This was driven home a couple of months ago when I went with a friend to a Karaoke bar to watch her perform (I am not into Karaoke myself. I haven't been since, in case you were worried about me.). I was playing pool in the back corner with five or six women my age, and for once in my life I was the only one with a boyfriend. Every one of them was talking about how rude men were, they were talking about the flaws of the men that were regulars, how none of them treated them with any respect, and how lonely and unhappy they were.
I listened to half an hour as these girls (all about 19 or so, none of them old enough to drink, but all in a bar) told story after story about boyfriends cheating on them, treating them like shit, guys they thought were friends fucking them then never speaking to them again, boyfriends that drank too much, and on and on and on. Every one of these guys was there, and these girls had met every one of these guys at this place. The kicker of it was, most of them were actively trying to meet someone, or break up another couple so they could bag the guy.
"Well," I said "What did you expect is going to happen? Every one of these guys you met here has made you miserable. Why are you still trying to meet men at this bar? Why are you surprised that the quality of men in bars isn't that great?"
They hemmed and hawed. One said that all of her friends hung out here and it was the only place she really got to see them.
"Well," I said "If they don't tell when your boyfriend is cheating on you, they aren't very good friends anyway. If they were all part of this drama, why are you still hanging out with them? You just told me they're not good people, they don't stick up for you or by you when you're in trouble. So why are you hanging around here, where all the men are bastards and losers, just so you can play pool with some people who don't really treat you all that well anyway?"
There was more hemming and hawing. She said she didn't know any other places to meet men.
"Geeks make good boyfriends, they're usually so happy to have a girlfriend at all they treat her pretty well. If you want to know I can tell you how and where to find geeks. Some of them are very sweet and cute, on top of all that, the only reason most of them are single is because they're shy. Shy men aren't likely to cheat on you. Most of them have pretty good jobs and make okay money, too. You'll go from one woman in a room full of women, trying to find one good man who may or may not be there, to one woman in a room full of good men trying to pick the one who you like the most. It's a good place to be."
They listened, but were obviously unhappy with me. None of them asked me where to find these cute, single, job-having, not drinking too much, not likely to cheat on you, sweet geeks. They didn't want any solutions to their problems. They wanted someone to nod while she bitched about how LIFE was doing bad things to HER and she was the VICTIM. Bullshit! The universe wasn't being shitty to them, they all had a thing for unhealthy and dramatic relationships, and didn't want to change because of drama addiction. If you want to stay in fucked up situations and throw yourself at unhealthy man after unhealthy man, FINE, but ADMIT IT. Own your own shit. Own your own choices. YOUR CHOICES affect what's around you more than anything else. If you surround yourself with unhealthy, unhappy, backstabbing people, even though they are your `friends', your going to be unhealthy, unhappy, and someone is going to stab you in the back. They're going to pull you down when you start to make your life better. Don't think otherwise, that's just how that goes.
Life is what you make of it. Every day you wake up, you have a chance to completely change EVERYTHING. You're not a slave to your past choices, and you can make good choices for your future. Pretending that life is otherwise is coming up with excuses for your laziness, an unwillingness to take responsibility for your own actions and choices, and a refusal to see that YOU are in charge of YOUR life, and YOU are what's fucking it up. `Society', `The System', `White Men' or `Bad Boyfriends' don't control your life, they don't have the power to. Trying to push the responsibility of having a good life onto something outside your self (or blaming your fuck ups on something extrinsic) is just that- pushing around blame.
Yeah, your life may have sucked so far, you Mom might have gotten drunk and beaten you as a kid and your boyfriend might have given you the clap, but you know what? You're a grown up now. People have had it a lot worse than you and made it just fine. The System didn't hold them down. If you really want your life to get better, cut your abusive Mom out of your life, stop dating shitty men, don't hang out with friends who drag you down, get yourself some skills so you can get a good job and make something of yourself. If you want to you can choose to stay where you are, pointing your finger at everyone else and bitching about how unfair everything is, or you can go out and do something with your life. Just don't expect me to stick around and listen to you whine if that's what you want to do, you're not a victim and I'm not going to put up with that shit from you.
