Happiness Is Not the Admission Price for Being Around Me

I've spent a year trying to write things that were PC, people-friendly, safe, and unlikely to offend anyone because I thought that might help me build an audience for Quiet Cup Press.

Now I'm sitting here going, Wait. Where the fuck am I in all of this?

Because I have opinions. I have feelings. I cuss. Some things piss me off. Some people piss me off. I have pet peeves. Apparently, I have a lot of them.

The Seeker's Lessons told my story, but even there, I was careful. Some of that was intentional. Some of it was necessary. And maybe some of it was simply habit.

But the book is written. The story is out there.

Now I want to write fully like me.

Which brings me to the shower.

Apparently, this is where my brain likes to hold staff meetings without notifying me first. Somewhere between washing my hair and realizing I had forgotten to bring a towel within reasonable reaching distance, I started thinking about pet peeves.

And, as it turns out, I have a lot of them.

Let's start with screaming children in restaurants. I know. They're children. Children cry. Children get tired. Children get overstimulated. Children occasionally lose their tiny little minds because their chicken nugget broke in half when they specifically wanted it whole. I raised one. I remember. But if my child started screaming in a restaurant, I picked him up and we went outside. We calmed down and went back in. If he couldn't calm down, I paid the bill and left, sometimes without eating. He learned pretty quickly that if he wanted to stay in the restaurant, color, play with his car, and enjoy whatever we were doing, screaming wasn't going to accomplish that. Because here's the thing: everyone else in that restaurant paid good money to be there, too. They didn't sign up to listen to my child scream through dinner.

Honestly, screaming children anywhere will do it for me. Restaurants. Grocery stores. Professional offices. Waiting rooms. Wherever. Not because I expect children to behave like tiny adults, but because at some point the adults responsible for them have to acknowledge that other human beings exist.

Then there are speakerphone conversations in public. What the actual fuck? I don't need to know about your cousin's herpes outbreak. I don't need to know about your father's aversion to whatever food you like. I don't need to hear both sides of the argument you're having with your sister while I'm standing behind you trying to decide which coffee creamer I want to try. There was a time when being forced to listen to someone else's telephone conversation required wiretapping. Now apparently all you need is a trip to the grocery store.

Then we have the people on their cellphones while driving. This one goes beyond irritating me. It scares the shit out of me. I stopped riding my motorcycle after nearly being run off the road by a woman who was paying more attention to her phone than the road. I loved riding, as brief as my stint was. I still own my motorcycle. But now, when I look at it, I don't feel the same excitement I used to feel. I feel terror. I think about how quickly someone else's decision could end my life. I'm not afraid of dying. I just don't want to die yet. I have too much left that I want to do. Your text message, Facebook notification, email, or whatever the hell you're looking at isn't worth my life. Your decision to take that risk doesn't affect only you. The rest of us didn't volunteer to participate.

While we're at it, can we talk about unsolicited advice? If I ask you what you think, please tell me. Seriously. If I come to you and say, "What would you do?" I want your opinion. Give it to me. Tell me I'm making a terrible decision. Tell me there's something I haven't considered. Tell me the truth. But if I didn't ask? I don't fucking want your advice. I am a grown-ass woman. I have lived many lives in this one lifetime. I have made brilliant decisions and spectacularly stupid ones. I have survived the consequences of both. I don't need someone swooping in to tell me what I "should" do simply because they have an opinion. Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one, and most of them stink.

While we're discussing things I didn't ask for, let's talk about unsolicited sales pitches. I recently had someone post a review of my book. Wonderful. I appreciate the hell out of someone taking the time to read something I wrote and tell other people what they thought about it. What I don't appreciate is the parade of people who apparently see a book review as the Bat-Signal for every person on the internet who wants to sell an author something.

"I do reviews."

"I charge this much."

"I post here."

"I have this many followers."

Cool.

I didn't ask.

There's nothing wrong with offering a service and charging money for it. I run a business. People sell things. That's how this works. What irritates the shit out of me is when the sales pitch is disguised as though someone has swooped in to do me an enormous favor, and when I decline that favor, suddenly I need to be convinced that I don't understand the incredible opportunity I'm turning down.

