Most people are far too preoccupied with themselves to be malicious. –Friedrich Nietzche, All Too Human

Basically throughout my entire life, I was raised with this “sharing is caring” mentality. When I was little, my mother encouraged me to share my toys with other kids (but not to let things go home with them, lest I never get them back) and always made my older sister share her more exciting toys with me. When I was an awkward, prepubescent middle school kid, my sister would come home from college and fall in love with whatever new thing my mom had bought me. It could have been chocolate covered cherries, it could have been a Tim McGraw t-shirt, or it could have been cucumber melon scented body wash from Bath & Body Works. Whatever the case, when my sister and I would fight over it, my mother would usually say something to the effect of, “Give it to your sister, Kate. I’ll buy you a new one if you miss it that much.” As I got older, I realized that this was probably because my sister was living in a dorm the size of my walk-in closet and my mother felt really sorry for her. I still remember when my mother cried absolutely hysterically after we dropped my sister off at one of Florida State’s oldest dorm buildings, Kellum Hall.

That room was seriously like a broom closet and her psychotic, morbidly obese roommate used to eat baby food as a snack. In retrospect, I sort of wish I had just given her that body wash instead of fighting over it. I could never live like that as an independent adult going to college. But she somehow survived and consistently made the Dean’s List.

But essentially, I was always raised to embrace this idea of sharing, of nurturing others, of not being selfish because the reality is that I have way more than most probably do. More especially when I was growing up, although I wouldn’t say that I was necessarily born with a silver spoon in my mouth (because believe me, there were times when we struggled), I grew up in a really fortunate home. My mom didn’t work until I was older and my dad worked really hard so that she never really had to. My parents always had new cars or “toy” vehicles (like my dad’s 1976 Jeep Wrangler CJ7 that he used to pick me up from elementary school in) and my mom had more expensive clothes than most of the women in the PTA. We always were afforded the luxury to participate in extracurricular activities and there were always tons of presents under our Christmas tree.

My parents were relatively comfortable monetarily for most of their married lives but they encouraged us to be thankful, to respect whatever nice things we had, and to understand that those things weren’t just given. My dad had worked really hard for them and some children weren’t as lucky as we were. So we had to be nice and willing to share.

And honestly, that was something that I always carried with me. I wouldn’t say that my husband and I are anywhere near as comfortable with money as my parents were when I was growing up but we aren’t on any kind of assistance, we have good insurance, we have sturdy vehicles that get us to work, and we have the ability to buy organic groceries despite the inflation prices. For that, we are incredibly thankful and we were both raised to open our door to others and share the things we have. And that’s something I plan on passing on to my children because I think it’s an awesome value. I think that sometimes people get so focused on all of the things they want, especially during this time of year, that they don’t take enough time to appreciate all of the things they do have.

Family. A warm home. A roof over your head (even if it’s not in the neighborhood you want). A loving spouse or significant other. Grocery stores, gas stations, and Starbucks on every corner. Safety in a country untouched by war and famine. The freedom to go to college, work wherever you want, dress however you want, and marry whoever you want. These are things to be thankful for. These are things that should keep people selfless but we’ve just become too spoiled.

But “being selfish” extends far beyond material things. Sure, some people are so inherently selfish that it carries over into every aspect of their life; but the truth is, I know some really genuinely down-to-earth people who would give a homeless man the shirt off their back but they treat their friends like yesterday’s garbage. And quite frankly, that’s something that I’ve never really understood. I can’t really wrap my brain around the fact that there are good people out there, wholesome, allegedly religious people who say their prayers every night and tithe every Sunday and still manage to treat the people closest to them like they’re unimportant. Or sometimes, even, like they’re disliked or offensive to be around.

I’m obviously not a perfect individual. I won’t sit here and preach about things that other people purportedly do if I’m contributing to the same epidemic. There are days when I just have a tough time, when I’m not my normal, upbeat self. There are days at work when I don’t feel my best and in all honesty, I don’t even try to make conversation with my co-workers because it all seems so taxing. But I make a conscious effort every single day to be pleasant. I would never take out my bad day on another person. I would never speak harshly to a person that I care about, especially someone I consider to be a really close friend. Sometimes I’m not as present as I would like to be because I get busy or life gets in the way but I don’t intentionally ignore people, because I don’t have time for those childish games, and I don’t go out of my way to be deliberately hurtful to my friends.

But that’s just me. I think life is way too short to be a snarky bitch. Life is way too precious to be fake to my alleged friends, to talk bad about them behind their back just to turn around and kiss their ass, and to be so selfish that I can’t seem to see outside of myself. In my experience, nothing bad has ever come from being a kind, sincere person.

Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others. –Ouida, Wanda, Countess Von Szalras

Honestly, we’ve all got selfish friends because the reality is that to some degree, we’re all a little selfish, right? We all have pretty basic, one track minds and are on an incessant journey to please ourselves. In some ways, it’s just a natural thing to always be on the lookout for Number One. I mean, that’s why the entertainment business thrives off of reality television, right? Those people aren’t necessarily bringing any kind of substance to the world; they’re just so selfish and egotistical that they’re under the impression they’re worthy of their own television show. They genuinely believe that people are hell bent on watching a show that follows them around while they get pedicures, take their children to school, and have possibly scripted fights with their families and significant others. And in a way, they’re right to think so because people watch it. I know I do! (My personal obsessions include but are not limited to: Girls Next Door and Teen Mom OG. But I have to be honest when I say that I’ve watched way more than my fair share of reality television.)

And to be fair, I have to say that I prefer those girlfriends (and male friends) of mine that are selfish about things like cars, clothes, and money to the ones that are self-centered about general human nature. I would rather be friends with a shopaholic who is in debt because she can’t seem to stop engaging in retail therapy than someone who treats me like Farrah Abraham treats everyone.

I’ve had a couple friends that have fallen into that aforementioned Farrah Abraham category and while they’re not nearly as bad (because let’s be real: that woman is a legitimate monster who apparently resides in plastic surgery hell) or nearly as rich as the woman who is starting to very closely resemble Kim Kardashian, there are some similar qualities. Some of them, I’ve intentionally let go even though I struggled with it. Some of them, I still sort of maintain a friendship with but it’s certainly not the quality of friendship I prefer.

I don’t like to always wonder what the other person is thinking, I don’t like to curb my language for fear of offending someone, and I don’t like walking on eggshells with people who are supposed to be my friends. It’s crazy to me how you can go from really loving someone, from being there for every crisis and triumph, from text messaging daily and socializing weekly, to no longer having any kind of relationship. I’ve seen all these little pinned quotes on Pinterest and Twitter about how some people go from being really close to suddenly being really far away. That the people you’ve trusted your secrets with, the people you really couldn’t see yourself living your life without, are suddenly people that don’t even cross your mind anymore. It’s a sad, sad thing to come to terms but maybe the reality is that that’s just life.

This phenomenon has happened with me a few times and generally, my hypothetical friend and I just grew apart. We didn’t have a huge fallout argument like the women of Teen Mom OG on a Dr. Drew Reunion Special and we didn’t make awful comments about each other’s weight. We didn’t sleep with each other’s boyfriends or share really personal secrets with the social media world. We just got older, started getting interested in different things, and moved on with our own, separate lives. But in some cases, it wasn’t so blasé. And to be honest, I was a little sour about the friendship ending. Maybe I felt a little scorned.

I had one friend that I considered to be my best friend. This was many, many years ago and honestly, so many things have happened since the dissolution of our previous friendship that it’s almost hard to keep track. On my end, I genuinely thought I had done all of the things I needed to do to sort of, get her back into my world. But it seemed like every time we spoke, she was putting more distance between us. Maybe it was that she didn’t want to be blatantly rude or hurtful but she also didn’t want to continue the conversation, or the friendship, with me.

I was always liking her social media posts and trying to post all these Throwback Thursday pictures of us in order to get a little attention from her. I made comments on Facebook statuses when appropriate and I always personally wished her a happy birthday. It wasn’t that I saw “So-and-so’s birthday is today!” on Facebook and decided to leave an impersonal message with billions of other people (who probably hadn’t even met her in person) on her Facebook wall. I always remembered when her birthday was and made it a point to speak with her personally because although we had drifted apart, she was important to me.

But as the years went on, the conversations got fewer and fewer and I soon started to realize that I was always the one attempting to maintain contact. Sure, she had answered me but it was very short and to the point, like she was doing me a favor just by responding. Like I was her poor, pathetic, former best friend who couldn’t seem to move on from our past. She had visibly moved on. She had moved far away, eventually gotten married to a guy who is actually super nice and supportive, and given birth to beautiful kids. And for whatever reason, this life she had created didn’t include me.

And if I’m honest, I never got over it. I never got over not being good enough to keep as a friend. I never got over all the personal social media posts that she had incessantly ignored despite her chronic tendency to comment on our mutual friends’ statuses. (It was pretty clear by social media standards that she was ignoring everything I posted, even if she was tagged in it.) And I never got over that feeling that she was, rather selfishly, intentionally blowing me off. It just never seemed fair. After all the time I put into our friendship and the amount of times I had tried to continue the relationship, it just never seemed fair.

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others. –Albert Camus

I had another friend that this happened with too, however unlike the aforementioned case, we had never had an argument to spark the dissolve. For this particular friend, I can’t even really describe to you what happened. It was like, one day we were close and sharing secrets. The next day, it had been actual months since we had spoken.

