of Being a Nice Person

I know you know how this feels.

You're certain. You are so certain that you will argue with your friends about it. You are so absolutely positive that you know what you're talking about, that you're willing to put yourself out there for criticism. You just KNOW, right?

Then you find out that the entire time you've been defending them, they've been lying to you.

The mortification! The humiliation. You have to eat crow and you have to suffer through the embarrassment of knowing that the person you've been defending all this time is not at all the person you were certain you knew.

It's one of the top 10 worst feelings as a human, to realize that you cannot trust a person you love. I mean, they can trust you, right? You have told them pretty much everything there is to know about you. You have hid nothing about your life. You then assume, justifiably, that you know everything about them, too.

Trust me. You don't always know. What's worse, you may never know.

When a person gets comfortable lying to you, they will continue to lie. When there are no consequences for their behavior, they have no reason whatsoever to stop. See, here's the thing, you allowed them to say "I'm sorry" and come back into your life. They said they were sorry because they needed something from you, and you gave it to them because YOU are a good person, not because they are. Their apology meant NOTHING because they don't care about your feelings, they just needed a place to stay, or they needed you to buy them something or loan them some money or take care of something for them.

Bet! Then call them out on it. Haha that is the biggest laugh of all. They call YOU a liar, they tell YOU that YOU misunderstood, they tell YOU that YOU were the one making that mess up, I mean it's a litany of excuses instead of owning what they did. Then they tell all their flying monkeys that you're making up lies about them so you sound and start to feel crazier than they are. They screenshot your posts that remotely might sound like them, share that to their wall saying how you're "stalking" them and "victimizing" them with your passive/aggressive nonsense. Trust me, I've lived this before.

When they finally do, and eventually, if you hold out long enough, they will own (borrow) it, but it's temporary. It's just to shut you up. They are going to keep doing the thing, just piss them off and find out. They didn't stop cheating on you, drinking, using drugs, gambling or doing whatever it was they were lying about because they wanted to; they did it to shut you up so you'd keep enabling them. So you'd keep them safe while they were doing exactly what they wanted to do in the first place. What they say behind your back? That you're stupid. You're weak. You're also a control freak and manipulative because you won't blindly let them continue openly doing the thing they want to do. The things these people who claim to love you to your face say behind your back would make you shudder. They are vicious creatures and they legitimately despise you behind your back, but the next time they need something, they still have your phone number.

How bitter do I sound?

It might surprise you to know that I'm not bitter in the slightest. Actually, I learned valuable lessons from this sort of thing. I've been treated with an amount of disrespect in my adult life that is staggering, especially considering my personality. I have allowed the people I love to walk all over me because I'd rather be right in silence and live in peace than argue incessantly over things that will never be settled because they will literally NEVER admit they lied.

I get it. Pride is a sharp, jagged pill to swallow. When you can't do it, you just can't do it. I'll gulp mine down with some coffee, yeah, I was wrong. I was DEAD friggin wrong to assume I could make a difference in the life of someone who immediately and instantly proved to be disloyal. I was wrong to think I was strong enough to overpower the negative influences. I was wrong, freely admit it. Now, I'm wrong.....and done trying. That's not to say I don't love - because no power in heaven or earth could make me stop loving someone, but I am done trying to help.

Now, here you have to understand what makes you different from the people who will lie to you in order to get your "favor". Yeah, I know you don't believe little Billy or Sally will ever do you like that, but trust and believe if they have a friend like that or if they are born and raised by people like that, they will justify their behavior. Can you justify lying to someone's face in a way that could potentially hurt them or just outright hurts them? No. No, a normal person cannot, but these strange, soulless creatures? Yes, they totally can and sleep like a baby at night after doing it.

"My anxiety is acting up." No, ma'am, your guilty conscience is acting up because you lied about every single detail of your life since I met you.

"Oh, I just have the worst panic attacks when I'm faced with difficult situations." No, ma'am, you don't. You actually have memory skill issues because you cannot remember the lies you told that you will now have to cover on the "spot"!

I'm learning to distinguish between anxiety and just enormous liars.

I'm learning how to distinguish absolute brazen cowards from people who legit have anxiety, too.

Having anxiety is an actual problem and usually caused by years of childhood trauma. Now, I'm not saying these narcissistic compulsive liars don't have some childhood trauma, but once you reach a certain age, you can't use the childhood crap anymore. That dog don't hunt. At some point you just take responsibility for your own crap and deal with it so your emotional vomit doesn't stain your shirt.

Honestly, this year has been an eye-opener for me. I just thought my old nemesis was "bad". Pffffft. She's just a dusty old cooch trying to stay relevant in everyone's life (and failed miserably). No, ma'am, what she unleashed on the world is her legacy and she did not corner the market on being a BOLD FACED LIAR.

And two-faced? What the hell is that about? Why can't you just look someone in the face and tell them how you feel? Why do you have to exaggerate it beyond even the normal comprehension of the original detail, and then share it with people you know who are morons and easily influenced, and inflate it so it sounds like abuse and you're the victim, and entice them to verbally/socially bash the person? Why? Is it not just easier to bring your issues to the person directly, or via email, or via text or just a phone call - something? I mean, maybe the person doesn't know they're offending you. Perhaps the person you despise so much you could puke has no idea they're even bothering you. Maybe they don't care, but that's another matter. I get sick of two-faced people.

You know how I feel about things and about people. You know because I have told you. I have put it out there because I don't want there to be any questions about my loyalty or the way I feel about stuff.

There we are again, though. We're not all the same. Some of us have mature emotions that we express in a reasonable fashion because we know how disgusting it is to have someone else's emotional diarrhea to clean up. Then there are those people who just....and I mean really just DO....NOT....CARE if they hurt someone else. They sleep naked with a fan on at night knowing they've destroyed someone's life and they left the situation blaming the person they just absolutely crushed. There are no consequences enough to make them stop because they've gotten away with it their whole life. I'm not the morality police but those are the people I honestly want to punch in the mouth.

I know you know how this feels.

Then you find out that the entire time you've been defending them, they've been lying to you.

Trust me. You don't always know. What's worse, you may never know.

How bitter do I sound?

It might surprise you to know that I'm not bitter in the slightest. Actually, I learned valuable lessons from this sort of thing. I've been treated with an amount of disrespect in my adult life that is staggering considering my personality. I have allowed the people I love to walk all over me because I'd rather be right in silence and live in peace than argue incessantly over things that will never be settled because they will literally NEVER admit they lied.

I get it. Pride is a sharp, jagged pill to swallow. When you can't do it, you just can't do it.