People Issues @ MindSay

I think I need more simplicity  in my life,I am kind of growing  weary  with the complicated people in my life,don't get me wrong I  enjoy people who are not boring,but having to be concerned with all their issues is getting a bit tiresome and quite frankly I am simply sick of worrying over them ,I do not like shutting people out ...but sometimes I guess what has to be done is something you do not like doing ,maybe a break is what I need  just lay back a while and keep my distance from them.

Well, I'm not sure how to begin. I never really am. and i'm a bit wary of admitting to much about myself. I've been burned recently by a few people who were supposed to care.

First, Everyone calls me Turtle. Its for several reasons. The turtle is my totem animal. I have many "turtle " quallities. I am slow, but persistant and steady. I don't give up, but will dig in and wait for better things to happen. I have a good respect for turtles.

Second. I am definitely my own person. I do what seems right for me to do at the time,even if it's NOT what everyone else might do. I also give my opinion, whether its wanted or not, and I will say what's on my mind. Unfiltered. I am who I am, and I really don't see why I should change that for any reason.And that can cause issues. Some people prefer getting filters.

I am one of those Lucky people who has TWO families. An adopted family and my biological family. I am in contact with both, and sometimes it causes problems, since they don't really get along. My foster/adoptive family are good people at heart though. I think they just don't want to see me hurt.

I am disabled now. And developed neurological issues and some mental illnesses. I also have heart problems.unfortunately, I used to self-medicate. And I became addicted to Meth. Its not something I'm proud of, but its not something that I hide, either.

I am engaged to the love of my life! We will be married in November.

I am active in church. At my current church I play softball. (well I occasionally keep the record books, but good enough for now)I also fold the bullitens every single Sunday. (except this week and next, since i'm on vacation)I also volunteered for VBS. Thats where I was when I took my profile pic. It said "ALOHA" but only HA came out in the photo. That kinda says it all.
I always feel like so many adults take themselves way too seriously.

I am back at school, working to get my teaching credential for CA. That was something I could never understand I can teach in Oregon but not in California.Hmm.

The mere thought of facing a year of fast talking, insincere, political stratigizers pumped and fed by frustrated Americans and detailed by hungry journalists makes me want to hybernate until it's over.  I love this country, and in general, I love people, but it is certainly true that the "mob" mentality is brutish! 

 

The issues (in no particular order):

• Iraq:  the choices are drop the ball and run, OR clearly define the US mission and let the military do its job.  What do we really think will happen if we pull out completely?  What do the "rumblings of war" in Iran mean?  I hear many people say it is not our business to settle the world's disputes, but if not, who will?  Like it or not, human nature (and testosterone) incites men to covet what others have ... more power, more land, more money ... without some sort of governing presence, all hell will break free. 
• Health care:  do we really want to penalize - or cease to reward - the outstanding medical minds in our country by socializing the medical system?  Seems to my mind to make more sense to penalize businesses for not providing adequate insurance benefits for their employees.  Even the issues we already have with HMO's ought to be enough to open our eyes to the failures of socialized medicine!
• Violence:  How can we curtail the increased violence in our streets and, ultimately, in our world?  Preaching "peace" doesn't seem to work ... How is the "gangster" mentality a positive lifestyle for Hollywood and TV to promote?  What would resolve the issues that have corrupted the idea of a loving home with 2 loving parents (m/f or same sex), gainful employment, honest labor,  and personal respect?
• Immigration (legal / illegal): Is building a fence a realistic treatment of the issue?  What about those already here ... those who have been here for years?  What are realistic expectations for granting citizenship?  What are the consequences?

No easy answers for any of these issues or any of those I did not list, but it is almost ridiculous to believe that ANY one woman or man can resolve every issue happily.  The purpose of this post is to incite clear, logical thinking.  I don't care if you agree with me or not.  That's not the issue.  My concern is that you each THINK through what each of the hopefuls say.  Some change their course every time they open their mouths, so what do they really think?  Realistically, how much can one person change the course of a nation?  How and in what ways do we desire change?  Please, don't just jump blindly onto some popular bandwagon just because it seems like the thing to do.  Educate yourself and think things through to their conclusions.  OK?  Thanks!  Oh ... and be NICE to one another!  ;)

 

~ B

Argh. So, this is the issue that's on everybody's minds over here right now.

