Have you ever met someone in your life that you just couldn’t stand? I have seen a girl who has so much talent and won’t put it to good use. She bothers me so much and yet I find her interesting still. It is just rather weird. Her real name will not be disclosed; instead I will replace her name with a fictional one. I’ll refer to her as Jane.
Jane is a girl with many problems. For starters, she’s a BIG hypocrite. Jane talks of how people are so deceitful and how a lot cannot be trusted. With that said, she proceeds to talk about the secrets of some of her friends with others and says how stupid they are. When I heard her talk foully of her own friends, I knew she’d talk bad about me as well, and started limiting my information given to her. Jane then decided I cannot be trusted, but didn’t tell me this. She, instead, would limit her information back at me (anything about her anyway, she’d continue talking bad about people she supposedly loved or cared about). Later on, she talked about how she has bipolar disorder and cannot help mood changes. I thought that might explain some of her actions and talking smack about people. She continued her bad-mouthing of people still, and I noticed how she did it more often now. I confronted her finally about all this and she used her mental disorder as her scapegoat. I didn’t know much about bipolarity however, so I couldn’t find a very good argument and apologized. Jane then stopped talking to me for a period of time. I figured oh well, she’s just trouble anyways. If this really was her bipolarity that made her do these things, wouldn’t she at least apologize when she realized what she has done? Maybe it had something to do with her actions, but she could do better than shoving the reasons on her illness all the time…
Jane eventually started talking to me again, and she wasn’t talking about her friends with me anymore. I thought, “Hey, she changed.” I was sort of right. She stopped needing to talk about her friends… since she now started the self-pity act. I first fell for it like a sack of bricks. Jane talked about how she hated herself; she felt she was ugly, and stupid. The fact was she’s pretty, artistic, and very intelligent (Her school average is higher than mine). When I told her that, she said she felt better and thanked me. So I thought I did a good deed for the day. I go home and log online to a website called, “Livejournal.com,” where you post about your life online and how you feel. I happen to be on Jane’s friend’s list of her journal so I see her post. It says she hates herself, she thinks she’s ugly, and believes she’s stupid. She added a, “I need a hug” at the end of her message. I checked her comments and everyone that knew her online has posted a comment feeding her ego saying she’s beautiful and such. She posted this AFTER I got through telling her the same things… I realized she was just trying to get attention. So I stopped feeding her ego, and of course that got her to stop contact with me for another period of time.
When she started talking to me, AGAIN, she was no longer degrading herself (as often). Instead… she went serious… Jane posted on her Live-journal that she wanted to kill herself; she hates herself and would feel better dead. Of course, there’s a whole bunch of comments on how she shouldn’t, and people were even offering to spend time with her. I was one of them, as suicide is a BIG thing, and I don’t want to take a chance that she’d actually hurt herself. Later on, she feels better about things, and I stop panicking. A week later she says she wants to kill herself. Same cycle repeated with people saying she shouldn’t, et cetera et cetera. She did the “I’m going to commit suicide” post almost every other week, and I stopped caring. She sounded like she was just doing this all for attention. Jane didn’t care about my comments either, she simply deleted my response to her posts and only kept the ones from people she liked. That just got me to not care about her much anymore. All she is doing is seeking attention and then blaming it on her illness, hiding behind it as if it’s her shield.
“Why did you call me a jerk?”
–“Oh sorry, my bipolarity was acting up.”
“Why are you talking bad things about your friends?”
–“Oh, it must be my bipolar disorder.”
I caught on to this. This made me become precautious as to never end up like her. Constantly using an illness as her scapegoat, talking crud about her ‘friends,’ and going as far to say she’ll commit suicide just so she can have some attention? This girl did change me. I refused to talk crap behind my real friends’ backs. If someone even starts making fun of one of my friends who happens to be friends with them as well, I just walk away or tell them to stop dissing my friends. If I have a problem with one of my friends, I will straight out tell them (not meanly of course). I also made sure I wouldn’t go degrading myself for people’s attention, and kept my opinions of myself to myself. If someone ASKED, I would then tell them honestly. And about the suicide threatening… never would be a problem for me. I’ve made my mind set up about suicide: Never do it. If there’s one person, just ONE person who cares about you and you go kill yourself, the hurt and mental torture they go through is far crueler than any pain you could be going through. Plus, there’s the old cliché, “Suicide is just a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” In a way, I have to thank Jane for helping me realize these things. I have the self-satisfaction that I can be a better person than her now. She is still doing all these things, and then some, but she doesn’t bother me. She’s just another person for me not to be concerned with.
At least we can all learn from her.
ReplyDeleteI hate a saying that states no one can learn from someone else's mistakes. I think the opposite is true. And we could all benefit from such learnings.
Love this blog post! A really interesting read! Followed!
ReplyDeleteUgh I knew a person like this once. Luckily, I don't see them anymore, I guess that's one good thing about University.
ReplyDelete