To kind of go through life not caring is a spectacular attribute. It’s one I wish I had. –Neil Cross

Over the years in this blog, I have spoken in depth about my ability to really care about people. I have gone into detail about my likeliness to just sometimes care too much, to allow myself to get fully absorbed into other peoples’ problems, and to worry about what others think to the point that I’m the one that’s actually suffering. I know I’ve rambled on about this a million times and it’s because honestly, I feel like it’s something that I’ve always struggled with. And to be fair, although I think it can be a really amazing trait (because no one ever got judged for being too kind or too caring), I feel like it gets me in trouble sometimes. I feel like it enables other people to take advantage of me and it also encourages one of my biggest pet peeves of all: when the other person just can’t be bothered to care back.

I think a lot of times what hurts me the most is when I’m really invested and other people just are not. The thing is, with most people that I consider relatively important in my life, I care. I don’t just go through the motions, I don’t just pretend to care when I feel like acting like a human being, and I don’t feign a person’s importance in my social circle. The reality is that if I have someone in my life, if I’ve taken the time to really get to know them and understand their personality, it’s because I want them there. If I’m texting someone on a semi-regular basis and trying really hard to remember and keep track of whatever really important things they’re going through, it’s because they’re important to me. If I randomly text them out of nowhere because something reminds me of them or for whatever reason, I started thinking about them, I don’t do it just for them. I do it because I want to; I do it because these hypothetical people are of value to me. And sometimes when life gets in the way and I get busy, I want them to know that I haven’t forgotten them. I want them to know that although I’ve been absent for a little bit, they are important to me. It’s not like I’m just here to put on a show and gain social importance. I actually give a shit about these people.

And what I think happens sometimes is that not everyone thinks like that. I know of some individuals in particular that are extreme social butterflies and to be honest, although they’re typically exciting people to be around, I feel like maybe the quality of their relationships aren’t so great. I know one person in particular that is allegedly just friends with everybody. He’ll go out to clubs every night of the week and sit in VIP with a different group of people each time but I can’t help but feel like he probably doesn’t actually know any of those people. I don’t know that he could really call any of them in his “time of need” because honestly, with half of them, he probably doesn’t even know their last name. But it’s like, “he knows everybody”, “he’s friends with everybody”. I don’t know, it just seems weird to me.

And I think what I don’t particularly like about those kind of “friendships” is that you don’t really know what you’re getting with people like that. If a person is just so charming and charismatic that they’ll make you believe anything, it kind of makes you wonder how special you really are to them. For example, I don’t share all my really personal life stories with every single person I meet. I reserve those for my really close friends. I save those things for people that I entrust my secrets with, people who I know aren’t going to run to the closest Starbucks and share my crazy stories with anyone in earshot, people who I know want to listen because they know something is ailing me, not because they have ulterior motives.

And honestly, I’m not saying that you can have too many friends because of course, you can’t. I mean, it doesn’t ever hurt to have people on your side. It’s not ever a bad thing to be friends with a bartender at a place you frequent, a bouncer at a club that’s way too pricey to pay full price for, or a girl who can hook you up at your favorite retail store. (Personally, I’m accustomed to this type of lifestyle because my cousin, who I actually am best friends with and have been since birth, works at Disney. I haven’t paid for a ticket in years and it’s the coolest thing ever.) I’m just saying that I prefer the type of friendships that get you places, not get you into places. I would rather “feel all the feels”, as they say, because I know I’ve got a ride or die friendship, than get into a loud, smoky club for free and make awkward conversation with all the “friends” I don’t [really care to] know.

Fake people have an image to maintain. Real people just don’t care. –Anonymous

But the thing about really caring about people, the thing about really investing your thoughts and time into people, is that when it’s not reciprocated, it can instigate an enormous amount of feelings. When you realize that your alleged friends don’t hold you at the value that you hold them, it can really sting. And I feel like personally, that’s something that I’ve endured quite a few times and to be fair, I have no idea why it happens. I don’t know what it is about my personality that encourages people to treat me that way.

My husband has this theory about Floridians, about how people are just different here. We used to always joke that Florida was once considered “the derelict state” and the place where the residences of the thirteen colonies cast all their prisoners to live indefinitely. My husband used to say that maybe that’s why all the people in Florida are so strange, and maybe a little backward; because they’re descendant of the country’s first criminals. Now whether this is actually true or just jokes that we’ve learned from our various history teachers, I have to further my point. And as such, I’m going to give you just a few people that came out of this beautiful state in the criminal world:

Ted Bundy (Serial killer, rapist, kidnapper, and chronic robber. Had a killing spree at Florida State University, among other places. Executed: January 24^th, 1989)
Aileen Wuornos (Serial killer, robber, hitch-hiking hooker. Had a killing spree that seemed to run all along the Florida coast but started near Clearwater, Florida, aka my stomping grounds. Executed: October 9^th, 2002.)
Casey Anthony (Probable child murder, pathological liar, and alleged Universal Studios employee out of Orlando, Florida. My assumption is that having an innocent, beautiful child made it difficult for her to party but we all know that for whatever reason, she was only found guilty of child abuse and neglect. According to Twitter, she is now alive and well, and running her own photography business. I swear to God. Google it.)

