Sunday, March 29, 2009

The Meek Simply Vanish Into Nothingness...

You know people are kind of funny. It's so easy to get angry at someone for a perceived slight, yet so difficult to show compassion when you see that same person in pain.

If you get angry at someone for something they've said, it implies to me that on some level, you actually care about what that person thinks. Yet, if you care so much- why can't you reach out when you see that they could maybe use it?

It's inevitable that if someone approaches you and tells you that they're upset that you'll deal with it accordingly. Yes, it's kind, but it's also easy and temporary. Taking that extra step to check up on them and approach them when they're not directly in front of you? That's what being a friend is. It means that you actually think about them when you don't have to.

This blog has gotten me into trouble more than once. Once I had legal action threatened against me, and I unposted all of my archives. I could probably start re-posting the less inflammatory ones, but who wants to take the time to go through a year and a half of archives to do so?

Once I had an ex-boyfriend essentially call me a whore because of something I posted and stop speaking to me. It was quite hurtful and the final straw in an on-again off-again so-called friendship. He tried to apologise to me later but he had hurt me so much that time that there was nothing he could do to get my good opinion back. The best he can expect from me now is cordiality.

And then there were the friends that I lost just this past year. I wrote about how they had hurt me and how I reacted to it. They didn't know how much they had hurt me, and when they caught wind of the post, they decided to stop talking to me. I apologised, told them I understood their anger and tried my best to gracefully let them go.

I accept responsibility for my actions. I've mentioned before how I am constantly monitoring what I do, and say and how I behave. I constantly gauge how people are feeling and how they might react to what I have to say before I say it. I rarely say something that I regret because I think too much. But this constant monitoring? It's also a constant reminder that one day I AM going to screw it up. One day I'm going ot miss a cue that tells me that I shouldn't be doind or saying something, and it's going to blow up in my face.

People lose friends all the time. People stop speaking with their exes. People do things that cause them to get sued. I am hardly unique in this.

But the frustrating part is how easy it was for those people to let me go.

How easy it was for my ex-manager to go from thinking that I'm an awesome employee to thinking that I'm the root of all evil. To not caring that her actions caused me to leave a job after seven years and not once try to ask me why.

How easy it was for my now married-with-child ex boyfriend to accuse me of being a whore and simply stop speaking to me because what I was doing was so hurtful to him.

How those friends who didn't like what I said about them on this blog, because I was hurt, to just let the friendship die. It meant so little that I was upset and made an error in judgement by posting something about them when no one in the world knows who they are.

When I've posted about things that make me sad, and how I don't think living is worth the effort - something like this isn't worth reaching out for, except by complete strangers who don't even know me.

I wonder if I haven't done it to myself. I can be too mild and accommodating. I can be too obedient and independent. Surely someone like me doesn't need anyone.

Why is it so easy to get hurt and angry about something so little? Do people perceive themselves as being so perfect? Does my track record not mean anyting?

People go out of their way to help some friends who are constantly in a state of crisis, or are truly heinous human beings. But someone who is typically good and responsible and caring seems to be measured on a different scale. Something that I would do that is maybe not stellar, could be considered positively angelic if done by your drugged out unemployed friend.

It's just disappointing to come to realize that my existence in some people's lives meant so little that I can be so easily dismissed. Perhaps I should find some way to being a more dynamic, demanding presence. That way people would find it more noticable if I were gone.

14 comments:

Lady Jane said...

I don't know what the posts said but it seems to me that they are pretty high maintenance and have some high expectations. Those people tire me out. I'm sorry you had to endure that.

Kate said...

I have always wondered the same as well. How do people so casually walk away from someone who "means something" to them? How can people be so callous about another's feelings?

I am sorry you were treated so poorly by people you considered friends. You deserved much better than that.

Jen said...

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

Dr. Seuss

. . . I'm really beginning to live by those words. I hope you can find it to do too.

James said...

Hey you really have a point there Princess. I never thought about that before.
Like a total arsehole who suddenly does something nice for once in his life , people bend over backwards to give him one more chance, but a generally nice person messes up once in a while and its zero tolerance time.
I feel for you, I do.

