I don’t go looking for trouble. Trouble usually finds me. –J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

It can be really refreshing sometimes to look back on your previous life. Personally, I do a lot of reflecting because I feel like it helps to really process things. A lot of times, I have problems letting stuff go because I absolutely hate leaving things unfinished. I am driven crazy by that lingering feeling of leaving things unsaid or not asking the appropriate questions when I had the chance. The fact that I might have missed out on the chance to say something that I really needed to say or call someone out on something they lied to me about makes me even more neurotic than usual. 

I realize that this probably isn’t the most endearing quality to possess but it is what it is. And besides, a lot of the point of reflection is to look back on what happened, process it in full, and then use what you have learned as tools in the future. Like maybe instead of allowing someone to infuriate you to the point of pure blind rage, you take a step away from the situation and all him to yell all by his lonesome. For example, one time my ex-boyfriend and I fought so furiously that I clenched my little flip phone in frustration to the point that it snapped in half.

I learned that phones are very expensive and difficult to replace on a minimum wage salary. I also learned that the stress accrued from the stress of that kind of fighting is dangerous to your heart and certainly not worth it.

The point to all of this is that life is one enormous learning experience because if it wasn’t, we would be living some weird kind of life reminiscent to Scarlett Johansson in The Island. Sometimes we say things that we either don’t mean or just regret verbalizing; sometimes we instigate arguments with people we love because it’s more exciting than just choosing to let things go. This is why, at least in my experience, reflection is just so insanely useful. It teaches you how to not act like a tool the next time. And also, it hopefully teaches you how to give and command future respect. 

Personally, I hate hurting people. And when I do it, I want to figure out exactly to the minute what went wrong. I want to make sure that I can critique my language for the next time around. Because you can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect an apology to repeatedly work.

But honestly, sometimes things just happen and despite our very best efforts to just ignore them, arguments and misrepresentations of what we mean to say consume our brains. Sometimes we ruminate, we think on those things, and we try to do what Ghandi would do but in some instances, we just can’t. There are times when I honestly believe that people will do absolutely anything for a little attention, even if it’s negative.

They don’t care how many conflicts might arise as a result of how blatantly ridiculous they act. They just want people to look at them. (In social science, we call that “histrionic”. It’s an interesting disorder; you should definitely Google it.) These people are like those really terrible car accidents; you know it’s bad but you’ve just got to look.

I got my heart’s desire and there my troubles began. –Lev Grossman, The Magicians

Years ago, I developed a genuine friendship with this man. He always sort of fascinated me because he was really mature for his age. He was one of those nineteen year-olds who really had his life together. He had all of these awesome goals and was actually well on his way to achieving them. He was tall, super brave, and relatively handsome in a rugged way. But he had this absolute nightmare of a girlfriend.

She and I were friends too but it was a different brand of friendship. Their relationship was pretty chaotic and while they were they were both always pointing the finger at each other, I never really did determine who was the primary culprit in all of it. All I know was that he had told me things, she had told me things, and only about a quarter of it was corroborated. 

Ultimately, my feelings about all of this were pretty straight forward. I wanted to believe him but I had seen his temper and I knew that he could be snarky when he felt that it benefitted him. I wanted to believe her but I knew that she was extremely sensitive and overly dramatic. I mean, whatever, it was high school. We were all relatively melodramatic. Drama has a way of making things more interesting; no matter how much we try to deny it.

Over time, the dynamics of all of this changed. It wasn’t something that had happened overnight but soon, she grew tired of his alleged maltreatment and dumped him. And when this happened, they both really started to lean on me. She utilized me as a vault. She had been with this man for a long time and she needed someone she could vent to about her array of feelings. He used me as a sounding board. He claimed to be really in love with her and honestly, to this day I still believe that to be true. He was seemingly just irrevocably heartbroken and needed someone to cry to. He wanted someone to tell him that they would eventually get back together. And mean it.

Some more time had passed and soon all of our positions had shifted. I think he was still holding out for her but she had long since moved on for the most part. She was pretty, intelligent, and thoughtful and ladies like that don’t stay single very long. He saw her out with other men and I knew full well that it made him crazy. To my credit, I was always there to hear both sides of the argument and eventually he started to see me a bit differently. 

I wasn’t her but I was a good listener, and I had somehow maintained really good friendships with both of them throughout all of this. But I wasn’t just his friend anymore. Now I was a girl with a waist line and pretty eyes. Now I had a bigger, more important role to play. You know, they say love is friendship on fire.

So we started dating and I’ll spare you most of the details because quite honestly, the majority of you already know the sordid details. The big take away from all of this is that our newfound relationship was causing a mammoth amount of problems, which I honestly never really understood. I mean, sure, her and I had been close friends but they had been broken up for a while at her intention. We were both “free agents”, as a girlfriend of mine once put it, so why was it considered such an ailment? Had I really maimed her that much? What had we done so wrong? I wanted to say: get over yourself. We weren’t signing our marriage license.

That’s paranoia for you; conspiracies are seductive. –Tess Gerritsen, Girl Missing

But what soon became reality was all this crazy, twisted behavior. This woman wanted me to understand the prevalence of her presence; she wanted me to know how important she still was. To this day, I’m not even sure that she wanted him back or if she just wanted to hurt me. It sort of seemed like the latter because everything appeared very intentional. It was kind of like, I had screwed her (in her mind) and she wanted to severely punish me for it. She wanted everyone to completely understand the pain that I had allegedly caused. 

