Marco joins us on the blog today with his post “Consistently Guessing”
“CONSISTENTLY GUESSING”
Marco Orlando
My mind is an expansive battlefield. With so much coming at me all at once, I don’t always know what to believe or who to trust. It would be nice if I could take everyone at their word and take everything they say at face value, but I’ve had to learn the hard way that not everyone can be trusted and nothing is always as it appears to be. I don’t always enjoy dealing with other people sometimes because of it. It’s not so much the people I don’t like dealing with, it’s the guesswork that comes with dealing with other people. I don’t like to have to guess with people. It would be nice if people could be honest with me from the start before I end up wasting my time.
I can believe most people are good all I want, but it doesn’t necessarily make it true. My family and I have been double-crossed too many times to know that it’s not always true. Yet, I still want to believe in the good in humanity, even though I don’t always have much faith in humanity. The first thought that pops in my head when I’m dealing with another person is usually, “What do you want from me?” I wish I could learn to appreciate normal everyday interactions with other people for what they really are, instead of wondering in the back of my mind what they’re trying to get out of me. I’ve lost count now of how many times I’ve been disappointed by other people because they weren’t being honest with me. Much like every other Boston sports fan I know, I am a stickler for consistency. I absolutely need people and things in my life to be consistent if they’re going to be successful. If they’re not being consistent, they’re not going to last very long.
Historically, humor and sarcasm have been difficult for me to interpret both in real life and online. Although sometimes, I’ve managed to surprise myself when I do pick up on it. I’m not always able to tell when someone is joking around with me and when they’re being serious. And not everyone who has joked around with me in the past has been very nice to me.
Mean-spirited humor that “punches down” has never really been my thing. I don’t believe in reaching for low hanging fruit for a cheap laugh. It’s poor form when someone builds themselves up by tearing other people down when they make them the butt of their inside jokes for their own personal amusement. There’s no need to hit below the belt like that.
I’m especially leery of people who make fun of the downtrodden and marginalized among us who aren’t always able to defend themselves. I loathe anyone who preys on someone who’s not quite as quick on the uptake and feels comfortable picking on someone who may not have the mental capacity to pick up on the fact that they’re being picked on because they think they can get away with it. Someone like that is the lowest form of scum I will ever have the misfortune of coming across. Their actions will only get them so far until it inevitably becomes their undoing. Karma collects.
It infuriates me to no end seeing someone like me being picked on or being taken advantage of, because I know all too well what it felt like when the same thing was done to me. I wish I had someone I could count on to grab a bat and step up to the plate for me back then, so now I owe it to myself to look out for other people like me and do for them what I could not do for myself when the situation warrants it.
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Published September 11, 2019
