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Why Eeyore Makes Me Scream

“Why Bother?” Eeyore asked. Because it’s your life buddy, that’s why.

Janice Maves
4 min readJul 9, 2020
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh via Buena Vista Distribution

Eeyore is the lovable, slightly depressed sidekick I have always found hard to understand in the Winnie the Pooh saga. Eeyore is a victim. He always finds the worst in a situation and always bemoans all of the worst that could potentially happen in the future of that situation. Eeyore is a catastrophic thinker, and is the Debbie Downer of the cartoon world. I don’t know how to deal with Eeyore or with the people who use him as a model for proceeding through life. I find myself getting frustrated and irate when I have to deal with an Eeyore, and then I find myself feeling guilty for being angry at them for being so pitiful. Eeyore’s are my conundrum. How are you kind to an Eeyore? Is kindness what an Eeyore type person needs, or a swift kick in the ass (pun intended) to get them off their pity pot and on with their life?

I recently had an Eeyore experience with someone I love very much. We spent more time together than was healthy for either one of us and it didn’t end well. I have no patience for the type of hesitancy and moping that an Eeyore character exudes. I don’t plant myself on a pity pot and worry about what if’s and should haves, I am a get up and go type gal. I can also be an asshole to people that are not able to just get up and go the way I do. I was mean to my friend channeling Eeyore, and now I feel like I’m a bad person. But that’s the thing about Eeyore, he can bring you down and make you feel bad about yourself as thoroughly as the best guilt trip laid on you by a Jewish Mother. I just don’t “get” Eeyore, but I do know about guilt trips, and I’ve just been on one.

I just spent a week with someone channeling a depressed cartoon donkey, and it sucked the life blood out of me. I felt like I was walking on eggshells trying to make someone happy who had no intention of going there no matter what. I do not know how to make other people happy, at least not how to cajole them into being that way. My go to role with the depressed is to take charge of everything, fix things, be motherly, be the great decision maker and tour director and in the end be bitchy and bossy. It is exhausting and makes me resent being around a person who is acting like Eeyore. I just want to take a nap after an hour of all the…

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Janice Maves
Janice Maves

Written by Janice Maves

Essayist, Poet, Mom, Dog Owner. Lives in Cornish, ME with Wallace the Airedale, and ponders Life In General.

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