Angry

I have a really bad temper. It's been mostly curbed from high school onward, except around my family - they seem to bring it out in me - but lately, I've been grumpy as hell.

A couple of factors might contribute to this. I'm not sure which it really is. I work a customer service job, which I never had to do in California, and have stayed for about a year and a half now. I'm a few years older and less patient with suffering fools, be they customers, co-workers, or castmates, than I have been in the past. I quit meat, booze, and dairy a couple of weeks ago, and consider my recent bouts of exhaustion (all within the last couple of days) possible results of dietary changes, deficiencies, and what have you. And, of course, I wonder if it's due to the fact that I currently live in New York.

New York has that stigma for being dangerous and constantly angry as a city, its residents unfriendly, rude, violent, or any combination of the two. It's kind of like the stereotype for French people (minus the violent and substitute "snobby" for "furious"), which of course only applies to whom it applies. There are nice people in New York...I just don't consider myself one of them.

Christine said when she visited this past spring (the second time she's come to visit) that I've become embittered in the last year, that I used to be cute and happy-go-lucky and that now I'm gruff. I can't say as I disagree with her, but knowing that I was pretty much a beast as a child, I wonder whether I've soured in the last year or whether she only knew me in my dormant period and that she's only now getting to know the basic, basest me.

Then I think back to the way I went through my daily life when I first lived here. I remember three distinct episodes with strangers (some of which I probably blogged about right here when they happened) that I found charming, interactions that would probably never occur the way I live now.

One was before I moved here, when I was just out for a week long visit to see if I should give New York a shot before settling in for the big suck of LA. I remember walking from Times Square to Bryant Park and passing a construction site, where some random fellow asked if I'd been on the C train uptown at a certain time the night before. I had, in fact, as I'd seen the show Curtains and had been on my way home. He said, and none of this in a creepy way, just friendly - that he thought we might have been sitting across from one another on that train ride. And that was all. We wished each other well and went about our days.

The second thing I remember was walking home after my first audition at the Flea Theater. I thought I'd kind rocked it, I felt good, the weather was nice, and I was wearing the purple booby dress Addie gave my for my birthday two years previous, over my one pair of jeans, and, y'know. I'd just been to an audition, so I'd put some effort into my appearance and walked home from the subway station feeling like I had had a good audition and that I was lookin' cute. A woman was walking with her two rambunctious kids, and as I passed by her, she called out, "dat's pretty, what you got on." I thanked her and continued on my way, continuing to feel groovy.

The third thing I remember is a fellow on the subway one night, who may or may not have been trying to hit on me. I kind of suspect he was, but either way I wasn't all that interested, though it was flattering. Basically I was reading Chekhov short stories (borrowed from Josh's shelf) and looked up at one point to see him glancing at me, and I smiled. This sparked a conversation ("what did you say?" "oh, I didn't say anything, I was just smiling..." etc.) during which he pretty much insisted that I was so friendly and nice that I was sure to do well in the city, if the energy one puts out reaps any sort of reciprocation from the universe. Something to that effect.

These days I can't see any of these things happening. I think part of it is that I never walk anywhere at a pace that could be called a stroll, because here it's pretty much an invitation for any number of assholes to bother you, be they beggars, Jesus peddlers, flyering workers, or just one of the multitudes of tools who feel entitled to catcall, harass you, invade your personal space, mutter shit that doesn't even make sense, make disgusting/insulting noises, or all of the above. I may never smile at a stranger again. I barely ever smile at people I know. In the last three days, I have snapped at or frozen out one distinct co-worker at least once during my shift for the last three nights. The first one I can't really remember why, except that we were at registers next to each other and he was choosing an unamusing time to be teasingly belligerent; the second one is always annoying as hell and I usually just ignore him but occasionally snap; and tonight, it was one lazy co-worker who I usually get along with fine, but he was being exceptionally unhelpful and I chose to bypass interaction with him instead.

People can tell I'm in a bad mood, but I've been fine and even friendly with other people; I could call these mood swings, but I think it's just having a shorter fuse lately. Am I just having a stressful couple of days? Could it be my old habits coming to the surface the longer I keep the same job, doing the same thing with the same people? Could it really just be because I haven't eaten any eggs in the last couple of days? Or am I really just a giant bitch?