One of my biggest problems in life is that I believe in basic human kindness and goodness ... I am naive enough to believe that traits like kindness, empathy, compassion and honesty are traits that are innate in human beings ... and unfortunately, as I get older, more and more people prove me wrong ...
As I said in my previous post I had a "friend" on Facebook that several times had made negative comments on my posts ... if she had only said things when I was "bitching" or venting frustrations ... the explanation that I was to get indirectly later on might make sense ... but it wasn't, in fact, she would make these negative, mean, bullying and snide comments on either things that were completely innocent and stupid or times when I was celebrating the good things in my life ... times when I was happy ... she felt the need to bring me down ... for what reason I don't know ... and rarely did she have that
effect ... but the very last time that she did it ... my inbox on Facebook was practically flooded with friends saying they didn't want to go off on her on my wall ... but "how dare she?" ... "why do you have her as a friend?" ... "how could anyone in your life know what's going on with you and say something like that?" ... I did have one friend respond directly to her ... and my boyfriend almost did ... but refrained ... but in total I had eleven other Facebook friends respond to her negativity in a way that made me question why she was my friend as well ... this leads me to the title of this blog ... the people we don't choose ...
I find myself a pretty good judge of character ... I get a feeling about people almost right away as to whether I think they are compassionate and caring or judgmental and mean-spirited ... I choose my friends very carefully ... and while I have somewhere around 350 friends on Facebook ... with few exceptions ... each and every one has left an impression on my heart and in my soul ... and I hold the majority of them fairly close ... I get along with my ex-boyfriends ... and my ex-husband most of the time ... the times I have been "betrayed" by people I have chosen to be a part of my life are minuscule ... in fact sitting here and thinking about it ... I honestly can't remember one, not there haven't been fights or spats (especially in jr high and high school) ... I'm sure there have been times ... but I've grown apart from some people here and there ... but I honestly don't remember any drama or horrible issues with the people that I've chosen to be in my life ... this came into play with some of the things that these two women had to say about me .... which I'll get more into later ... but there were some implications of "misery loves company" and "those that are bullies see a bully" ... and to some extent I agree with both those statements ... you know ... it takes one to know one ... but that's not always true ... sometimes it just takes having prior experience to know one ... and this leads me right back into the people we don't choose ... there are people we deal with in our lives, both face to face and in the cyber-world that are not people we would necessarily have dealings with, nonetheless a friendship with, otherwise ... these are the people that I have had issues with ... so it's not that I like having negative, bullying people in my life ... it's not that I am attracted to judgmental people ... in fact quite the opposite ... it's that I have a hard time letting people go that I feel "obligated" to ... there are people like co-workers, classmates, my kids' friends' parents, family (can't forget family), friends' significant others and family, friends' friends, and family friends ... that I wouldn't necessarily be friends with outside of those connections ... people that other people or genetics chose for me ... not people I would have met on my own and thought, "wow she seems like a really nice person, compassionate and caring, the kind of person I want to be friends with" ... in fact some of them initially rubbed me the wrong way ... but for the most part I just smile through things ... keep my mouth shut and follow the "if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all" rule ... unfortunately these two women fell into the people we don't choose ... the older of which has been friends with my mom for years ... and my mom treats one of her daughters like a niece ... which I understand being an only child myself ... the desire to love and care for someone's children like they are part of your family ... and for a long time I have watched my mother struggle with this friendship as well ... and in fact that has led to some recent bonding, which was good for us, so in some ways I have a reason to be grateful that these people are the way they are ...
