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| Lifting the burden 2004, March 9 - 2:05 a.m.
I love Dr.Phil. I think he's awesome. He dishes out tough love and common sense and I appreciate people who do that. He has sayings like "you teach people how to treat you" and "how's that working for you?" And it's true. You do teach people how to treat you. Having learned this, I now stay away from manipulative people and make it clear that I do not want to be friends. Not in a an unnecessarily rude way, but in a clear cold shoulder kind of way. Pink is such a person. Rather, she tries to manipulate but lacks certain social skills and dare I say it, intelligence to pull it off properly. I have met manipulation and have looked her in the eye and because of her, I know that Pink is harmless. But I still don't want any of it. Ever again. Dr. Phil said something else recently. He said that no good deed goes unpunished. He said that the people you do the most for resent you the worst. When you give and give and give, you eventually run out of yourself to give. You're drained and you need something back, but you've set up a relationship with another person in a certain way. You've taught them to take from you and that it's ok. Then they resent you for not giving anymore. They have a sense of entitlement. These things happen. These things have happened. However, these things will not happen again. Not to me. I find that when I have befriended someone and I'm concerned, I put my own feelings aside and focus completely on them. It's actually a bad habit to do this. It sets up a bad friendship vibe. So I have been working on that. I express concern but always make sure to express my fair share of me talk. When my mom was dying, I had a counsellor at the hospital and all I talked about was my concern for a friend of mine. I refused to talk about me, even there, though she kept trying to get me to open up. It was a hang up, I guess. The woman tried to tell me that in a friendship it had to be give and take but I wouldn't listen. I thought that I knew better and my assessment was that my friend didn't have anything to give me. I thought she should not focus on me at all. Maybe it was a self esteem issue. I don't know. What I do know is that after a time, by accepting her dark moods and insults and allowing her to direct anger at me because I was too afraid to upset her, I helped destroy the friendship. I played a part in it, I know that now. I played a role in it, not expecting more from her in her attitude towards me. Not expecting more from her in any capacity when relating to me. I taught her it was ok to treat me like crap while resenting her for it more and more each time without telling her to stop. The final straw was the day I essentially said I expected more of her. I would never have tolerated what she did from anyone else and I changed the rules without telling her. I decided to stand up for myself and had a confrontation. That was met with a lot of anger and the rest is history. Not that it was all my fault. Hardly. As my mom said, "it takes two to tango." She has to own her choices and actions just as much as I need to own my part in what happened between us. Neither one of us is blameless. I reflect on friendships gone array sometimes. Not often, but occasionally. It's important to understand why the plane crashed before trying to fly another one. However, that plane is down, crashed and burned. I don't think it's salvageable. I put far too much energy in that has come to nothing to try again fresh. I doubt we could start fresh. Too much history. I feel fine with that too. I've made peace with it, particularly now that I've figured out what I did wrong; now that I know my part in it and can take something away from that experience. Something positive. I learning something. It's funny, like a burden has been lifted off my shoulders. Thank You - 2006, June 7
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