I could go on, friends because my knowledge is frighteningly vast when it comes to true crime. But I’ll skip it just this once. I don’t want to get too far off topic. The point is that something I’ve noticed about some Floridians, the native ones, more especially, is that they’re just so different than non-Floridians. Honestly, I’ve been in Florida since I was five so I’ve basically always considered myself a “Floridian”, even though I was born 32 miles southeast of Chicago. But there’s something different about the people like me because we’ve come from northern families. We weren’t “raised” like Floridians because coming to this state was a totally new experience for all of us, even though we were little kids. My best friend, who is a native of Bridgeport, Connecticut, always jokes that Floridians are so “weird” and “different” than New Englanders. And although I tease her for saying it because she’s been here since she was like, two years old, I totally get what she’s saying. The people here are just unlike any other I’ve ever personally encountered. And it isn’t necessarily in a good or bad way. Things are just so different here.

And the reason that my husband and I have had this discussion multiple times is because he’s obviously from another country, and not only from another country but when they came to the states, they lived all over the place. He has firsthand knowledge regarding the fact that people’s personalities vary from state to state. And something that we’ve both sort of encountered, in Pasco County most especially, is that our caliber of friendships seem to have dissipated. My husband was aggrieved a bunch of times by a bunch of people and he was even robbed by someone who was a fellow firefighter at his firehouse. He kept saying after his station allowed that criminal activity engaging man child to come back, “How am I supposed to expect this man to have my back in a fire? He stole from me!” (The sweet irony of all of this is when he turned himself in for stealing from the man who helped him out and gave him a place to stay, he was crying in his mugshot. What a lily-livered wuss.)

 

And while I’m not here to wage a war on the state of Florida, I have to say that I’ve endured some really strange things since living here too. And to be fair, not all of my offenders were Florida born and bred and in fact, a lot of the really awful people in my life are from the New Jersey area. (Don’t even get me started on that wretched state.) I don’t know if it’s the lackadaisical nature of the people here, if it’s because the weather makes people feel like they’re on a permanent vacation, or if it’s because Florida is just generally a more “relaxed” state but for some unknown reason, it’s like no one knows how to treat anyone. Sure, there are garbage people everywhere. There are good and bad in all areas of the world. But even driving to work and watching the way people want to actually pull over and murder each other astounds me. I was actually driving home the other day, in my neighborhood, and witnessed this huge argument over tailgating. The person being tailgated actually jumped out of his car and ran down the sidewalk after the other individual. All while holding a cigarette. They were yelling back and forth about beating each other down and finally the man with the cigarette, who never put it down by the way, screamed out the other driver’s license plate number and said he was calling the cops.

And I’m over here just trying to get home to my sweet pit bull. I’m like, can we move this along? I have a locked up dog to set free!

It's all just nonsense. And I don’t know if it’s just me but I feel like it literally surrounds me. People are just very strange here. They seem to be extremely disrespectful, lacking of any kind of respect for others, and either harshly abuse their kids or don’t discipline them at all. Please tell me if I’m out of line here. And then go ahead and buy your groceries at Walmart one time and tell me how wrong I am…

Be leery of silence. It doesn’t mean you won the argument. Often, people are just busy reloading their guns. –Shannon L. Alder

And so over time, with this consistency of just being disappointed and played by people, after continually witnessing the lies that come out of allegedly educated individuals’ mouths, after stressing and replaying every conversation in my head because I’m chronically worried about what I did wrong, I came to a new conclusion. I could spend what will probably end up being days of my life worrying about fixing my problems with people that are supposed to be my friends or I could just not. I could keep trying to worm my way into their lives when they’ve made it clear that they don’t respect me or I could just not do that. I could continue to be supportive of them when they decide to come crawling out of the woodwork because they realize that I was probably the only genuine friend they ever had or I could just not. I could incessantly allow them to disrespect my marriage and treat me like some non-affluent version of Annabella Sciorra in season 3 of The Sopranos or I could just say, “You know what? No.”

I could continually allow all of these things to disrupt my life or I could let these people know that my give a damn’s busted. The reality is that I can’t continue to be walked all over, I can’t allow people to continually and intentionally disrespect me, and I can’t continue a friendship with someone who won’t even have a discussion about it. My time is too precious to be lied to, it’s way too valuable to be ignored, and life is way too short to be continually disrespected by anyone, much less the people that supposedly care about you. Maybe that makes me too sensitive or maybe it makes me a bad bitch; I haven’t really decided yet.

