The age of intolerance

My tolerance for other people’s bad behaviour has gone down. And actually I don’t even mean bad, just annoying is enough to turn me off and close down a messaging window. Perhaps it’s because my tolerance used to be so high. Give them an inch goes round and round my head. It’s the truest catch-phrase of all. 

It’s nice to be patient and kind, but the endlessness of it has changed for me. I’ve decided it's nicer to be honest. So I am in a spell of telling the truth and trying less hard. All the hours I spent mopping up spillages that weren’t mine, and all the times I got down on my knees to pull you out, feel like exhaustion now. A friend asked me if I wanted to go to the theatre with her as she had a spare ticket, and I decided for once to say no in the first instance. I don’t want to go, I hate plays, sorry. And the relief I feel now I hadn’t said yes to something in a moment of weakness and wanting to be nice, that I’d have to cancel on the week of - because look I am never going to the theatre. And I said no to the hen-do of someone I love because it’s actually not my thing and I told her so. It’s addictive, start telling the truth and you just can’t stop. Like Pringles. 

I was always setting myself up to let someone down. And letting someone down feels tired and heavy. The writing of excuses almost makes me want to go to the thing in the first place. But the truth, you can’t argue with the truth. You can hate it because the truth hurts like Lizzo says, but you can’t argue with it.

Some friendships I had that were built with bricks based on minimising myself or saying less, or being quiet, have blown away recently. And I’ve been having dreams that I rouse from that feel like forgiving and realising something else. I wasn’t bad and you weren’t bad, but we couldn’t be true. So off you go and off I go. 

I realise it’s possible not to like me. And I feel like I’ve got a better chance of having a good life if I’m honest from the start. So now all the friends who actually didn’t really like me can stay away. And I don’t have to give more pieces of myself away just because someone wants a bit. A long time ago a friend of mine said, be careful Annie, people are always going to want a piece of you. And I hardly took in what she was saying because I felt so endless and leaving a meal on a doorstep felt so easy. But it’s changed now and I don’t feel like being a resource anymore. 

Rather than this be another unpopular manifesto that alienates all my friends, I’d like you to consider that I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about me. My age of intolerance is a curious rebound from the reclaiming of myself that seems to be happening. In my writing classes I tell people that they don’t always need to explain themselves, that it’s not the job of the writer to tell their reader everything. Sometimes it’s the reader's job to keep up, accept the not knowing and crack on. And I feel like that in other ways too. 

When I was a child I wanted to be grown up. I desperately wanted to be out of childhood and into something else. Beth and Andrew would build dens and run around the woods and I wanted to be in the next chapter. And I wanted responsibilities. I’d clean the house on Fridays after school and I campaigned and eventually won a campaign to get a horse. Not in a rich way! Not even in a posh horsey family way! I always must stress before you put me down in a list with the other show jumping girls you know. But I got a horse in a muddy farm up the road, no idea what we were doing, make best friends with Rose, a woman in her mid-forties way. And I’d cycle up the hill before and after school to feed her and soak the hay and my hands would be cold all the way home. 

I always wanted to be thought of as mature and responsible and older than my time. Maybe it’s why my boyfriend when I was 21 was 10 years older than me. Why I was hosting dinner parties and making dips from beetroot and yoghurt instead of testing all the drugs and staying out too late. But that’s all by the by because it’s just who I was and what I did. My worst nightmare would be someone asking if I was hungover. Of course not! I’m far too grown up for such antics. 

I think about it now because I think about all the ways I wanted to take responsibility. And how somewhere along the way I started taking responsibility for other people. Teaching yoga allowed this too. I loved whispering in my actually naturally quite dulcet tone, for people to not have to try, to show up as they were, to let go because it was safe. I loved to hold the space. Collect tears and confessions and pieces of people afterwards. Everything is welcome, I won’t judge, I’ll just receive. So it happened like that. I became a great collector of other people’s shit without realising what I was carrying. 

And I notice it all the time. Feeling bad is so unbearable we’d rather give it to someone else. And I just think I’m a shit person sometimes and so are you and it’s about time we all said so. 

And perhaps the reason for my sudden awakening. Like a head literally popping out for the covers to say YOU KNOW WHAT, AND ANOTHER THING! Was because I assumed so much responsibility, people gave me theirs. And I got in trouble. I got in trouble for not giving more, for getting it wrong, for being too emotionally involved. And now, suddenly, I feel like I’m lying in the middle of a salty ocean with my palms facing up saying ok enough now. You can have your responsibility back. I’ve always taken care of my own and I’ve built a kind of resilience that deserves a medal. And I’m just going to tell the truth now and be less agreeable but more honest. And I’m not showing off, but since I put down all those bags, I’ve never felt better.