No Monday Matinee...Just Me...

August 26, 2013

I have decided not to do a Monday Matinee for today. To be perfectly honest with you, I am a little bit too angry and hurt right now to even think straight when it comes to doing research for a movie from years ago that the majority of people have already seen.

Though before I continue, I just really want to stress one thing. My anger and hurt is NOT direct to any of you reading this blog right now. You guys have been absolutely lovely to me these past couple of years. Your consistent support by reading the blog each day, as well as the occasional comment offering up your thoughts and kudos...I gotta tell you, that means the world to me. I really am very appreciative towards all of you. I honestly don't know if I would have made this blog last over two years if it weren't for you.

Therefore, I hope all of you can understand why I'm giving up the Monday Matinee for this week. I'm sure that next week, I will have an appropriate topic for discussion which will cause you to grab a nice bowl of hot buttered popcorn and a Kit Kat bar the size of a plank of wood.

This week though, I just don't have it in me.

I do apologize for the tone that this blog will likely take. I've had a bit of an upset in my personal life and I really have no other way to get my feelings clear about it all than posting it here on this very blog...for several hundred people to read and make judgement.

I know it might seem a bit odd to some of you. I guess in some manner, I have been using this blog as part of a pop culture project, but also as part of my own self-therapy. As you might have gathered from my blogs, I've had to deal with quite a few barriers and obstacles in my past that not a lot of others have experienced. And while I've been mostly honest about what has happened to me and how I've overcome it, there's been one thing that I have been hesitant to really talk about.

Until an incident happened this past week that prompted me to actually be one hundred per cent truthful about how I feel.

Now, the specifics of what happened are not really important in the who, what, where, when, and why of the situation. All you need to know is this. You know that saying that goes something along the lines of “don't lend money to a family member”? Well, that is the crux in which our story begins. I loaned someone close to me some money (not the first time that this has happened, might I add), and well...things spun out of control some time after that.

I am currently on what I would consider to be on the “losing end” of a family feud, and for the life of me, I don't even understand how it got so ugly so fast. The only thing that I do know is that words were said, feelings were hurt, and the end result is that half of my family will not have anything to do with me.

And, damn it, I'm mad about that. So mad, I'm showing it in blazing red font. Oh, I'm so furious I could kick something!

The sad thing is that it was a misunderstanding between two of my family members regarding the money. One of them asked a simple question, and that got the snowball rolling. Soon after, another family member who really had no business getting involved in the conflict decided to put their two cents in, and sided with the family member who was in conflict with me over this business, and now I feel unfairly ganged up upon.

And, damn it, I don't deserve that. In fact, I expect better from people who are supposedly blood-related to me.

And therein lies the problem.

Now, note that I haven't actually revealed what relation each of the feuding family members are to me. That's because in the grand scheme of things, it's a moot point. None of my family members even know that I even do this blog, or even have commented on the fact that I do write every day, so I highly doubt that they'll see this anyway. I'm purposely leaving it ambiguous on here because I don't set out to hurt people on purpose, nor do I want to make people feel like heels in a public venue. So, that is why I will be keeping their identities private here.

But in the slight chance that they end up stumbling upon it, at least they will actually get the opportunity to actually hear (or in this case, read) what I have to say instead of gossiping behind my back and purposely putting me on a guilt trip in a last ditch effort to elicit sympathy and continue to make me out to be the bad guy.

News flash. I'm not the bad guy. Not this time. Not ever.

And maybe once you actually cool down, start thinking rationally, and want to have a calm and civil conversation with me about it, then maybe I will be interested in hearing what you have to say. Until then, I'm perfectly content with keeping up this silent treatment because I am stressed out enough without adding unnecessary drama to the list. I need people who will build me up and make me feel good about myself. Both of you who have decided to turn against me know more than anyone how hard a time I have had with trying to find my self-worth. The last thing that I expected from either of you was that you would end up hurting me more than any childhood bully ever did.

And yet, that's exactly what have done. You have put me back in that cage of self-loathing all over again. All because of a misunderstanding that I wanted to clear up, but neither of you would take the time out to actually listen to me and hear me out.

But I guess that if there is even a shred of consolation here that can be found, you can at least take comfort in knowing that you're not the only ones who have made me feel this way.

