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.