If you offer me a service and I say no, the appropriate response is not to explain why I don't understand the incredible opportunity you're graciously allowing me to pay for. A sales pitch is an offer. No ends the offer. No isn't the opening round of negotiations.

One particularly persistent person recently decided to demonstrate how much he could "help" me by suddenly increasing my social media following. Within an absurdly short amount of time, my follower count jumped by well over a hundred people. The problem was that I looked at those shiny new followers.

Bots.

Lots and lots of bots.

When I told him I knew the followers weren't legitimate, told him no, and told him to leave me alone because I don't respond well to being bullied, he continued insisting everything was real.

Then something miraculous happened.

The followers disappeared.

Apparently, more than a hundred completely legitimate human beings simultaneously decided they were no longer interested in me.

What are the odds?

Then there are the one-uppers. You know these people. You tell them you've been somewhere, they've been somewhere better. You tell them something happened to you, something bigger happened to them. You accomplished something, they've accomplished it twice. Who fucking cares? I wasn't challenging you to a duel. I was telling you a story.

Closely related are the people who feel compelled to recite their résumé every time you interact with them. You ask whether the copier has paper and somehow end up learning that they were Regional Director of Very Important Shit for fourteen years, supervised 372 people, have three certifications you've never heard of, and once had lunch with someone who knows a senator. Cool. Does the copier have paper?

Then there are the people who justify absolutely everything. You aren't even questioning them. "I bought a new coffee maker." "Well, I don't need a new coffee maker because mine still works perfectly, and I bought it in 2017, and I researched them for six months before I bought it, and..." Okay. I wasn't trying to overthrow your coffee maker. I swear.

But there is one pet peeve I left off that list. Probably because this one isn't particularly funny to me.

I've spent most of my life being told I'm "too emotional." There seems to be an acceptable emotional setting for women, and that setting is pleasant.

Happy is fine. Anything else apparently requires an explanation.

If I'm quiet, "What's wrong with you?"

If I'm sad, "What's wrong with you?"

If I'm angry, "What's wrong with you?"

If I'm passionate about something, I'm emotional. If I respond strongly to something, I'm overreacting. If I express an opinion someone doesn't like, there always seems to be a convenient label available to explain away what I'm saying instead of actually listening to it.

I'm an angry woman. An angry white woman. An emotional menopausal woman. An angry liberal woman. Too sensitive. Too passionate. Too opinionated.

Too much.

Pick whichever label allows you to dismiss the emotion without having to consider whether I might have a legitimate reason for feeling it.

Maybe that's what bothers me most about being asked, "What's wrong with you?" Sometimes, nothing is wrong with me. Sometimes I'm fucking angry. Anger is an emotion, not a diagnosis.

Sometimes I'm sad. Sometimes I'm disappointed. Sometimes I'm frustrated. Sometimes I'm irritated. Sometimes I'm passionate about something. Sometimes I'm simply having a shitty day.

None of those things means something is wrong with me. None of this means I get permission to treat other people like shit.

That's the distinction.

I am responsible for what I do with my emotions. I am responsible for how I treat people. I am responsible for my words, my actions, and the consequences of both.

I owe people basic respect and accountability. Those are standards I expect from myself, too. But I do not owe anyone perpetual pleasantness. Those are not the same thing.

Just as consideration is not compliance, emotional regulation is not emotional suppression.

I don't have to stop feeling something because my emotion makes someone else uncomfortable. I don't have to smile so you feel better. I don't have to soften every opinion until it's sufficiently palatable. I don't have to pretend something doesn't piss me off because anger makes you uncomfortable.

My emotions belong to me, too.

Maybe that's another form of autonomy I didn't immediately recognize when I started making this ridiculous list.

Physical autonomy. Emotional autonomy. Intellectual autonomy. The freedom to make my own choices. The freedom to have boundaries. The freedom to say no. The freedom to disagree. The freedom to feel something without immediately being required to justify why I'm feeling it.

You don't have to like my emotions. You don't have to understand them. You don't have to share them. But you don't get to decide I'm not allowed to have them simply because they're inconvenient for you.

Happiness is not the admission price for being around me.

Most of my life, I think I've been struggling to choose between Rowena, Patroness of Putting Up With Everyone's Bullshit and Fuck You, Fuck You, Fuck You, You're Cool, Fuck You.

As if those are the only two choices. They're not.

