the habit of being

A woman at the next table is about to start crying about something. A man has his hand on her hand. I want to kick him. Men never know what to do when women are upset. A man doesn’t know the difference between a woman who is crying and a woman who is yelling. They take it all as an attack. They get nervous, and then they get mad. They try to cover it, but eventually they can’t. Eventually they’re yelling at you, calling you selfish. Eventually they’ve written you off as having a “martyrdom complex” because they just cannot handle how much you can hurt.

. . .

A defining Holiday moment: after decorating the Tree, my mother and I, both just a little drunk, start belting out Christmas carols at the top of our lungs, despite having about the most horrible singing voices ever, and not entirely knowing the words. We did not even come to a consensus about what we thought the words were. Sometimes we were not even singing the same song. But we were laughing so hard between stanzas, it didn’t matter.