BACKWARDS, SAD, NEGATIVE WORLD

 

This world is so screwed up and twisted that sometimes it’s agony for me to just walk out the front door. Well, I don’t mean the world itself…but the people in it. Over the last few years I’ve started to realize an astonishingly sad fact: people love negativity. They are drawn to it, they bathe in it, they feed on it. In my life, a lot of people have criticized me as being negative but the sad truth is THEY LOVE IT MORE THAN I DO!!!

 

If I present a theory like this, I ought to be willing to back it up with examples…and believe me, I have quite a few.

 

First one that comes to mind: this friend I had out in Denver. Let’s just call her A. A and I became friend because we had similar musical tastes. After hanging out for a while, A told me a story about a guy she dated. He sounded like a typical bad boy jerk that all women seem to go after. He owned a tattoo parlor, and she lived with him in an apartment above his business. More often than not, A and her boyfriend spent their time together arguing….which often led to physical abuse. Yet still she stayed with him.

 

Okay, you are probably thinking, “Stop right there…that’s enough.” But, shockingly, it continues!

 

All this melodrama came to a head when A woke up one day to find her face covered in dried blood (from a bloody nose), as well as discovering one of her legs was bruised purple from ankle to hip. If you saw just her leg, you would have thought her natural skin color was purple. And to top it all off, she had no memory of how this happened…but her first guess was that it had something to do with her boyfriend.

 

And guess what happened?

 

Nothing. She stayed with her boyfriend for at least two more months.

 

Upon hearing this story I was stunned. I said to A, “I can’t believe anyone would treat you so shitty. I mean, I think you’re cool as hell.”

 

When she heard this, I saw an uneasy look come over A’s face. She said thanks, but hesitantly. From time to time (not too often, mind you) after that, I would let A know how cool I thought she was and how important her friendship was to me. She would say, “It’s weird being complimented. I don’t know how to handle it.”

 

Within a month or two, instead of figuring out how to handle it, A decided to just stop being my friend. She wouldn’t return my calls, would hardly say a word if I saw her online…and all because compliments…POSITIVE REMARKS…were too much to handle, yet she could keep dating a guy who left her with bloody noses, bruised legs, and blackouts.

 

Another example: another girl I know…let’s call her H…moved back to upstate New York sometime around last December. Ever since she was back, we talked about trying to hang out. She told me she was constantly busy and wouldn’t really be able to see me. Okay, fair enough…but shortly after she said this, I ran into a mutual friend of ours online.

 

I said to this mutual friend, “What have you been up to?”

 

She replied, “School, work, hanging out with H.”

 

Hanging out with H? But I thought she was always busy?

 

So I wrote an email to H. It was nothing nasty, just an email that basically said, “I miss you, let’s really try to hang out.” I figured if she was hanging out with the other friend that her schedule must have cleared up.

 

A week and a half went by. No response. So I let her rip…wrote an upset (but not angry or nasty) email saying I knew she’d been hanging out with others even though she was so “busy,” and that I guess it meant she didn’t value keeping my friendship as much as I did hers.

 

And lo and behold, the “busy” girl suddenly found free time to get back to me with a length, thought-out reply! She couldn’t get back to the sweet, endearing “I miss you” letter, but responded to the pissy-bitchy one in record time.

 

These are just two examples. I could give so many more. Sometimes I conduct my own little experiments. I go into an Internet chatroom and try talking to people…asking wha’ts up, what kind of hobbies they have, what they think of the latest news stories, etc. No replies. But then I let out a negative remark…racist and sexist ones are always fun…and all of a sudden everyone in the room is all about talking to me.

 

It’s a sad world to live in, and it’s growing darker with each passing day.