"this is mere madness" hamlet: v, i

Here's how I know that I'm not quite right in the head all the time.

This morning I text messaged a friend I knew was dealing with something unpleasant. "How're you doing?" I texted.

About 5 minutes later I got a text message back:
"Fine thanks."

And rather than thinking to myself "Oh, good, she's 'fine thanks'," what I thought was "Is she mad at me? 'Fine thanks'? What does that mean? I think she's pissed at me for something. Did I say something wrong??"

I somehow managed to read into the phrase "Fine, thanks." In a text message.

But wait, it gets better:

So this afternoon, I texted someone else. I said "How about a movie tonight?"

Ten minutes later I received the following:
"Sure."

"'SURE'?!" I thought. "What have I done to make him mad?"

I don't know what answer I would have preferred. Maybe "yeah, that sounds fun" would have made me feel less insecure. But I don't know. There's a distinct possibility I would have read something into that too. "'That sounds fun?' I think he's being sarcastic!"

I'm going to go ahead and chalk it up to stress. I'm kind of behind on my homework for school this week, but besides that, I am working on a couple of projects for a benefit gala I'm on the planning comittee for, which I am, of course, behind on (this is me we're talking about here). In addition to that, I am also gearing up to stage manage a monthly show at AS220 called the Empire Revue, and as much as I am looking forward to it, I'm quite nervous as well. Plus I also just became a board member for the All Children's Theater, a group I was a member of all through middle and high school, and so I'm starting to think about all that that will entail. Not to mention that I need to start pulling something together for my school externship, and the fact that the holidays are fast approaching and I am going to get slammed at work here pretty soon.

All in all, I'm not that surprised that my mind is a little cuckoo right now.

Still. I see no need to read between the lines in text messages that are, let's face it, less than one line long. There's no "between" there.

This Australian PSA made me feel a lot better though: