Listening, Honesty, and Being a Good Friend

I apologize, the photo that comes along with this entry was just too funny, to me, to not include it ,even though it does not really go along with the sensitive and heartwarming piece that I am about to compose.

This is a story that has been in the works for quite some time, but I have finally made some mental notes and decided to sit down and write the darn thing. To be your own person. You would think that by the age of 40 you would be able to carve your own niche in the world. Not be pushed along by your peers. Kind of like high school etc. I guess it still happens. To talk less and listen more. To ask more questions and to REALLY be interested, really interested in the lives of others. The things I must have missed......

I had a friend, I'll call her Bossy McKnow-It-All, and for 6 years I thought that we were good friends. Really, the last year was not one that I should count because that was when it all began to fall apart. When I began my quest to be a better person and to look deeply into my soul is when I began to see and hear the things that she was really saying, and I found that she was not so nice.

There were some really good people that she helped me to lose as friends. I have since called them and apologized for my behavior and we are all now back on speaking terms. They were ladies who's whose company I had once really enjoyed. I hope to again. I have made the right step in the direction of making my life better. Getting pulled into the dramas, that was how she liked to live her life and continues to do so to this very day, I could not stop it. It washed over me like a tidal wave and I was totally engulfed in all of her negativity and bad vibes. At one time someone had given us the nickname of the "chaos twins". I really am embarrassed by that now. It really was like someone took the blinders off my eyes. I began to see and hear her in a totally different way. I noticed how she never really wanted to know how my life was going, but would ask the one introductory question, wait for the answer and then launch into a diatribe about her life. Every statement by someone else and line by line dialog. It was as if she thought that we all wanted every intimate detail of her life.

It was when she began to constantly use the phrase,"It's all about me.", that I began to realize that she really thought that it was and she really meant it. No one else even mattered. That was why she just divorced her husband, of 23 years, and basically left him with the 2 kids. She has a very small visitation, but that was her arrangement. She was only concerned with what people would think, if she the mother, did not want to see her own kids. They are better off living with dad most of the time. She was the one that walked away. She thought that the grass was going to be greener.

Some of the friends form her past told me that they were shocked that I lasted 6 years because she had a history of dropping friends and making new ones almost every 3 years. I really went the distance!! Now that I have moved on there is so much less negativity in my life. The friends that I have are positive people. I take the time and listen to what they are saying.

I am sad for her that she does not even realize what a good friend that she lost. When I told her that things had not been right with us since January of this year, she just quit talking to me. Never wanted to know why or what was I talking about. Either she really knew or she just does not want to hear it and wants to keep living her life in a bubble. That is not any way to live. Without real friends or people that care about you. Sadly she has surrounded herself with "yes" people and people with low self esteem and they feel flattered to have the attention that she lavishes upon them. They feed off each others needy personalities. Not the kind of situation that is either sincere or real. Not one that I ever want to be a part of ever again.