The Price of Pride

My girls don’t speak to me. I don’t understand why. Of course, that’s a large part of the problem.

Mary is the eldest by quite some distance, and she likes noise. She might have been born in a large family, with a need to shout loudest and be the first to do everything. She is the life and soul of the party, the entertainer.

Mary is a beautiful independent soul. She had an independent mind even as a youngster. At the age of four I took my eyes off her for a second, and she wandered away from a play area in the middle of a large holiday park. I searched high and low in a panic, until I found her standing alone in a room, without a care in the world, dancing to music that was playing over the public address system.

Mary is very driven. She left school and home at the first opportunity, found a great job, and bought her own house before turning twenty.

Mary says we drifted apart. She blames my poor communication and lack of understanding. We had a few arguments, usually about her drinking and how unhappy she seemed to be when sober. She asked me to leave her place a few times. I’m ashamed to say that I stopped trying after a while.

The youngest, Grace is a very different person. She is full of self-doubt and lacks self-motivation. She was always an expert at middling, never wanting to be top or bottom of the class, just doing enough … and always at the last minute. But Grace has a big heart; she is desperate to love and to be loved.

Grace blamed me when Mary left home and she has never forgiven me. ‘I’m going to see Maxine,’ Grace says to me when she’s upset. ‘She gets it.’

Of course, I know Grace means that I don’t get it, whatever it is. There are many things I don’t understand. I don’t understand why others get promoted ahead of me at work, when I’m quite clearly better at the job. I don’t understand negative people who struggle to find happiness and wallow in the past, seemingly unable to move on.

‘Where’s your empathy?’ they ask.

‘You have low EQ,’ they say at work.

What’s so good about empathy and EQ? I don’t really care what other people think or feel. You see I’m a positive, self-confident, forward-looking individual, who just gets on with things. I’m rather too good at moving on, and often too quick to do so… allegedly.