So, when I unfriended this girl on Facebook after she made yet one more comment and I had a flooded inbox asking me why I would keep such an awful and judgmental person in my life ... I have it on good authority to say that she put on her status on her own Facebook page, "So you know how you have some people on facebook that their posts just annoy you to no end. Easy fix: comment on their post and call them on their stuff. Problem solved they un-friend you! Celebrate!" ... which I guess only goes to prove that she wasn't just innocently saying something I took the wrong way ... ironically I also have it on good authority that after my last blog post about this situation that she deleted that post ... and others that said things like "some people are crazy" and things like that where others and me both attributed to her ... I honestly don't understand how people can completely lack compassion and empathy and be mean, but apparently they can ... and it's also kind of strange that apparently my positive posts annoyed her ... but this whole part where she was calling me on my crap is kind of funny ... again ... I think it goes without saying that finding a job and getting out of this house would make my life feel easier and more normal to me ... so if telling me that was calling me on my crap ... well obviously she doesn't have a clue as to what really is going on in the world and how hard jobs are to come by ... especially for people that don't have a stable work history ... that seems to be on the top of employers' wish lists right now and unfortunately I don't have that; from being a stay at home mom to being basically forced to leave my last two jobs at the whim of my father ... I mean I could go on and on about the cards that are stacked against me, but everyone close to me; especially my mother and my boyfriend know very, very well that I am doing everything in my power to make that happen ... when you get thanks but no thank letters from places like Wal-Mart and Target it can be very discouraging ... but I have been pushing through the discouragement and trying very hard to get out of this spot ... In the meantime ... my mother was actually out visiting this friend .... while all this was going on ... I don't think she had much knowledge of it at the time ... but my mother came home from this visit and I could just tell that she was frustrated with a lot ... because this relaxing vacation wasn't all that relaxing ... she said she was snapped at while she was there and judged ... and then her friend wrote a blog basically talking about what a burden it was to have a house guest, which my mom took very, very personally ... then I told her about my problems lately with these women and she assured me that neither of them are happy with their own lives right now ... that the younger one is very unhappy in her marriage and wants to move closer to her mom but her husband doesn't want to ... and that they are both struggling financially ... and maybe I just ended up being a punching bag ... which is possible I guess ... but when I'm down and out I tend to gain more compassion and empathy not lose it ... anyway, since my mom was no longer in direct firing range, I wrote the younger one and told her that I thought she deserved an explanation as to why I unfriended her. I meant to ask exactly what I had done to her that made her dislike me so much, be so angry and mean ... but I forgot ... I did start with "I don't know what exactly your problem with me is" ... but she wrote back and the first letters of her response was "I am sorry" ... I took that as an apology, but later on, I wonder if she really meant it that way ... especially when she blocked me ... so I couldn't write her again ... she made it clear on her own Facebook page and in her comments to me how she felt and the kind of person she really is ... and I guess that I just have to settle for that ....
That is another one of my problems ... I take bait ... in my thinking that if somehow I can just show people that lack compassion how it makes the other person feel ... how being hurtful is so wrong ... how to 'change their ways" ... I often say too much ... react too strongly ... respond to things I know I shouldn't respond to .. I know logically that I am just feeding a pack of frenzied sharks ... and I had the problem in grade school too ... people would tell me, "if you don't let them get a rise out of you they will stop" ... but I always have defended myself to a fault maybe ... tried to show people the other side of the story ... after all there always is more than one side of the story ... I play devils advocate on subjects where I don't even remotely agree with the side I'm arguing, I'm just trying to get whoever I'm talking to to understand there could be another point of view ... and some may even say that writing this post now ... I'm taking bait ... letting them get to me ... but in reality I'm writing this all out so I can let it go ... I tried to kill them with kindness ... give them the proverbial sugar ... and was just met with the same lack of compassion and empathy ...
As far as Facebook and "negative" status posts ... there really aren't that many of them ... I went through in my paranoid frenzy and read back months and months and months ... they're not all happy go lucky, but they're certainly not all negative ... I do have friends that go in spurts of posting only negative things for a while and then they go back to positive .... it happens ... people have hard days ... people post things maybe they don't even really think about ... that's why if I don't have something encouraging to say ... or nice to say ... I just don't comment ... people have frustrations with their kids, and their partners, and their friends and their jobs ... I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to comment on a post where someone was bitching about their job and say "shut up ... you have one" ... but I don't ... because when it comes down to it I'm not that kind of person ... but people also have to not assume that things are about what you think they are ... often times if I'm talking about something that frustrated me, it has to do with WoW ... with a game and people that play it with me ... people that I also didn't choose ... as far as my blog and negative posts .. much of my blog is cathartic and me thinking outloud and in that a lot can come off as negative, but it's me working through my emotions .... as far as directly about my "benefactors" ... out of 95 blog posts ... 18 of them are tagged with the term "parents" .... and of those probably at least half are about my father ... so when it comes down to it I guess about 20% of the time there might be something negative about one of my parents in my blogs (although not all are negative) ... but given the circumstances of my life I would say that's fairly normal ... it's a stressor in my life right now and blogging is helpful in getting some of that stress out ...
