Rant ahead.

I've been working hard on inculcating a resting bitch/at least unapproachable face. With my stature and usually approachable expression, I carry a giant waving sixty foot high flag for every weirdo in the state to gravitate to, otherwise. I've even posted here about this before.

Because of an unrelated topic, I've been maintaining a very curt, icily polite demeanor at home as well, because my Pickmeisha of a flatmate was trampling all over my boundaries. I grew tired of her incessant negativity, griping, and open jealousy and competition, and emotionally cut her off. Communication is restricted to the basics, and that's it.

But that has kinda taken a toll on me, because I'm an ex-pickme myself, not to mention a recovering pushover and hopeless doormat till recently. After a few weeks of being cold to her (which honestly isn't even 25% of what she deserves, but I'm stuck here), something I saw about kindness last night unsettled my stance a little. And I was wondering today whether, in my search to be a harder, less vulnerable person, I'm compromising being kind, or losing my softness completely.

Yeah, no. Less than half an hour after thinking that maybe I need to nicer in general after all, I was interrupted outside the post office by an annoying old scrote. At least in his late seventies, barging in onto my bench and starting off with ''Young lady, where are you from?'' and proceeding to drone on for the next fifteen minutes easily, asking stupidly personal questions. At first I was polite because I thought that he was a neighbor, but nope. He did not shut up. And not only did he yammer on, he had the dangfuckingnabbed AUDACITY to first recommend that I go to a restaurant for 'a taste of home for me', then asking me to come with him to the restaurant. I stared him down and laughed very rudely at that, at which he mock-dramatically rolled his eyes and went, ''oh, you're laughing at me! I'm telling you, come! It'll be fun! In fact we could even take a trip to Spain!!''

I smiled but with that disgusted, oh look there's something stuck on my shoe expression, and just picked up my things to leave. At which he got up and insisted that I take his card. I just said goodbye and walked away quickly, kicking myself mentally for having allowed him to talk to me at all. Not nice enough be damned, the Universe sent me a sign in my first moment of self doubt that the only way to get some peace outside is to be fucking unapproachable and fierce all the time. Scrotes never stop overstepping their bounds at the slightest hint of someone relenting. Neither do pickmes. The only option is to be ruthless, ruthless, ruthless. And it really showed me how much I've been slipping, too.

What we learn growing up in the name of morality and politeness is nothing but being trained to ACCOMMODATE these buttwipes' advances and coddle their egos. They never learn, not when they're 17, not when they're 70. The only recourse is to a, not allow them the slightest foothold, and b, flick them out like a fly in the soup at the first sign that they're trash. Gah, I wish I would learn this faster, too.