My Life as a Sponge

Sponge Brain by Jeffrey Allen Price

I have always been too spongy. That is a major flaw in what makes me me. In fact, if there were a procedure available to become cold and heartless and care only about myself, sort of like the way my cousin Suzanne already is, I would do it.

Being spongy means never having any control over anything that happens to you. For example, things can be going swimmingly in my life, but if someone I know calls and tells me how everything in their life sucks, I am then totally bummed out and depressed--sometimes just for a few days, sometimes much longer--over their sucky life. I have tried and tried to get over this, attempting to replace my sponginess with a callous, devil-may-care attitude of who gives a shit, that's your problem, but to no avail.

Once, a long time ago, I almost succeeded. But then it caught up with me and now it's back, and here I am again, sad because one friend is in the ICU with god knows what, and another relative is all but homeless, and a third is in a wheelchair in a nursing home. A fourth is living on Nantucket Island oblivious to everyone's problems but her own. They all make me so sad.