I’m not a very patient person. I have very little patience for the shifting of blame and no patience at all for people’s personal bullshit. I don’t play mind games and I call people on it when they try to play them with me. I don’t like apologies because I think that if it’s something that you need to apologize for, and is something for which you have apologized in the past, then an apology is meaningless. I don’t want words, I want you to STOP THAT BEHAVIOR.
All that said, I am an empathetic person. I will listen with sympathy and (as hard as it is for me to do) not offer unsolicited advice. If you are my friend, then I am automatically on your side and loyal to whatever cause we’re fighting for in the moment. I will afford you more patience than most others get.
However…
The people who consider me a friend generally do so because of (or maybe sometimes despite) my opinionated honesty. I try to rein it in, I really do, and make every effort to wait until I am *asked* because at least then they know what they’re in for. Sometimes, though, sometimes I see the same bad judgment, the same destructive behavior, the same shifting of the blame and I am truly COMPELLED to meddle where I haven’t been invited and that’s not good.
You see, it’s not that I’m giving an *opinion*, it’s that I wind up pointing out a very harsh and painful truth and people don’t take that well.
But _I_ get tired of hearing the same drama play out with a new cast of characters. I become drained and rather intolerant. There comes a point where, when the same things keep happening, you HAVE to question the choices YOU make instead of blaming the rest of the world.
It’s like this: I was a secretary for 5 long years. I bounced around from job to job and every single job I worked made me miserable. It was never MY fault, though… it was always the people I worked for, or the other people in the office, or the people on the phone who were whining or screaming or whatever. It was never ME, how could it possibly be anything to do with me, I’m wonderful.
Except that it KEPT happening. And each new job would start out so much better, but within a few months I was back having the EXACT same problems and making the EXACT same complaints and feeling EXACTLY as miserable as I had when I left the previous job(s). There came a point where I had to face the fact that maybe it wasn’t everyone else. Maybe it wasn’t just bad luck that I was always finding the worst jobs with people who would treat me badly and want me to do things that made me miserable. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t the rest of the world "out to get me".
Maybe it was me.
And it WAS me. I’m not cut out for secretarial work. It has nothing to do with me as a person, or the people I work with, I am just not suited to be in that role. I need something more challenging and, honestly, less taken for granted. So I switched careers and made a change, but before that could happen I had to take on the responsibility and quit shifting the blame.
The problem is that a very dear friend of mine is in the middle of this cycle and it’s becoming extremely destructive. Not only do I find myself listening to the same outraged tales over and over again (with different names involved), but when it finally gets to the point where she simply can’t take it anymore, she runs away. She literally runs away from the entire situation, packing her bags, leaving her "home" and moving to a completely different location where she no longer has to even consider the idea of possibly running into those people on the street.
For nearly a decade, I have been on her side. I have been loyal and true and outraged on her behalf, but I only just realized that she’s in a holding pattern and that I am just so tired of having the same damned conversation and listening to the same damn problems and allowing her to shift that blame again and again and again while she claims that she has no fault and is constantly surrounded by emotional vampires.
And again, I have no patience for bullshit. These toxic people are the same kind of people that I have cut out of my life when they start to drain me, use me, dump on me, treat me badly… I have NO tolerance for that sort of thing and if all I get in return are mere words and apologies with no change in behavior, I’m done. I don’t need that. I don’t have the time or the energy to invest in Other People’s Drama.
And yet… I do it for those I care about. At least, I do until it gets to the point where I realize that it’s destructive and then I wind up here.
Because I don’t play games, because I have no patience for this sort of thing, because I can see that this is a cycle that needs to be broken… I’m trying to figure out what to say/how to say it/if I should even make the attempt and I don’t think it’s going to go over well. The truth is that I’m pretty sure that no matter how I try to phrase it, I’m going to piss her off, maybe to the point where she stops talking to me for an extended period of time.
That would suck, but at the same time, I can’t help but wonder which would suck more, losing her for some time because she’s pissed off that I told her the truth, or losing her forever because I couldn’t keep up the patience required to not say anything at all.