You can be considerate and boundaried.

Compassionate and angry.

Respectful and unwilling to tolerate disrespect.

Kind without being compliant.

You can tell someone to fuck off when the situation calls for it without becoming a person who believes other human beings don't matter. Once I realized that, the rest of the list started making a hell of a lot more sense. There's a common thread running through almost every single one of them.

Consideration.
Boundaries.

Accountability.

Autonomy.

The screaming child isn't really the issue. The issue is the adult who decides everyone around them should absorb the disruption indefinitely. The speakerphone isn't the issue. It's the assumption that everyone sharing a public space should become an unwilling participant in a private conversation. The cellphone in the driver's hand isn't the issue. It's someone deciding that whatever is happening on that screen is important enough to risk the safety of everyone around them. The unsolicited advice isn't really about advice. It's the assumption that someone else knows what is best for my life simply because they have an opinion about it. The unsolicited sales pitch isn't really about someone trying to make money. It's the assumption that my no is merely an obstacle to overcome. The one-upper turns your experience into their opportunity. The résumé reciter turns a conversation into an audience. Being told I'm "too emotional" isn't really about emotion. It's the assumption that someone else's discomfort with what I'm feeling means I should stop feeling it.

Different behaviors. Different consequences. Different levels of seriousness. But underneath them is the same uncomfortable little idea: What I want matters more than your experience.

Apparently that is my actual pet peeve. Entitlement.

The belief that because you want something, believe something, prefer something, or have an opinion about something, everyone around you should accommodate it.

There is something important buried underneath all of this. Consideration is not the same thing as compliance.

I am not saying everyone needs to behave the same way, believe the same things, make the same choices, or live the same life. I am saying that we live among other human beings, and there is a basic social contract involved. You get to live your life. I get to live mine. Neither of us gets to steamroll the other because we're oblivious, self-important, or convinced we're the main character.

You don't have to understand someone else's choices to respect their right to make them. You don't even have to agree with them. You can think my choices are ridiculous. You can disagree with my beliefs. You can think I should have handled something differently. You can dislike what I write. You can think you would have made a completely different decision if you were standing in my shoes. That's fine.

But you're not standing in my shoes.

That distinction matters more to me than I realized when I started mentally bitching about strangers on speakerphone.

Because autonomy has not always been something I was allowed to have.

There have been times in my life when other people decided what was best for me. Times when my choices were taken away. Times when someone else's wants mattered more than my safety, my boundaries, my voice, or my right to decide what happened to my own life.

There have also been people who hurt me and refused to take accountability for what they did. People who justified. Minimized. Explained. Deflected. Blamed.

Eventually, I had to figure out what belonged to me and what didn't.

My choices belonged to me.

My boundaries belonged to me.

My mistakes belonged to me.

My emotions belonged to me.

My healing belonged to me.

Perhaps most importantly, my story belonged to me.

That realization became part of the reason I wrote The Seeker's Lessons. I needed to tell my own story in my own words. Not the version someone else remembered. Not the version someone else could tolerate. Not the version that made other people comfortable.

Mine.

Writing it forced me to look at the places where my autonomy had been taken from me, but it also forced me to look at the places where I had reclaimed it.

Sometimes reclaiming your life happens in enormous, terrifying moments.

Sometimes it happens quietly.

Sometimes it sounds like: No.

Sometimes it sounds like: I didn't ask.

Sometimes it sounds like: That's your opinion.

Sometimes it sounds like: This is my decision.

Sometimes it sounds like: I'm angry, and nothing is wrong with me.

Sometimes, apparently, it sounds like: For the love of God, take your fucking phone off speaker.

Maybe I don't dislike people after all. Maybe I just spent enough of my life having other people cross my boundaries that I have very little patience left for people who behave as though everyone else's boundaries are optional.

You can live differently than I do. You can believe differently than I do. You can disagree with me. You can make choices I would never make for myself.

That's autonomy.

But when your choices begin requiring everyone else to surrender theirs?

Stay in your fucking lane.

© 2025 Quiet Cup Press, LLC. All rights reserved. | Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy
Physical books sold through Amazon and IngramSpark include any applicable sales tax at checkout. Digital downloads and PDF products purchased directly from Quiet Cup Press are not subject to sales tax.