This Is Not a “How To”, I Am Merely Venting: My Frustration With Inconsiderate Humans, Both In the World and My Personal Life

People are shitty. It is a fact of life that I have long been aware of, but still struggle to come to terms with. Even I, being the divine, all knowing, self-righteous goddess that I am, have my less than favorable qualities. I am a bit of a know-it-all, quite icy, and do not feel the need to force myself on anyone, which some can misinterpret as standoffish, or bitchy, to put it bluntly. I never have bad intentions, but I am aware of, and completely accept those moments in my life when me and another person lacked chemistry and as a result, tumbled into an abyss of awkward, unpleasant energy. But notice my statement about not having bad intentions. To be flawed is to be human, and not hiding one’s flaws or trying to hard too compensate for them, I feel, lands someone at a nice even-keeled, relatable place on the personality spectrum. Its authentic. And people respect authenticity. However…being a smarmy, scheming, abusive person is something else altogether. Allow me to elaborate:

So after a very strange encounter at a restaurant last night, I needed a good place to air out my frustrations surrounding how inconsiderate, and downright harmful humans can be towards other humans. Yes, I am using the word “human” a lot. It sounds sophisticated to me for some reason. It is also rooted in the fact that I have long operated under the delusion that I am a visitor from the great beyond, sent here to observe the inhabitants of this planet, and once I leave this vessel, I will be charged with taking my findings and reporting them back to some sort of higher power, or other-worldly authority. And since I clearly do not think or operate in the same way that your average human does, this may not be all that far-fetched. Any behavior that is unfair, unkind, ignorant, or lacking in thought or consideration for how it will affect other people, grates against my very soul. It always has. The fact that some humans can so easily do harm, and in some cases, relish in doing harm, is beyond my realm of understanding, and pushes me past my tolerance threshold. Bullies, abusers, scammers, exploitative types…I have no patience for any of them. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to avoid these people, and my latest run-in happened last night during what was supposed to be a low-key dinner with my son.

We showed up to our favorite Japanese restaurant, and were seated at a booth adjacent to a table full of four people. As crazy as it sounds, I felt like something was off as soon as we sat down. My energetic field was immediately splintered, and I became privy to some pretty unsavory sensations. My intuition was definitely alerting me to the fact that I was around unsafe people. It did not take long for the whispering and giggling to start. Then they began glaring and cutting their eyes at me, and then the coup de grace: all of them fervently typing away on their phones followed by a few outbursts of hysterical laughter. The group chat was poppin’, apparently. And I can’t help but speculate about me being the topic of conversation. Now, if I were alone I probably would have had a couple of beers and either, gone out of my way to make these people uncomfortable (getting up and choosing seat in closer proximity to assholes like these when they’re trying to provoke you is always a classic), or depending on my mood, I’m not above snitching. “I need a manager”-Me. But I was with my son, and they saw this, and it was a real gut punch to think that they may have been exchanging mean-spirited quips about him too, and that there wasn’t much I could do about it. What is most confusing, is the why. I think of myself as pretty average. I am no perfect ten by any stretch of the imagination, but I am far from being unattractive. I am not extravagant in the way that I present myself, and do not display any sort of attention seeking behaviors when I am out in public. The “why?” part really bothers me. Anyway, I kept my composure, rolled my eyes at them a few times, ate, paid, and left. I didn’t go straight home after dinner, and instead opted for a half-hour joyride to clear my head. I was over it after a couple of hours, but I was clearly triggered by this encounter. Why else would I be writing this? I do not have a clear resolution, or epilogue here, and I didn’t learn a damn thing from this experience. Life will go on, and these people will more than likely, continue to be shitty. I’m sure I will never see them again, and I suppose that is solace enough. But I’m not done.

Ignoring a stranger when they are being shitty is one thing. Witnessing people who you have personal ties to, who you know to be generally congenial, wonderful people…folks who have many great qualities and can be really awesome when they want to be, put their better judgment aside and be completely inconsiderate and unreasonable…that is a completely different experience altogether. One that is hard to navigate, but one that we will all ultimately face, and have our own unique response to. I am not immune to this type of betrayal, and a situation that played out over the past couple of years with a former friend of mine and some others, rings to mind.

Let me preface this with details about an abusive relationship that I was in during my college years. My sophomore year of college I entered into what would eventually become a year long saga of physical, emotional, psychological, and verbal torture and abuse. This is, to date, the single most humiliating and damaging experience of my life. My safety was compromised numerous times, including having guns pulled on me, and I was harmed in unspeakable ways by this individual. Even after I managed to get away from this person, I was stalked, harassed, and bullied for years. Smear campaigns, triangulation, and bullying (mostly on social media) were just some of the tactics employed by my abuser in an effort to malign me and ruin my reputation. Now, I supposed there is a slim chance that he may have had some sort of epiphany, or come-to-Jesus moment since all of this has happened, but I doubt it. I do feel that there are some people who struggle with anger and who are prone to emotional outbursts. This can be managed and/or healed. There are also those who possess a malignant pathology, and are extremely calculating and dangerous. It is important to be able to distinguish between the two. But I digress. Eventually, after trying to report the abuse to campus authorities and attempting to hold him accountable (to no avail, he pretty much got away with all of it) I was able to completely shake him and any residual memories/lingering resentments. This of course, came after years of substance abuse, erratic behavior, PTSD, anxiety, depression…everything you’d expect. But I got over it. Rebuilding confidence after an experience like this is no easy feat, as my lack of confidence is what made me vulnerable to this kind of abuse in the first place, but somehow I pushed through. One thing I have always prided myself on is my strong resolve. The fact that I was able to keep my shit together long enough to graduate is a miracle. To this day, I don’t even know how I managed to show my face on campus and finish my degree after the way I was humiliated. That is a testament to a pretty sturdy emotional mechanism, according to my therapist, and I shamelessly celebrate that.

So, to make it clear, all of this drama unfolded on campus. And people knew. It was the elephant in the room wherever I was, and that dark cloud followed me around until I completed school. And thanks to the magical, communal glue that is social media, it stuck with me even after leaving campus. Everybody knew. Everyone FUCKING knew. Strangely enough though, I was recently made aware of the fact that some friends of mine from undergrad still keep in touch with my abuser. And not only do they keep in touch with him, but they are fully supportive of him and his endeavors. It is difficult to piece together the current of emotions that rush past you when you see someone you either presently, or previously had a friendship with, show loyalty to someone who is known to have done intentional harm to you and others. Its just a really bizarre cacophony of confusion, anger, contempt…betrayal. Its hurtful, and it leaves you with questions about whether you are willing to keep people in your life who clearly have flimsy boundaries, are not good judges of character, and who obviously do not respect you or value your friendship. But sometimes the choice is easy. To see a “friend” gushing over someone who literally almost killed you, after you’ve overlooked some other sketchy behaviors from this co called friend, makes it pretty easy to go ahead and hit that delete button. Cleansing your head space and your cyber space of people who annoy you, and that you have to force things with, is quite the catharsis, as it turns out.

So the moral of the story here is that there is no moral. Humans are inherently immoral. And stupid. And inconsiderate. And insufferable. They are not an enlightened life form. I have nothing of any real significance to say. This was not meant to be philosophical. People are shitty.