The happy stories

Recently my roommate posted on my facebook status "Guess what everyone? Josh hates EVERYTHING", in response to a status about how the federal government stopped funding ACORN at the first whiff of controversy, while Blackwater (now Xe) is still being funded after numerous incidents. She was kidding, sort of. There is truth in comedy and this joke had a lot of truth in it. I post a lot of shit on my facebook wall about the terrible state of things. Healthcare, gay rights, torture... I've got statistics and stories on why each of these things is worse now than it was ten years ago, and how its not all due to W.

But heres the thing:

No one wants to hear the good stories. We dont like the bad so much either, but we'll listen a lot longer to the "this the 18 little things that went wrong today" story than we will to my amazing weekend. Everyone wants the intimate details of the dating failures I've had recently, from the hook up with the sword swallower to the girl I flirted with for two hours before she let slip that she had a boyfriend to the friend who is just a friend but whom I slept next to. But no one wants to hear the story of the first time I made love and how it was a wonderful experience. They want awkward. They want uncomfortable.

I'm not sure why this is. Maybe its misplaced humility, as bragging is a terrible social faux pas that is easily avoidable. Maybe its a trust issue, where if someone tells you their true joys you've somehow agreed to undertake making them a happy person. Maybe we're just distant. I'm not sure. But I know the cycle of negativity wears on me. I want to tell the good stories. I want to tell people about things that I love. I want to get over that mild uncomfortable feeling I get when someone tells me a good quality that I have. I want to believe I'm not the only one who feels trapped telling the same horror stories and never really talking about what I love.