‘AIBU?’ It Depends…
For some reason, opening ‘Am I Being Unreasonable?’ (AIBU) on Mumsnet feels like a “guilty pleasure”. Perhaps it’s because I have so many things I should be doing instead of reading 40 pages of back and forth between people I have no connection to in real life, especially because I never join the conversation by posting.
I read it for a couple of reasons: (1) I’m incredibly nosey, and (2) I like to hear other peoples’ perspectives on things and see how they differ from my own and each other. It’s simultaneously a great reminder that people can interpret situations very differently, and also that internet-based conversations are not always the place to go for nuanced discussions.
I think that’s why, in general, I never post a reply.
One of the things I’m known for is the phrase “it depends” — but never as evasion or a hedge. Because you can bet that I’m going to have at least a handful of things that I think ‘it depends on’, gathered from observing, noticing, seeing patterns, and generally studying social life like I’m going to be examined on it later. Mumsnet AIBU is generally not the place for “it depends”. Not because what gets posted is independent of contextual variables, but because lots of people seem to post without actually wanting to know if they are being unreasonable or not.
I’ve been avoiding writing. Sort of.
It’s the middle of the night and I’m returning from a dance event that is 170 miles away. I’ve been driving for hours. I’m desperate to get home, get into bed, and get some much needed sleep. Or I’ve popped to the supermarket to buy food for dinner. I’ve got hardly any time because I need to prep, cook, eat and be out of the house in less time than I actually have available to complete all those tasks. Or it’s just a regular trip in the car and returning home is the culmination of the journey because home is where both myself and my car live.
For some reason, regardless of the circumstance, the length of the drive, the time of day, what preceded the drive, what needs to come afterwards, any urgency (or not), when I pull up at home I know I should go inside the house but something happens in my brain that stops me from turning off the car, taking the keys out of the ignition, and then leaving the car. Step one and step two are relatively straightforward — I’m pretty good at turning off the car and preparing to leave it. Because the delay in getting out is not because I want to keep driving. It’s not even that I don’t want to go in the house. It’s more that I know what I need to do but my brain and body are resisting doing it. Writing this article has been the same.