One of my biggest struggles with this is my need to always “be the bigger person”. I don’t really know why but for me that means a variety of communicative things. It could be that I’m willing to give the other person a chance to explain themselves after something really stupid happened. It could be that I reach out after a long silence because I feel like staying cold and angry is just a waste of time. It could be that I like or comment on a photo that belongs to someone I really can’t stand the goddamn sight of. But somehow showing a little bit of appreciation for some nonsense picture they post makes me feel like I’m being the bigger person. It makes me feel like I’m trying to be kind, like I’m working to be a positive person above all things and despite whatever has happened.

And again, as selfish as this sounds, this is more for me than it is for them. Because I like being a good person. Because I like being the type of person that people remember as a nice girl. I want to be recalled as pleasant, easy-going and nice to be around. Not as someone who is holding such a strong grudge that they can’t even like a stupid Instagram photo. That’s just not me. I mean, no wonder people are always screaming and protesting about equality and human rights; everybody seems to hate everybody!

But I don’t know, sometimes I think it’s just stupid. Sometimes I think this kind of generosity is really lost on people. Sometimes I think that no matter what I try to do to “be the bigger person” or to be a “nice person”, it comes across as pathetic and is obviously underappreciated. Sometimes I have to agree with my husband when he says things like, “People are just assholes sometimes,” or “Men are just dogs, Kate. No one knows how to treat anyone in this country.”

It’s really just kind of an ongoing battle and when you care about human nature and people in general, it can be really stressful. I don’t want to be that person that’s unwilling to be pleasant about an ex-boyfriend getting married. I don’t want to be that snarky bitch that is reluctant to show a little support for a former frenemy trying to get healthy. The way I see it, as long as they’re straight with me and as long as they’re respectful to me (and that absolutely includes respecting my marriage), then I’m more than willing to move past things to give a courtesy like on Instagram. Or to smile at them when I bump into them in the produce section at Publix.

You know what? As long as they’re happy!

But I go back and forth because sometimes I think that certain people really don’t deserve it. Some individuals just aren’t worthy of that nicety and honestly, some people just don’t care either way. You could give them one of your kidneys and they would still talk to you like you’re a piece of garbage. That’s just the unfortunate part about human nature I guess. Especially when you’re like me and you just want everything to be gravy because seriously, what’s gained from being a crotchety, miserable creature?

Wrinkles and no one to get pedicures with, that’s what!

And I’m always telling myself: Well, I did what’s best with this situation. I was the bigger person. I refused to be bitter and disrespectful and you know what? Even those people in my life that I want absolutely nothing to do with, people like my abuser, for example, I hope he’s happy. I hope he’s good to his family and I hope he’s happy. That’s all you can really hope for anybody, right?

Moral of the Crazy: And honestly, I feel like I’ve been struggling with this more frequently. This whole premise of whether or not to just let things go or stand up for myself seems to be something of a prevalent theme in my life as of late. I’ve struggled with it at work, trying to decide if I should just be pleasant because it’s the workplace, even though I am sometimes talked down to and gossiped about. I’ve struggled with it in my immediate inner circle with the new baby coming, trying to decide if I should just let things go for the sake of my child or really stand up for myself because I feel some things are unacceptable. I’ve even struggled with it with some of my friends in the last couple years or so, debating on whether or not I should smack some sense into people or just breathe and let things pass because they’re my friends and I should love them not matter what.

I had one friend awhile back that I felt I was really close with. I was under the impression that we had similar upbringings and personalities (but now I’m not so sure), I was excited to have an intellectual equal, someone who loved to read as vivaciously as I did and actually went to school for journalism. (Well, allegedly.) We had worked together previously and we had what I thought was this really awesome, co-ed friendship. But then things got all weird.

I seriously don’t know what happened but things got twisted. I think that what was happening was he wanted a little more than I could give. I would get frustrated and say things like, “I’m married; I love my husband. That’s not what this is.” In most friendships, even the ones between men and women, I would have expected him to say something like, “I completely understand and I apologize for offending you,” or “I’m sorry if that joke was inappropriate but it was just that: a joke. My feelings for you are purely platonic.” But that’s not what happened.

I was attacked continually because I stood up for myself. Because after letting a few things go by and finally getting sick of, what I considered, his absolutely unjustified and inappropriate behavior, I said, “You know what? No.” And I swear to Christ, friends, I have never been (or felt) so disrespected by anyone in my entire life. I have never been talked to, in my entire life, the way that person, who was allegedly one of my closest friends, spoke to me when I set him straight.

And I’m a survivor of domestic violence.

