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carose59I'm Shorter Than People Think I Am. I'm Not Actually Any Shorter Than I Am, But I Am Shorter Than People Think I Am.*
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Let me tell you a story.
Many years ago, I had a couple of friends: Killa and Ninon. We used to spend time on IM, talking and having a good time. I was having a good time anyway; what do I know about what anyone else was feeling?
After a while, we drifted apart.
Well. Things with Ninon got strange and sad and we stopped being friends.
Things with Killa . . . I still don't think I know. All I could ever put together was that on her top ten list of favorite people . . . I was number eleven or twelve. She liked me a lot, but not enough to spend time on because there were people in line ahead of me.**
What can you do? What can you ever do?
But one conversation we had has stuck with me all this time. Killa told me that one of the problems was that when we were IMing, I would try to keep her from signing off when she needed to.
I didn't say anything.
There wasn't anything to say. It wasn't true.
It was Ninon who would try to pressure Killa to stay. Part of it was that Ninon was convinced Killa's husband was abusing her emotionally and she was trying to keep her in a "safe" place. I didn't think too much of Killa's husband either***, but that was her business. She was an adult and she hadn't asked for help.
I had been so happy then. I'd loved those talks and I used to save them, thinking I would go back and read them over. After that conversation, I did go back, just to be sure, and I was right. So I could even have proved that it, but it wouldn't have changed anything. People decide who you are and that's it. That's who you are.
And if I'd shown her the IMs, I would just have been an obsessive who saved these conversations for years just to prove I was right. You can't win. So, like I say, I didn't say anything. But I knew everything was over, and it was.
*Bob Newhart
**It was a relief, really. Because having a friend tell you they like you, they really like you, only they're just always too busy to spend time with you is like having an affair with a married man. You keep hoping someday you'll get to be a real person in their life, but you never do. It wastes so much of your time and energy, and it's a cruel and cowardly way to treat someone.
***I've had a couple of friends who have done this same thing: talking about their husbands in a way that makes them sound awful. They say they love their husbands, but the only stories they tell are about how badly they're being treated. It leads one not to think well of these un-met husbands.
-:- -:- -:- -:-
Let me tell you a story.
Many years ago, I had a couple of friends: Killa and Ninon. We used to spend time on IM, talking and having a good time. I was having a good time anyway; what do I know about what anyone else was feeling?
After a while, we drifted apart.
Well. Things with Ninon got strange and sad and we stopped being friends.
Things with Killa . . . I still don't think I know. All I could ever put together was that on her top ten list of favorite people . . . I was number eleven or twelve. She liked me a lot, but not enough to spend time on because there were people in line ahead of me.**
What can you do? What can you ever do?
But one conversation we had has stuck with me all this time. Killa told me that one of the problems was that when we were IMing, I would try to keep her from signing off when she needed to.
I didn't say anything.
There wasn't anything to say. It wasn't true.
It was Ninon who would try to pressure Killa to stay. Part of it was that Ninon was convinced Killa's husband was abusing her emotionally and she was trying to keep her in a "safe" place. I didn't think too much of Killa's husband either***, but that was her business. She was an adult and she hadn't asked for help.
I had been so happy then. I'd loved those talks and I used to save them, thinking I would go back and read them over. After that conversation, I did go back, just to be sure, and I was right. So I could even have proved that it, but it wouldn't have changed anything. People decide who you are and that's it. That's who you are.
And if I'd shown her the IMs, I would just have been an obsessive who saved these conversations for years just to prove I was right. You can't win. So, like I say, I didn't say anything. But I knew everything was over, and it was.
*Bob Newhart
**It was a relief, really. Because having a friend tell you they like you, they really like you, only they're just always too busy to spend time with you is like having an affair with a married man. You keep hoping someday you'll get to be a real person in their life, but you never do. It wastes so much of your time and energy, and it's a cruel and cowardly way to treat someone.
***I've had a couple of friends who have done this same thing: talking about their husbands in a way that makes them sound awful. They say they love their husbands, but the only stories they tell are about how badly they're being treated. It leads one not to think well of these un-met husbands.