We had met through some mutual friends and hit it off right away. We had a few things in common but it seemed like the things that made us different made us connected. In the beginning, I had really opened up to her because she had one of those personalities that just encouraged you to do so. She was warm and welcoming, she made great eye-contact with you when she spoke, and she always seemed to be sincerely interested in whatever you had to say.

With her, I felt like I had found this sort of kindred spirit, especially since I had been screwed over by so many other women. She had mentioned to me that she had also been through friendships that seemed to fizzle out and even told me about one in particular where a “best friend” had become a person she could barely stand to speak to via text message. This former best friend had changed, become a huge shit talker, and suddenly became a person that she no longer could see herself socializing with. I nodded and sipped my drink because like I told her, I could sympathize. “Sometimes friends can be dicks,” I had drunkenly told her.

Because of how close we were getting, I lined her right up with my three other best friends. She could probably never top them because my three best friends have been with me for years, through thick and thin, and our relationships are untouchable. But she was holding fast at number four. She was definitely in my starting lineup.   

She had even started introducing me to her friends and seemed to make a real effort in including me in various social gatherings. Obviously, I always jumped at the chance and would tell her (and her friends) that I wanted to be included, that I was so thrilled they had thought to invite me, and that I couldn’t wait to engage in whatever particular activity was in our future plans.

But then, then she started to change and I have no idea why or what happened. All those alleged plans that we had made, all of those now seemingly courtesy invites had come and went. I was never contacted or even shot a consideration text message to say, “Hey, we forgot you wanted to come.” In fact, I can’t help but feel like I was intentionally left out of the plans because they seemed to accidentally talk about it in front of me. They managed to sort of fake their way through the conversation and say things like, “Oh, it was spur the moment,” or “We just went last minute and didn’t think to call you,” but it was pretty clear that they were barely treading water. They were just trying to get through the discussion long enough to appropriately change the subject. And maybe, in their misguided defense, they thought I would just forget all about it.

Let me be clear about something: I am a nice person but I never forget anything. So much so, in fact, that it sometimes gets me in trouble because for whatever idiot reason, people feel it’s easy to take advantage of nice people. But because this isn’t my first rodeo, I was really, really, unreasonably angry about this whole debacle. I even told my husband about it and said that I couldn’t believe they had gone out of their way to invite me, just to intentionally blow me off. I mean, literally, when that conversation just happened to leak at the table, I thought to myself, “Why am I even here? It’s pretty clear that they don’t want me here, that I’m impeding on their time together, that I’m just an added little piece of their puzzle that no one seems to really give a shit about. What am I even doing here right now? Why was I even invited?”

Maybe it was just some stupid get together that they had genuinely forgotten to invite me to but that’s not how it seemed. And maybe I got a little inwardly offended (I didn’t make an outwardly big deal because that’s not my style) but that was only because I felt really (and intentionally) left out. You don’t fucking go out of your way to invite someone to a get together and then accidentally talk about how you blew them off while they’re sitting at the table. You don’t openly discuss a relatively huge and well-planned social outing in front of someone, invite them to it, and then act confused when they’re pissed they clearly weren’t actually invited, as evidenced by an absolute billion Facebook and Instagram photos.

This had happened way too many times in a short period with this woman and I was quickly starting to get over it. Listen, I don’t need you to do me the favor of being my friend. And you don’t have to introduce me to your friends like I’m some sort of antisocial charity case. I’ve got plenty of my own friends that actually want to hang out with me. (Just me, and not me with three other people to help you maintain the conversation.) If this little get together wasn’t something that you wanted me invited to, that’s totally acceptable but then don’t fucking invite me. And again, a few months later, if you decide that maybe you don’t want me coming to your party, that’s absolutely appropriate but don’t personally tell me I should come and then refuse to send me an invite. I just have a really, really big problem with being personally asked to join in on something, like in person, just to get blown off later.

You know what? Don’t do me any favors. I’ve got way better things to do than open myself up to people who, quite frankly, don’t give a shit if I’m there or not. I’m thirty years old and I treat people with respect. I expect that shit back and I don’t like being intentionally left out of things. I’m not five. I’m not going to cry if I’m not invited to your wedding/birthday party/graduation dinner/whatever else. But don’t beg me to come and tell me how awesome it’s going to be if you’re just planning to accidentally (on purpose) disinvite me and then rub it in my face.

If I wanted that kind of drama, I would be relentlessly tweeting Farrah Abraham.

Moral of the Crazy: I know it probably seems like I’m coming down really hard on these people but I just don’t understand how you can treat your alleged friends like that. It just appeared like the woman mentioned above had gone out of her way, over and over again, to keep me out of the loop. Towards the closing of our relationship, I was always the one that had to contact her because if I hadn’t made that effort, I wouldn’t hear from her. I would be the one that had to make the plans to hang out and after a while, it felt like I was literally begging her to hang out with me. And similarly to our aforementioned well-laid plans, whenever I would reach out to her in an effort to be social, she would yes me to death, then text me the morning of saying she couldn’t make it for whatever reason. And honestly, I know that things happen; I know that life gets in the way and to some degree, people get busy. But when you’re too busy to even check in (after weeks of not speaking) or return a text message, it’s pretty clear I’m no longer a priority.

