My sweet jellybean,

No that doesn’t make you a bad person, honey. It makes you a real person. People like that drive me nuts. It’s not like you wish her ill. But come on. How much can a regular person take of that?

Perfect boyfriend. Perfect job. Perfect family. Perfect frickin’ teeth. Honestly. And I can’t believe she continues to chirrup about having breakthroughs with her psychiatrist. What serious emotional issues have you got to break through? And that bit about past-life trauma. Honestly. You’ve got to be kidding. But, really, it all makes perfect sense. She actually has to look for problems and trauma in her past lives because this one has gone so swimmingly.

Truly, people like this drive me nuts. Yes, envy is a deadly sin but I’m convinced it was added as an afterthought. There’s at least no question envy is the least serious of the deadly sins. And how can any regular person take somebody like that? And I’ve met way too many to believe. People invulnerable to colds and misery and loneliness and bouts of self-loathing are just unnatural. And have you noticed how these sunshine people flock together? Whatever the opposite of misery is clearly needs company.

People need flaws. People need struggle. We love Shakespeare heroes because they are flawed and because they suffer. I cannot suffer someone who doesn’t know how to suffer.

Perfection is intolerable. Perfection gleams like polished platinum and is about as interesting. I’ll take oxidized copper any day.

A cold, a vice, a cloudy day, would go a long way toward making her a lot more tolerable. Some current life trauma, for god’s sake. So don’t feel bad. I am altogether relieved you think so too. Only the blithely happy can enjoy the blithely happy.

SS