In the beginning, she was just popping around randomly. She always somehow managed to snag invites to every event he might show up at and once he caught onto that, I was conveniently uninvited. And after things started happening between them, like curricular things, I quickly started to lose control of myself. I started rapidly losing weight because I was relentlessly teased about my weight the way I looked. I started straightening my coveted curls because that’s what she had done. I tried to look like a Floridian surfer girl instead of just a normal person because it was clear to me that she must have had better style than me. I started cursing my Italian/German heritage and wishing my parents had been Hispanic instead of one hundred percent European because apparently that’s what he was drawn to. 

She was incessantly the victim, no matter who you asked, and I was always the overweight, unattractive hooker that had stolen her [absolutely insane] boyfriend and had ruined her [completely dysfunctional] relationship. I could never, never understand how people didn’t see what was really going on. I couldn’t grasp how people were too busy seeing her as a victim to realize that she was really an instigator. 

Honestly, it was a really weird time for me. She instigated a lot of drama because she wanted to put all the blame on me. Even though she was having a very public, illicit affair with my boyfriend and blasting their entire twisted romance all over Myspace. (OMG, do you guys even remember Myspace? What fresh hell, right?) Even though she was continually initiating contact with him and insisting on blabbing about it. And even though she was habitually hating on me, commenting on my weight, criticizing my clothes, and talking about how pathetic I was for staying with someone who cheated on me, she put all the blame on me. 

And honestly, I think a lot of people believed her. I think a lot of people felt sorry for her. And quite fucking frankly, I really resented that. I didn’t really think it was fair. I didn’t think it was justified.

To this day, I haven’t gotten over a lot of that. I mean, we are okay now and we’ve sorted everything out. We’ve both apologized for our end of the nonsense and voted our ex-boyfriend as the primary reason for us both acting like lunatics. It was a long time ago and for the most part, I’m over it but some things are just hard to forget.

Like on my twentieth birthday, I tried really, really hard to look cute. This was primarily because I was super insecure and exhausted of hearing how pathetic and unattractive I was. I was incredibly broke but I was even more determined. So I bought a cute new shirt and was super excited when I saw how it accentuated my natural tan. I had paired it with a cute necklace and white wedges, and had taken the extra time to straighten my frizzy curls. 

I felt good about myself and I felt even better that my boyfriend was with me instead of with her. He had even reserved a table and invited a bunch of my friends. It was one of the few times that he had really done something nice for me.

And the next day, while I was still on my awesome birthday high, she had to come along and fucking ruin it. She couldn’t have just let me have one day. She could never just let something go by. She had to instigate the absolute shit out of everything. 

First of all, she was apparently all bent out of shape because I had the audacity to own a necklace that was either similar to or the same as one that she possessed. God forbid we should both own something trendy, right? The world would probably spin right off its axis. Then she commented on a picture of me where I was drinking a Bahama Mama, claiming that the reason I must have look so awful was because I was clearly drunk. (Off of one Bahama Mama? She clearly didn’t know me very well.) She just mad it her job to incessantly start shit with me. As if I didn’t already feel bad enough about myself.

We don’t fight for gain; we fight for what’s already ours. –The Wolf, The Bastard Executioner

I just never really understood it, if I’m honest. I know she was allegedly going through some things of her own and I respect that. But I was goddamn miserable; I couldn’t understand why she tried so hard to make things worse. I won’t sit her and claim that I was innocent in all of this because I absolutely was not. But I never. started. anything.

 

Anything that I said was a direct response to her actions and this continued long after this man child and I broke up. And to be fair, I know that I shouldn’t still hold onto all of this. I know it isn’t healthy. Some things just don’t go out of your head, especially when it’s a warped brand of emotional warfare. I just cannot wrap my brain around why you would want to instigate an argument with someone else. Life is just so much easier when everyone gets along. You know what I mean?

Moral of the Crazy: I still know people like this now, people who intentionally want to cause problems, and it has never made sense to me. They live these chaotic lives where they just sit around and stir the pot. They insist on twisting stories around and create unending problems for people and quite frankly, it just seems so exhausting. I mean, I can barely keep up with the few friends I have and I actually like them. Serious shit.

In this particular case, maybe “causing problems” between my then boyfriend and I was the only way that she thought she could get attention from him. And honestly, that just was not the case. Real talk: he would have obviously done absolutely anything to be with her. 

To this day, I would bet my limited funds on it, if she went and knocked on his door, he would probably drop his entire life just to be with her. He very blatantly had her full attention. For me, it was just painfully obvious.

But anyway, for some people, I think it’s just normal to rabble-rouse. Some individuals can’t handle the calm; they thrive in chaos and they grow from inciting problems. It just is what it is and I’m not sure that they can always help it. These people should probably be actors instead of regular people so they could at least benefit from their crazy. 

But as much as I would love to defend these people, I have a hard time understanding why you would intentionally want to rock the boat. And worst still, what would be the benefit in kicking someone when they’re already down? Sometimes doing nothing can be so difficult but it’s clearly the best possible choice. Although sometimes our instant response is to fight back and say something or beg someone to listen to our words, it can be truly liberating to just sit back and breathe. Sometimes, you’re really doing the world a solid if you just stand still and be. 

Just let it all go, friends. Just ride the wave and let it wash right over you. It will all still be there when the water dries up. 

You’ll thank me later. 

No trouble ever got fixed late at night. Midnight is for regrets. –Holly Black, Red Glove