Saturday, February 13, 2010

In with the good, out with the bad.

Or, is it supposed to be "In with the new, out with the old"? Eh, whatever, they both work.

Monday morning I woke up to this email:

I happened to stumble upon your blog. I saw in one of your post you had some wonderful things to say about your grandmother, especially when she is dying! Seems like you take after her in regards to her "attention grabbing ways." I hope for your grandmother's sake she doesn't read your blog. I learned a lot about the person you are from reading your blog. The cursing was especially helpful to show your character not to mention all of the complaining you do. I think you hit the nail on the head in your post about your cars in stating you were a brat. That is probably an understatement. Oh and it takes a real woman to say her dog is her best friend, above her child and husband!
And finally, I WOULDN'T EXPECT ANYTHING LESS FROM SOMEONE THAT VOTED FOR OBAMA!!! Next time educate yourself about the platforms for each candidate or do us all a favor and DON'T VOTE! Hope life gets better for you and you can stop your bitching and realize there are billions of other people that have it worse than you. YOU SELFISH BITCH!!!!

Although this person pretended to just "stumble upon my blog", I know exactly who sent it. I have ways of knowing things. It is the age of technology. 
She is a ex "friend", who I barely knew. Her and I had a falling out months ago because I was choosing quality time with my husband and child rather than talking to her on the phone. Shocking, I know. If that makes me selfish, then yes, yes I am selfish and proud of it.

Anyway, I have a very weird reaction to things like this. I obsess about them. Maybe because I have this eminent need to be right, or maybe because it really hurts me and I want people to like who I am. Maybe both?
My initial reaction was to defend everything she said, in a response email; something like, "OMG. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW ME OR MY GRANDMA OR MY POLITICAL VIEWS OR WHO MY BEST FRIEND IS AND I'M NOT EVEN CLOSE TO BEING A NEGATIVE PERSON. MY GRANDMA ISN'T DYING!!!11", etc., but I thought that would be a bit defensive. Plus, I realize that I do put these posts on the world wide interwebs so I do open myself up for judgment and ridicule, which is a piece of this that I can't ignore.

Instead, I took this opportunity to figure out why I'm not great at processing these things, aside from the obvious of just being too sensitive. I really wanted to learn something from this and not react inappropriately. I know most of you are rolling your eyes, if you haven't stopped reading already, and saying, "Who cares! Let it go!". I wish I could, but I'm not built that way. Most of us say we don't care about what others think but I don't believe that to be the case. I think most of us really do care, in most situations. Maybe that's just me though.
Above all, I really want to teach Lily how to deal with things like this properly. Conflict management has never been a family forte.

So, this whole week, I thought about it, reread it a couple of times and analyzed what she said to me. I thought about my old relationship with this person, where it started, where I was in my life, what our friendship was like and how we interacted...which is when it really dawned on me...sometimes, it's the people I'm choosing in my life that are the issue, not really the situations that arise from knowing them. (This is probably quite obvious to some but I'm a slow emotional learner sometimes.) Not to say that these are bad people, just not the right people for me to be engaging with.

I once read that when you have a child you, knowingly or unknowingly, purge the people that shouldn't have been in your life to begin with, and the relationships that should have been there flourish. I have found that to be absolutely true. There just isn't any time for being petty or investing any emotions in negative energy.

So, what I brought out of this is that it really isn't conflict management that I need to instill in Lily as much as learning to identify people with good character to embrace. You have to find people that match where you are in your life and if you end up taking different paths, that's ok. Learn how to still cultivate that relationship and if that isn't possible, let it go.

This all sounds very simple on paper. How do you teach someone to do this? Lead by example, I suppose.

6 comments:

Melaina25 said...

Seriously? Whomever it is it sounds like they had a large helping of crazy sauce before they wrote that email. Just ignore the crazies!

Jessica said...

I'm glad you were able to process this and hope you can put it behind you now. It's BS anyway.

Chrissie said...

Nice thoughts V. Trust your gut, and she'll learn to trust hers. :)

Christy said...

omg! What a crazy person. Seriously? Who has the time for that kind of nonsense. Get a life crazy person! haha
Processing is key. Glad you found some peace with that and can move on. I had to do that recently..not easy, but for the best.
(((hugs)))

NicanDrew said...

Ha! Well first off.. I hope she "stumbles" across this comment to see that her reply was absolutely absurd! And like you, I agree with the fact that people do care what others think of them, anyone who says they don't... isn't telling the truth. Your honesty is what makes your blogs awesome to read, and also makes me feel normal (& others too I'm sure) Pshh...whatever!

Anonymous said...

Everything they said!

"I once read that when you have a child you, knowingly or unknowingly, purge the people that shouldn't have been in your life to begin with, and the relationships that should have been there flourish."

And I think this is awesomely put. And true.