Crys said...

you are probably judged more harshly for your tiny indiscretions because any discretion at all is so unlike you.

i've been married. my first husband literally smacked me while my second husband would never so much as call me a name. and so when the first husband called me a bitch? didn't mean much to me at all. but if the second one did --- or even implied it? it meant a whole hell of a lot more. see?

you've got to let these people go. you've got to look forward, for real. you've got to find people who will smooth over your rough edges, and who will let you do that for them. they're out there, they really are.

Anonymous said...

It's amazing the things I have seen happen on the internet. I was in a situation a long time ago where an army of asshats decided that my life was their public playground without thought to how it would feel to them were the shoe on the other foot. Even today, I keep tape across my mouth over a certain situation that I could blow right out of the water...because it's more important for me to be a good and classy person than to expose another's lies and misdeeds.

I wish everyone would stop and think before they judge. Glass houses and all that, you know?

Karen Bodkin said...

I absolutely loved this post. I've been treated badly by friends because of my blog too and I get it. Totally.

Sherri said...

I am also very, very careful in what I let onto my blog and you're right...you're just gonna over-share sometimes.

I don't know if you feel this way, but I have trouble letting people go. So when people are letting me go with no problem I just don't understand it, because I'd never do that to them. And yet maybe I should, maybe it's necessary to being a healthy person, that I don't hang on to people who don't want to be hung on to.

You write things I'm afraid to write because I've plastered my name all over my blog. And I like that Dr. Seuss quote up there.

Nat said...

I've come to the conclusion that often time so-called friends were looking to cut you out of their lives anyway. The blog/blogging just gives them the fodder when it's time.

Catherine said...

You have really hit home with me with this post, especially from "Does my track record not mean anything?" on down. I have thought about that a lot, seeing evidence that building a history that should foster trust, an impression of me being reliable, transparent, well-intended, etc., and otherwise a good egg, counts for shit. Someone'll turn all that on it's head with some accusation or other notion they pulled out of clear blue sky. It stings like a bitch, very frustrating and disheartening, and I'm glad to hear you talk about it. Thanks.

Catherine said...

Jeez, the above comment could have been a LOT better worded :P

MissE said...

One of the best things to come out of my childhood of moving every 2-3 years was the understanding that there are different "grades" of friends. It was a hurtful lesson to learn, as each move would quickly reveal which of my friends were the ones who'd 'stick' with me, which were the ones who'd stick the knife in the moment I was gone and which ones would just drop away. And there were always more in those last two categories than in the first one.

I'm with what Jen quoted, Princess. I can't believe that people cut you off because you wrote about your feelings, your thoughts, your reactions. I mean, did you post pictures of these people? Put their real names up on the post? Their addresses? Offer a GPS service so that readers could go over to their homes and chat with them about it? Of course you didn't. You simply used this forum of writing to express yourself. And unfortunately, it revealed that these friends probably weren't.

I am so sorry. I wish I could make it easier for you. All I can say is that I view every relationship that comes into (and often goes out of) my life as a lesson of some kind. Some of them are wonderful, some of them are awful but all of them leave me with a little more wisdom and understanding of the world and what I want from it.

Hmmm - I really hope that makes sense.

Anonymous said...

It's easy to remember the "bad" things people said I guess instead of remembering all the good things. You're a good girl, Princess.

Curiosity Killer said...

You know what they say... you remember 10% of what you hear, but 50% of what you read. The effect of telling someone how you feel is dramatized when you're telling them how you feel in a letter.

Then this letter is published for "everyone" to see (in their head).

So they flip out over the smallest things, not paying attention to what you're trying to say in the first place.

Been there myself. My blog has seen some serious drama with flame war, and death threats by these "so-called victims" whom I star on my blog because they're that important to me.

So I became super paranoid and stop talking about my blog to my friends. The other day, I stayed up till 6am cause I was terrified about how some people might feel about my most recent post (even though I'm not even supposed to be aware that they've discovered my blog)... but I've decided to post it anyway, because that friendship itself was going nowhere. If the other person really care for me as a friend, they would HAVE to understand how they've hurt me, accept their end of responsibility.

And then maybe, just maybe (hoping), the friendship will truly blossom.

Or die. But I'm prepared for it now.

 
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