Tonight, my friend, who works at an “innovation firm” (I’m pretty sure that’s just a BS-y way of saying consulting firm), reached out to ask if I might know anyone who is a recent empty nester, and if he/she’d be willing to participate in a one-hour interview for a study he has just been assigned to work on. I thought about everyone older I know who might fit this category, and I remembered that Chris’s dad’s cousin has children who have just left home who might actually fit the bill. I reached out to Chris’s dad to ask, and they immediately responded and said they’d participate (and they’d be rewarded $100 for their one-hour contribution to this study, so if I were them, I’d take my friend up on the offer, too!). My friend asked what they were like, and I told him they actually came to our wedding and were some of the kindest people in the world. But then as I was typing this out over text, I realized I say that about almost everyone in Chris’s family. The only people I really don’t say this about… are my own family. My own family, extended and immediate, are not the kindest people in the world, and if they are acting like they are, it is exactly what I said it is — an act, unless it’s my sweet aunt. Everyone else is doing it for a show or because they are expecting something.

I just think it is so exhausting to expect something all the time and put on a show when I don’t really mean it. It’s no wonder that nowadays, I am very rarely called the “nicest person ever” the way I once was in middle school, or the way certain women at my office are called. It’s just too tiring. It’s too tiring to not be myself and to be nice all the damn time.

But then if I got really cynical about this, are Chris’s dad’s cousins genuinely the kindest people in the world, or are they just… acting like that? I have a feeling it’s not the latter.