(And just for some clarity: I strongly believe that in really, really good friendships, especially between men and women, I don’t feel like you should have to have that come to Jesus meeting very often, if ever. But if you do, I feel like it should be handled with class and understanding because after all, you are friends right? Who else would better understand you than someone who’s supposed to be your “friend”? But whatever; it’s neither here nor there.)

What I’ve learned from all of this complete nonsense is that sometimes, neither answer seems right. And sometimes the people who claim to really care about you just don’t. I also learned that my husband is absolutely right: Sometimes men are just dogs and if you actually are happy in your romantic relationship, maybe they just feel threatened by that. (Which is basically the dumbest thing I’ve heard all day but look, this is Florida; I’ve seen stranger things than men getting bent out of shape over a girl refusing to cheat on her husband.)

And to be fair, I don’t know if it was that I was catching him on a bad bunch of days or if he really felt so slighted by my refusal to engage in anything extracurricular that he deemed his behavior worthy because of how awful I apparently was. Regardless, we obviously aren’t friends anymore (and that ship has long since sailed, to be honest; even I’m not that forgiving) but because I’m not a cliché and I want to be the bigger person, I sometimes want to just throw a courtesy like on his Instagram to let him know that while I don’t want to be friends with him anymore, I’m over it all. I refuse to be talked to like a piece of garbage by someone who was absolutely disrespectful over and over again but I’m over it. I’m done with it.

And you know, it’s like my husband always says: Maybe none of it matters. Maybe some people are just meant to be in your life for a brief stint of time and then they’re just meant to fade out. Maybe one of my problems is that I get so attached to people and really invested in their life and our alleged friendship that I’m unwilling to address problems until they come to an ugly head. Maybe I’m too forgiving, too willing to just let things go and look past stuff that’s borderline insulting because I’m not the type of person to get mad over every little thing. But there again, maybe that’s why people continually take advantage of me and then lose their shit when I actually stand up for myself. Maybe it really shocks them to the point of no other appropriate response.

I guess I’m just getting closer and closer to the point where I’m unfazed by anyone’s behavior. I’m getting further past the point of thinking that people think like I do, that everyone is selfless and thinks about other people besides themselves. And although the realization is really a sad one, it’s somewhat comforting to know that I can take care of myself. And if that means eliminating the lower caliber people from my life because they’re insensitive, disrespectful assholes, then I’m okay with it.

And similarly, if being pleasant to the people who have scorned me is something that makes me feel better because I like being an upbeat, positive person, then that’s what I’m going to do. I’m not going to harbor a grudge just to satisfy them. I’m going to continue doing me; I’m going to be that same chipper, somewhat neurotic, avid coffee drinker I’ve always been and they can just deal with it.

I mean, it’s just like Bob Marley said, “The truth is that everyone’s going to hurt you; you’ve just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” And maybe it’s okay to experiment with that if you find that you’re getting something from the friendship or the relationship. But at the same time, you have to stick up for yourself because no one else is going to do that for you. I also think there’s a big difference between putting up with nonsense that’s workable and just relentlessly taking abuse because you think someone is important to you.

I think the bottom line is that you should want to be the bigger person. You should want to be agreeable and the person who doesn’t snap over little, unimportant things. But you should also have the reputation where your niceness only runs so far. It should be pretty well known that you’ve got some lines that are un-crossable, that you will be assertive if the moment calls for it, and that above all things, you have the utmost respect for yourself.  

Maybe my give a damn’s busted but maybe that’s only because I’ve been running on empty with so many people, trying to salvage some kind of human decency. The reality is that I care about you, even if you’ve been a hurtful dunce to me. Even if things are no longer what I consider civil between us, I want what’s best for you. (And in some cases that’s the realization that your insensitive behavior is unacceptable and that perhaps, someone more important than me will help you see that.) I don’t want anyone to struggle or go to jail for tax evasion, even if they were total dickholes to me. I don’t want anyone to die of a broken heart or any kind of cancer, even if they cheated on, lied to, or abused me. I just want everyone to co-exist very nicely.

But obviously this isn’t a perfect world. I think it’s important to remember during struggles like these that it isn’t the circumstances you’ve been dropped in; it’s the way you react to them. Be the bigger person, friends, even if it kills you. I promise you’ll start sleeping better at night.

If not, there’s always melatonin.

You can crawl back home; say you were wrong. Stand out in the yard and cry all night long. Go ahead and water the lawn. My give a damn’s busted. –JoDee Messina, My Give a Damn’s Busted 

Follow me at my twitter page @thatcrzk8 for more updates and rants about my neurotic abnormalities and celebrity obsessions. Be sure to subscribe to my up and coming YouTube channel to stay up to date on the things that grind my gears, specials about domestic violence awareness, and reasons I love my South African, jerky making husband! New videos posted every week!