We have two main characters, who because I do not have them on mindsay, shall be known simply as S and P. And A, S's fiance/girlfriend.

So, let's start off with the basics. This is all in one social circle. I've known S since before college. I met P and A in college, get along splendidly with both. P's a great guy, generally goofy, but a little quiet. Fits into the gamer society fairly well, and has a gift for making people feel good effortlessly. Just hanging out and talking with him, you feel like he's happy you're there. That's a very cool thing. I wish I could do that.

S has been my friend for years. He has issues, but the thing is that I've known about these issues (we all did in the old social circle), and just adjust to them. You don't rely on him for certain things, and you don't bring certain issues up with him, and you'll get along great. It's not the best recipe for a relationship, but there are worse.

So, S is three years older than I am. He decides that he wants to move out of his mom's house. P is up for moving in with him. Now, there's one thing that never occurred to me about this. P does not know what S's issues are, exactly. There's an understanding that he has some emotional brouhaha going on, but at least half the people in the group, if not all, have struggled with depression at some point.

(By the way - that was MY issue in high school, that S adjusted to. I didn't mean to give the impression that it was a one-way thing. My depression isn't an issue anymore, so it's become more of a one-way thing, but we've also become a little more distant, so it's not as much of a strain.)

As a matter of fact, it never occurred to me that nobody in the group knew about S. I think there's a light layer of blame being thrown my way for this, but that's probably just my own imagination. The fact back in high school was that everybody knew about how to deal with everybody. I didn't spend as much time with this group as S did, so between the mindset that everybody already knew about it, and that everybody spent more time with him and would have picked it up, it just never crossed my mind that I should mention any of this.

S is a pathological liar. Has been for as long as I've known him. He's a nice guy and when he's got his ducks in a row, likes to be able to care for people and protect them (which makes us laugh - he's rather needy), but he's a psychological frustration, as A and I have put it. (I find him more of a fascination, but that's because I don't get closely involved with or depend on him).

So, let's start with where we left of. S and P decide to room together. As far as we can tell, all goes swimmingly, or at least as swimmingly as two college guys rooming together is likely to. For the most part, little mention is made of how things are going there - for some reason our home lives don't often come up in discussion in this group.

Everything down in the music world is humming with excitement. Over spring break, this little community takes a week-long trip to Florida. Last year, I'd been totally pumped about the trip - which got canceled due to a lack of interest. This year, I can't afford it - and technically, since I go to a different school, I don't have the same break. But I think all of my saxes are going, S among them, and while I'm a little depressed about not being able to, I am looking forward to ridiculous pictures on Facebook when everyone gets home.

So, after their break, I'm on mine, and I come by a little more frequently to hang out with the group (read - three days instead of two). On one of these days, P mentions that S hasn't paid the rent. At the time, I just figured that he was late for the month and he'd take care of it as soon as he got paid. Later in the week, S and I had Jazz Band practice. I was putting my sax together, and as he was walking out of the band room purposefully (he does this, too - always looks purposeful when he's walking somewhere alone, usually has no specific direction in mind. It amuses me), had this conversation.

A: (taking the reed out of my mouth) "Hey, S!"
S: (comes towards me, interested) "Yeah?"
A: (mischief grin) "I heard you need to pay the rent."
S: (exploding) "I PAID the rent!!" (storms off angrily)

I hadn't expected that at all. Generally I'm the one defusing S, because I know what makes him explode. That was supposed to just be our usual clowning around, which should have progressed to him taking the reed out of his mouth and responding, "Aha. You're funny." Instead, he exploded without explanation, stormed off, and refused to have anything to do with me or even look my direction for the rest of the night. Now, if I had taken the time to put this together with past experiences with S, I probably would have gone, "Uh oh," and recognized this as a bad sign. Unfortunately, I had my mind on other matters.

