Mark and Jim and the three dollars 

 Whitney's emotions are off the rails

I don't think i've ever known someone who has such a hard time dealing with their own emotions.  I mean on a level that I'm stunned. Because I feel them snapping back and forth, abruply. And it can be quite a scary thing.

 Everything Negative and Only Negative

Yeah so this lady i worked with, very vivid in her complaints and conversations.  I'll call her BPE.  She loves to be upset, and outraged, but when you point out The Positive, she skirts right around it. She's getting let go from her job, yet she has secret freelance work and will be on a severence salary for 6 months. So really she'll be making much more than she was making - a salary, and the outside work. And, they offered her a fulltime job already, at the place that its giving her frelance work. But she doesn't want THAT, no no.  I'm in the same boat, having lost my job from the same institution. 

So I am attracted to the Complaints, like a moth to a flame. And, in fact, am more fascinated, because she is a fountain of woe, a fountain of complaint and upset.  This seems to be a pretty strong attraction on my part, throughout my life. Positive and upbeat? Not as interesting.  Complaint and negativity?—I'll be right there. I hate it, and yet I love it. As Andrea always says, if its not one things, its your mother.  I learnt well from my own parent, a Comfort Zone.

When I try to pin down the details about oh you have WORK now, suddenly!-she doesn't want to talk aobut THAT. She wants to talk about how everyone screwed her over, they have no heart, she lost her job, no on else in her dept got cut...  negative negative, victim victim.  Her boss actually did call her6on her very final working day (of the long slow 60-day wind-down), to wish her well and say an official goodbye. Dotty is the name of her direct boss.  But BPE would only focus on what a horrible person Dotty was, prior to this goodbye.  

Obviously this inability to see Some Positive points to an unhinged quality, emotionally deranged and feeding on the most outraged and upset part of her core.  Even while, she's doing fine and so on.  But since i myself am drawn to that, am I any better? Clearly I enjoyed and was faascinated by this disturbed outraged passionate person.  Its kind of interesting.  What do I get, from this? Something, obviously! I can't say its just her, thriving on the negative. I have to certainly be enjohing the ride!! 

And I'll feel cheated once she gets herself all set up, and starts to scold me- for not brushing myself off and walking off my own situation!  

See how things will turn? She'll be UP, and I'll end up DOWN.  I can already see the writing on the wall: that I listened and listened, with fascination, but in reality it was all a ruse. She was just venting nonstop as a nonstop victim. But in reality, she was fine. and will be fine.  And I'll be sinking slowly into my own depression.

Ah well.  So be it.