And, this leads to the one thing that I really have to confess. I don't even care what people think of me after this. If people want to say I'm over-reacting, go ahead. If people want to call me a wimp, go ahead. But I need to do this for myself in order to try and stop the pain that I am feeling once and for all. The pain that I've held onto almost all my life.

As pathetic as this may sound...I don't have any truly close friends to depend on. At least not in my geographic area, that is.

It's like a really vicious cycle when it comes to making friends in most cases. Whenever I would get really close to someone, something would happen, and the friendship would end. I'll admit that sometimes the cause of the friendship ending was my fault...and sometimes, it was theirs...and sometimes there was no control over it at all (they'd move away, for instance).

But for me, it became a bit of a recurring theme. Whenever people got too close, something would happen and they would all just go away.  There have been exceptions to the rule, of course, but for the most part, this is all that I have ever really known.

A couple of kids in my third grade class and I were quite inseparable for a time, and we hung out every chance we got...but by seventh grade they became my worst enemies...and to this day, I honestly don't know why. I made a really good friend in my college years and for a few years after I left, we exchanged snail mail. But some time ago, the letters stopped coming, and again, I wondered what I had done to make her stop writing to me.

And then there was my friend Alex who I really respected and liked, who ended up leaving me too – only in this case, it was death that took him away, and there wasn't a whole lot that could be done.

But the point is that all my life, I've had to deal with people walking out of my life – sometimes without any notice whatsoever – and it makes me feel really bad about myself. In fact, I think a lot of the reason why my self-worth was in the negative numbers was because of the fact that so many people left me that I just simply started to stop trusting people.

Even now, years after all of this took place, I still live a rather lonely existence, and that is largely brought upon by the fact that I get so anxious when meeting new people. In fact, sometimes I admit that I come across as a bit cold when it comes to greeting new people because I worry that if I get too close, they'll eventually leave me behind like everyone else I know.  

That's the reason why I take friendship much more seriously than other people. To me, a true friendship and kinship with someone is worth more than all the gold, silver, and platinum in the whole entire world. To me, having a relationship like that is absolutely priceless.

I guess maybe in the long run, I've put such a high price on the value of friendship that I've made it so expensive that even I cannot afford it.

And I guess that's why I find the feud between myself and a couple of family members to be so difficult to take. You would think that of all people in the world, my family would understand the hardships and struggles with finding and maintaining friendships and relationships with people. Instead, they seem to have joined the rest of the crowd and have turned their backs on me too.

And, you know something? That's cold.

But again, maybe the writing was on the wall for a long time. In my family, I'm considered to be the odd duck. Most of my family had the opportunity to grow up together, whether it be my cousins, or my nephews and niece. I was born in one of the “dry spells” of the family. There is literally nobody in my entire family that was born in the early 1980s. I am the only one. And, therefore, I couldn't relate to anyone else in my family as well as they could relate with each other. Whenever there were family gatherings, I was always the one sitting off to the side by myself playing my handheld electronic games because nobody else would talk to me. They all did their own thing, leaving me to my own devices, completely ignoring me.

At the time, I didn't think it was intentional. I thought that the “grown-ups” were just too busy with their own things. But I couldn't help but feel as though I was the “black sheep” of the entire family. Because I couldn't make friends as easily as some of the other kids, or because I was super sensitive about my feelings than the average child, or because of the fact that I often skipped school in my elementary and high school years because I needed a day off from the bullying, I thought that family members were unfairly judging me.

I thought that they thought that I was the problem. I certainly remember instances in which I got into it with family members in the past regarding school drama, and once again, I was made to feel absolutely guilty over how I was feeling even though I was absolutely in the right to feel however I wanted to feel at that moment. It wasn't right.

And, well...I guess the end result was that I kind of just suppressed all emotion from anyone. Including my family. I stopped trusting them as well, and I always had this sense of doubt that none of them had my best interests at heart.

The way I see it, I have only ever had two family members in my life who have always had my back, regardless of how badly I felt, or how bad I treated them when I was feeling sorry for myself. And, when those two family members pass on eventually, I feel as though I'm going to be completely alone in the world.

And that thought scares me to death.

I guess that is why I have come to the conclusion that I need to be my own best friend. I need to find the comfort and warmth within myself so I don't have to rely on other people to find it.

I mean, maybe there's a way that time will heal all wounds, and that maybe things can go back to how they were.

I'm just not ready to make that move right now.