Okay, other matters would be our drummer being forty, fifty minutes late. This is a problem on two levels - one, because I haven't seen my boyfriend for a few days and had been looking forward to chatting with him a bit. Two, on a bigger level - we were going through new music that night. And if you have not heard our jazz band, I will tell you this. We are awesome when we have our drummer. We are pathetic when it comes to sight-reading without him. It's very, very sad.

So, within a week of the explosion, P and S get evicted. Because apparently S has not paid his share of the rent for some time now.

We're all fairly disgusted with him for this. P clearly did not deserve this, and he's a nice guy, and a good friend to all of us. We think it's ridiculous that S has not been paying his share of the rent, and that he went off on a fun trip when he owed money and had a responsibility to his friend.

But then the story gets a little deeper. Because S has been working at one of the big stores in town, according to S. But as the story trickles down, it turns out that according to P and S's landlord, he never worked there. And no one from this store has any knowledge of S.

This was not something that surprised me. It's my practice to not worry about information I get from S, and if I need to use information for something, I double-check it. S inventing a job wouldn't really be anything new or even creative for him. But no one else knew about this bit. Sigh.

A little bit further on the story-trickling. This one is making nobody happy. According to P, he's been giving his share of the rent to S, because he gets his paycheck first and S can pay it all at once, or something like that. Details kind of get lost on me early in the morning. However, according to the landlord, neither one of them's been paying their rent for the last few months.

I'm actually not going to a conclusion there. I don't know what happened there, but the implications are quite nasty. I just know that this is the information we have.

Now, for this next bit, I need to back up a little bit to explain something about our group. All of us who hang out together and play games, watch movies, eat food, do homework in the new tv lounge, this social circle...we were all students at FCC at one point. At this point, about half, maybe two-thirds of us are. A very small fraction got suspended for their grades, a number are taking time off to work so that they can pay for tuition again, and I believe two of us are actually going to another school (it may be just me). But we all still crash together and hang out.

According to Security, this is a no-no (except for me, I'm protected by the music clause. More than half of our jazz band aren't students). If you're not a student, you're not on campus. And they know that a number of us aren't. But for the most part, they turn a blind eye to us - as long as we're not getting loud, we're not really disturbing anyone, we're not damaging anything, and we're not really preventing anyone else from studying (particularly since the tv's been moved to the cafeteria - the room was built with the notion that it would be noisy).

I'm guessing S's mentality was to hit us before we found out what had happened, because either the same day or the day after he and P were evicted, he took the time to compose a list. He made a list of all the people in this group of friends that he's a part of, who are not enrolled as students at FCC for this semester. And he took the time to track down security, and make sure that they were aware of it.

Now, what I'd said before about security turning a blind eye to us? That happens with things. They don't have time to take care of every little thing that's off around campus. But if someone complains about something, it becomes top priority. It has to. So even if they didn't really have a problem with us before, technically, since someone complained, they have to do something about it.

So, two of the group got escorted out, kicked off campus, whatever you like. No one else from S's list had been in that day. I'm fairly certain he was bragging that it was because of him that it happened, because there's no way we would have known that any one person was behind it otherwise. Psychoanalyzing S leads down some interesting roads - I'm guessing the concept was making sure we knew that he'd been behind it so that we wouldn't confront him. S can be a bit of a bully when he thinks he can get away with it.

That usually lasts about two seconds. When he WAS confronted about it, he hastily backtracked, and declared, "Look, I'm sorry, but I had an obligation. I didn't want to be mean, and I don't want to make the rules, it's just how the rules are. I'm sorry, that's just how it is." We're further disgusted with this explanation, because he never had this obligation earlier.

S's code of honor is a little flexible. Like spaghetti. He likes the concept of honor, but most of the time he's too lazy to actually do anything about it. So when he does, we get irked when he acts hurt and pretends that he's always been this way.

