains that stretches endless between the black and white extremes we hold so dear?

How much do you take before you fight back, and then how should you fight back?

Yeah, maybe that last question's the real one, the one that keeps me up most nights. I spent so many years not asking too many questions about whether or not my self-righteous anger was justified. Or, y'know, fuck that, whether or not my high-volume vituperation was always totally justified. ...And, y'know, actually...goddamn it, I am tied up so tightly in this web, I'm choking on my own desire for wisdom in the form of pat answers. I am so twisted over another person's drama I can hardly sleep some nights. I have been making every effort I can, lo these past 7 months (aw, jeezus, has it really been that long?), to act honorably, to refrain from returning this person's vile and prolific gossip, refrain from behaving as spitefully and as egotistically as she. And lord knows...

Lord knows I'm about at the end of my goddamned rope. Yesterday, she tried (tried) to diss Otter in front of a kitchen full of our professional peers, then pulled Otter aside, ostensibly to apologize for her behaviour, but really to tell my Otter how awfully I had burned her, how I habitually burn people, and that she loves Otter and hopes he's not just the next victim on my list.

...Grrr...

Now, first of all, Otter is smart, is canny, is wise in a lot of ways, and, fortunately, can see through bullshit like it was virgin kitten breath. Like it was Wonder Woman's airplane. So he didn't buy into the manipulation she was layin down. I don't have to worry that she's gonna worm under his fur any time soon: her skull is just another mussel to be bashed against the stone Otter carries on his belly. Otter can see my heart through the miasma of my reasoning and knows that my Love is true, just as I know Otter's love is true.

I'm not worried, I'm just...

I'm just...

I'm just incredibly pissed off! I mean, this woman---well, her diabolical girlfriend should really be included in this, too, as an instigator on a power trip---these women seemed so down-to-earth when I met them 11 months ago. They seemed bereft of the overweening egos I find running so thickly among rock stars of kitchens and bars; they seemed like they valued food and communion above status. They seemed honest.

...They seemed like they might Get It.

And, oh lordy, was I ever wrong. I was so Wrong, I was out of sight of Right. I have never seen such aberrantly malicious posturing, such a campaign of abuse and slander directed by people who apparently have absolutely nothing better to do with their energies than manufacture a pouting resentment and vengeful vitriol against someone who did not turn out to be the succulent angel they assumed her/me to be. I've tried to figure out where it all started, and the closest I can come is the night I turned away the girlfriend's lascivious advances. She was very drunk, trying very hard to make out with me, said that they (the girlfriends) "had an arrangement" and that it was okay for me to kiss her, and I, I didn't want to kiss her or touch her or anything her; I couldn't bear the thought of her bitter, petulant mouth against mine. And the next day, the next many days, her manipulative crying began and continued. The gross gossip I overheard in the middle of the night when they thought I was asleep. The physically abusive things she did to Frida, my now-disappeared feline familiar. There were long months of violently whispered insults, the most hurtful followed by some gift or another (chicory coffee for my Sua Da, antique fabric so beautiful it hurt to look at it, a nice word or two dropped on my behalf to someone sure to repeat it to me), followed in turn by even nastier gossip, even more strenuous efforts to get anyone who might know me to see how hollow and callous I could be...though I have no idea why they really think those things.

There's a long string of indecencies, including these two colluding to ruin the food I make for work (oh, and you wanna see me go all Mama Bear, just fuck with my loved ones or my food!)---taking desserts out of the freezer and leaving them on the counter, repeatedly turning off the heat beneath my cooking custards, etc. There were several weeks where I had near-strangers approach me and tell me how sorry they were about what these two women were doing to me, weeks where people would ask me what was going on between me and the awful couple, when I was forced to reply honestly, "I have absolutely no idea," and listen to third parties relate lie after lie they had been told about me. And then when Otter and I got together? And when we were both so good for each other? So happy? Oh, lordy. Those women were aaangryyy! They've vociferously accused me of trying to take all their friends away from them, but the only thing I've done is try not to put same friends in the middle of whatever imaginary battleground these women have created for themselves. By refusing to return the women's slander, I have refused to force our mutual friends to choose between us and, thus, they have chosen for themselves (though I think that having to choose one-or-the-other is a buncha bullshit). As I said, I've been working my emotional ass off trying to follow my Mama's admonition to always treat people with respect, to respect them as the tortured individuals they and we all are, and, naturally extended from that, to never, ever gossip about someone, to never talk outside my own experience. And, y'know, the moral high ground thing does feel right, does feel like the appropriate action to have taken these last several months, and...

...and I'm fucking sick of it. Like, I just want to grab both of those women by the hair and drive their faces into brick and mortar until they are totally unrecognizable. I have dreams about putting them in unimaginable pain, about looking them in the eye and seeing that they know they got what they deserved. Short of physical violence, I at least want to return their vitriolic naysaying, a game at which I have no doubt I could emerge an unquestioned champion. I know the short-lived satisfaction of choosing violence over more difficult communication; I know that violent outbursts are common and generally endorsed in this society, that there are a lot of people who'd back me up if I chose that route. I mean, jeezus, I at least want to quit my fucking job, just so I don't have to see these women all the time, don't have to depend on the monster to order basic ingredients I need to do my job. ...Oh, yeah, one of 'em is almost my boss, is the 'chef de cuisine,' just under (resentfully so) the executive chef. The EC and I get along well enough; I like him and love him like family; but then he's not on a massive power-hungry ego-trip like she is. He's not out to induce an entire island, including my beau, to loathe me like these women are trying to do.

Man, I'd love to know what I did to trip these women's Psycho switches. That's a kind of thing so powerful, you don't wanna do it by accident.

So, back to the Balance I wrote of at the beginning of all this bitter drivel: this is where I'm at, trying to figure out what to do. The Awful Twins are obviously trying to goad me into quitting my job, or making a grand mistake (oh, 'cause you know she'd love even more to get to fire me), or just breaking down and crying. Or returning fire. Of course, the last option is appealing far and beyond any of the others, at the moment. But, I dunno. If I can find other work, I am fucking out of that kitchen; I don't care about the kitchen or its so-called reputation; I just care about the food, yo (aren't we all supposed to feel like that there?) But, if not, do I really want to stay in this opressive environment until we move to New Orleans in six months or so? Are the lessons I'm learning worth the frustration? Worth the daily temptation to maul and physically maim another human being? Or two? Is it worth the lost sleep? The pitiful turns my food takes in the face of so much negative energy? Is the revenge taken by not crumpling beneath their pressure enough? Is it worth it? Will it balance?