I Am Linda Tripp

I was reading New York magazine's review of Impeachment: American Crime Story (because if there is one thing the world needed it was another story about a president getting a blow job from an intern. I swear to God, 50 years from now, Hollywood will still be delving into history's least interesting, most overanalyzed scandal in American history) and the author wrote two passages that hit particularly close to home:

Paulson's Tripp is petty, vindictive, and selfish. She's also foolish, or at least just smart enough to make the same very foolish mistakes. She wants attention and can't muster the self-awareness required to admit she wants it. Everything bad in her life was done to her; everything good was the result of her own, Herculean efforts

and this ... 

Too often, though, Paulson's performance is uncannily like Tripp herself. It is trying so, so hard in a way that makes you want to recoil. It would be a disaster, except this is precisely what Impeachment is most interested in: the contempt we have for desperation and for people whose desperation is too painfully evident.

When I think about my personal life and how my career has dead-ended, the first quote often applies. I think through a lot of things that others did to me - my parents, my ex wife, the boss who fucked me over after I ran through wall after all for him, and how angry I am at all of them, but that all the success I want to think I achieved has been due to overcoming all of that abuse. On the other hand, when I think about my utter failure and inability to have even a basic, normal dating relationship with a woman, I think it is because the desperation to have one is so painfully obvious and it just repels anyone within 100 miles of me. 

Most of all, it just feels like at this stage in my life, I am just passing time. I am not going to achieve the things I hoped to in my career, so I am totally checked out at work, and I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life, so why bother showing any interest in anyone or anything?