And quite frankly, I’m sick of stressing about that kind of shit. It’s taken me a really long time to realize that I don’t have to beg people to be in my life. I don’t have to plead with people to be friends with me or hang out with me because that shit is pathetic. If you don’t want to be in my life and you’re trying to passively aggressively get out of my domain, don’t let me stop you. It’s like those people who do things to intentionally get fired because they’re too chicken shit to quit. If you don’t want to be here, don’t let me hold you back.

It’s just that this kind of selfishness can be debilitating and honestly, it can make you feel really bad about yourself. I mean, when I learned of the fact that these women had just gone off and socialized without me after the plan was for me to be included, I felt about two inches tall. I almost felt embarrassed because there was obviously some reason why they didn’t want me there. And then I started putting all the pieces together on my own. She could never hang out with me by myself, she never contacted me unless I did so first, and she seemed to blow off any plan in which I was included. Suddenly all this nonsense was starting to make sense.

I’m going to be real with you: I’ve basically gone through most of my life being second best. I’ve pretty much come to terms with the fact that I’m not people’s favorite and that there’s only a very select few women I would call my true friends. I’ve learned the hard way that sometimes, no matter how much you’ve shared or opened up to someone, no matter how much you’ve helped them or listened to their anxieties, they don’t hold you at the same level of importance that you hold them. It’s happened to me tons of times and every time, I get livid and hurt. I sit around and analyze every little Facebook post, every cute little hashtag, and every shared Facebook memory and think to myself, “What did I do to this girl to make her just drop me?”

Sometimes, like one of my actual best friends said to me when we were talking about it, people make friends of proximity. Maybe when you work with someone, go to school with someone, or live near someone you get really close to them and suddenly push them up on your Top Eight (oh my gosh, remember MySpace??). But then when you quit that job, graduate from college, or move to a different apartment complex, those people fade away. Maybe it’s not deliberate but something that just happens with distance.

And I understand all that because it’s happened to me. And in some cases, this hasn’t been some awful tragedy. Maybe you just go from talking every day when you’re in school together to hardly talking at all because your lives changed. But when you do get the chance to talk, it’s good conversation and that friendship is still there, no matter how much things have changed. I have lots of friends like that. We aren’t enemies; we just grew up. None of it was intentional.

But sometimes, it doesn’t happen in that way. Sometimes it’s not so innocent. Sometimes, and I’ll probably never know why, you just become unimportant. Or maybe it’s that you always were. Maybe it’s that you never reached that level of priority to be considered someone who should be respected. And that is some selfish ass shit right there.

I’m not saying that everyone needs to be your best friend. And in fact, I’ve been accused of befriending people too quickly, offering them too much of myself, and labeling them a close friend without them really earning it. I just don’t personally believe that maintaining a friendship should be that difficult. You shouldn’t be so selfish of an individual that you disregard everyone, that you pretend to hold certain people close to you just to drop them when things become inconvenient, or that you couldn’t be bothered to treat your alleged friends the way a friend should be treated.

If you like someone, if you want to be friends with someone, you should be nice to them. You should attempt to socialize with them and be as honest with them as you possibly can. You should respect them enough to know that when you act like a selfish tool, you’re probably going to hurt their feelings and as such, should probably not make a habit of it. And that’s really it. It’s not rocket surgery.

No scandalous shit. No gossiping behind each other’s back. No behavior vaguely reminiscent of Farrah Abraham and you should be good.

I just personally hate that feeling where you don’t really know where you stand with someone. If that’s how your friends are treating you, then what’s the point? I would rather be socializing with someone who doesn’t make me wonder how they feel about me. I would rather have someone who would stab me in the front, a person who doesn’t make me feel desperate every time I send them a text message. I would rather share my personal life with someone who genuinely wants to know about my life, not just texts me because they heard gossip through the grapevine.

The truth is that at the end of the day, when you’ve resorted to treating everyone in that selfish, entitled way, you’re left with nothing. And that’s a really sad way to live.

All I ask from you loyal readers is that you treat your friends the way you would want to be treated. I know that probably sounds simple but it astonishes me that some individuals just turn on people they claim to care about. And while no one likes to be the bad guy, finding out information second hand (like say, that your “friends” chose to conveniently disinvite you against your knowledge) is way more awkward and uncomfortable.

Because nobody likes sloppy seconds. 

Suppose you were the last one left. Suppose you did that to yourself. –Cormac McCarthy, The Road