The Role Of The Mediator

One prominent and rather unpleasant aspect of being an average sort of person, I am beginning to discover, is that people think you are someone you can turn to in times of trouble. My bland exterior provides a canvas upon which people paint allegiances. People take one look and me and go, "Aha! Look at her dull and unremarkable face! Clearly this person has yet to take a side! I shall mould her to my own design, like some sort of deity! Mwahahahahaha!" Obviously this is an internal monologue, otherwise I would see these things coming and I would know to run as fast as I could in the opposite direction (which, admittedly, is not very fast. At all). Instead, I am forced to take on the role of the mediator, which, let me assure you, is one the most difficult and misunderstood roles of all time and never recieves the sort of recognition and admiration it deserves. Just look at those bastards with all their fancy BAFTAs, Emmys and Oscars. All they have to do is prance around in a more-often-than-not ridiculous outfit and say some poncey shit. They don't know how easy they've got it. They should try keeping a carefully passive expression when they're sat listening to various members of their family making slanderous accusations about each other. The ability to do this is the mark of the true actor. Honestly, I should have a display cabinet crammed with all sorts of awards by now. My talent is being wasted.

Oh, who am I kidding? The reason people rant to me, is because I am spineless. Really, it's a wonder I manage to even maintain an upright stance on a day to day basis. Not only am I spineless, but I am a bitch, and a two-faced one at that. I can listen to somebody have a rant about a person who they find profoundly irritating, and I can nod along, agree with their many and mostly repetitve points, even interject with an amusing anecdote or juicy morsel of gossip about that person from time to time. I can then have a conversation with said irritating person, who I may find quite annoying myself, and listen to them wax lyrical about their hatred for the initial ranter. I have developed an uncanny ability to pretend to like people and cover up my bitchy tracks with more bitching. I am the epitome of bitch. My soul is tarnished. I will burn in hell.

Hell is other people. Or, you know, just flames and shit.

Okay, maybe that's bordering on melodramatic, in fact it may even be fully-fledged melodrama. The central idea of this blog is that I am average. Bitching is a very normal thing to do. I am no different from everybody else. My soul could maybe do with a bit of a spit-n-polish job, but other than that, I can probably stroll through those pearly gates with only the merest hint of a raised eyebrow from St Pete.

Anyway. Back on topic. I started off as a negotiator. This began when I was quite small and parental arguments were something that were infrequent and highly undesirable when they arose. The following conversation is an example of my work:

Me: Mummy, why are you crying?
Mum: Because I'm sad.
Me: Why are you sad?
Mum: Because Daddy said some mean things, but don't worry about it, sweetheart.
*CUE LEVELS OF WORRY THAT ARE UNHEALTHY IN A CHILD SO SMALL*

[Ten minutes later]
Me: *poking head round doorframe* Daddy, Mummy's sad.
Dad: *washing up in fury. He is so angry that the water is bubbling, or that could be my childish imagination working overtime* Yup.
Me: Maybe you should go and say sorry?
Dad:...Nope.

Eventually, I discovered that negotiations don't work. I have learnt to simply listen and be sympathetic, or at least pretend to be. Sometimes pretence is easy, and other times it is more difficult that trying to maintain a plentiful supply of oxygen whilst breathing through a straw that has been thrust up one nostril. I have found that on the phone it is easier. On Friday, my father rang me. I had to endure a twenty-five minute rant, starting off with his ex-girlfriend, continuing seamlessly on to his current girlfriend (might not be so current anymore) and rounding off nicely with a vicious attack upon my mother. In this time, I managed to dress myself with one hand. Even the bra. Now that, my friends, is talent. One of the distinct advantages of being on the phone is that your face is hidden. In fact, you don't even have to listen. Sympathy can be feigned with a series of non-committal grunts and a series of 'mmm's and 'ahh's - variety of pitch makes this act all the more convincing. In the mean time, you are free to roll your eyes like marbles and make a variety of obscene gestures without the person at the end of the line ever knowing. It's marvellous. Modern technology never ceases to amaze.

As if the moaning endured on Friday wasn't enough, I am having to endure yet more today. This seems unnecessary, given that I got home at five this morning after going out clubbing in New Cross. We went to Venue. The exterior pretty much sums the place up:

Venue - it's shit, but it's good shit.

The interior doesn't get much better. Take a look at the photo album on the site and you'll see what I mean: http://www.thevenuelondon.com/Main/main1.htm (bit of promotion right there - don't thank me). However, this is one of the the best things about the loveable little den of vice and iniquity that is Venue - no matter how shit you look, there will be someone who looks worse.

So anyway, Sarah (my fellow borderline alcoholic) and I take the night bus home at around 4.30am, eventually rolling home at about 5. We enter the house stealthily, like ninjas, only without the outfits. We even manage to make sandwiches without waking anybody. We eventually go to bed at around half past five. We are up again by half nine. We make breakfast. Sarah goes home at about ten forty-five. I retire to my room. My mother enters at half eleven-ish to inform me that she is taking my sister to a horse show. I nod blithely without tearing my eyes from the computer screen. She leaves.

And then the screaming starts.

Such fury I have not heard since a few days ago, when I encountered the terrifying "lady" screeching in what was presumably righteous indignation at a traffic warden (admittedly they are soulless and a waste of perfectly good oxygen, but still, the levels of abuse were unnecessary) out of the window of a BMW. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would genuinely hear someone scream, "FUCK OFF YOU SLAAAAAAAAAG".

A BMW - it's shiny, but it doesn't buy you class.

So my mother hustled my sister out of the house, slamming the door with one final venomous hiss of, "Piss off." For a while I comtemplated whether the mother I know and love had been replaced by a particularly vicious snake:

Take one mother, add anger, simmer gently. The result may swallow you whole.

I sat debating this for a while, before deciding that I didn't particularly care. Arguments have become commonplace around here in the past few months and rather than analyse every deeply hurtful insult hurled like a grenade across the battlefield that is my home, it is often easier to duck down into the trenches and play dead. This is what I did, but then who should knock on my door and stroll into my room but my mother's boyfriend, with whom she had had the argument that had initiated her reptilian metamorphosis. He spent a few awkward moments attempting to justify himself, with varying degrees of success. Once again, I was relegated to the role of sympathetic ear. My sympathy is wearing thin. I now feel like I want to do something like this to my darling family:

I KEEL YOU.

You see that look in my eyes? That is lunacy. Sheer lunacy induced by listening to far too many people's problems. Such is the curse of the average.