Let's drop back to one other point. A. A is a quirky, delightful person, went to school with Knuter, a year older than me. Rather well-balanced, has a good concept of what's what, and for the most part knows how to take care of herself. No one's quite figured out what she's doing dating S, aside from the point that his attempts at...well, pretty much anything...amuse her. Not that there's anything terribly wrong with S, it's just that he's not ideal relationship material. They've been engaged twice now. The first time, A said that he hadn't really had a good reason for wanting to get engaged, and it was rather soon in the relationship for that kind of progression. Clearly, this girl has a good head on her shoulders. Quirky and goofy, but good.

At this point, she's mad at him. He's rather oblivious to this. This is going to seem presumptuous of me, so let me just say that this could be totally off - it's just the way I know S's mind has worked in the past (like I said, we used to talk a lot, and he still sees me as a little sister). First off, S hasn't done anything wrong. He knows he has, but for some reason he has to be this big important man who has it all figured out. A lot of S's issues come from thinking he has to be something that he doesn't know how to be. A big important man who has it all figured out wouldn't do things wrong, wouldn't have screwed things up so badly - so since he wants to be that big man, he can't have done anything wrong. Whatever he did, he was justified in, and has to rally a defense against these people attacking him.

This is where things usually start to get bad. It's become a recognizable cycle with S through years gone past. First, he screws up - usually by lying and pretending he has something he wants to have. Not always. Then, he lies about it. Always. Someone always figures this out, usually because S is only happy when he's dating someone, so he almost always has a girlfriend, and she knows him. She's also usually pretty smart (or in some cases, very dominating), and doesn't take too long to figure out that he's lying. It's not always the girlfriend who figures things out first, sometimes it is the friends and the girlfriend is defending him.

I don't know exactly what happens when it's the girlfriend who figures things out, but I do know what happens when it's his friends. They confront him, and he's insulted that they would think he's deceived them, because the man he wants to be isn't a liar. He's also angry because he hasn't figured out how to be that man, and he hasn't figured out that his friends want the real him, not this idealized image, so he's angry at somebody because he's let them down. And he's angry because he's justified in his actions and being attacked without warning, and because someone has dared suggest that he did something wrong. So, he explodes, usually throws up a solid wall of more deceptions (it's only solid because there's so much anger going into it - when he gets passionate, he never bothers to think his stories through), and runs off to escape before it falls apart and they can reach him again. Usually at this point he seeks solace from his girlfriend, the one person who still loves him, who will be his guidance and comfort in all this.

Do not misunderstand me. We never stop loving him. But he acts like a child and tries to punish us when we are angry with him or hurt by something he's done.

If S's girlfriend is not to be found, or sides with his friends, things get very, very touchy. S still has issues with depression. He'd like it to be aggression, I think, but it turns into depression. And he seems to rationalize that since we all dislike him so much, he should just disappear. Then we'd be sorry.

This is why I get worried. Actually, that's less destructive than what happens if the girlfriend is on his side. Because, if he's genuinely screwed up, but she doesn't let him know, just says it's okay, it further erodes and reshapes his code of morality (it is simply scary how much S will depend on a girl), but also causes him to sink into a spiral around her, where she becomes his core and the light in his universe. That gets beyond worrisome, and becomes just scary. You probably know how relationships like that go.

A is actually not the first girl S has been engaged to. And she's put off their wedding, which was to be this summer. This brings a sigh of relief to many of us, because S clearly isn't ready for marriage. He may want to be married, which is usually what we're talking about when we say a guy isn't ready to get married yet. He definitely wants to be. But he's not an adult. He hasn't figured out how to take care of himself, and anyone who marries him right now will be the one he expects to continue taking care of him.

His mom, at this point, refuses to let him move back home. I'm privately thinking this is good, because he does need to learn some measure of independence. He left a short but scary letter passionately declaring his love for A (numerous times), and asking if he could just stay with her for just awhile. I honestly didn't believe people could write like that outside of cliche movies.

At this point, I don't know what's going to happen. Confronting S never makes the situation better. I think what he really needs (besides a place to stay) is a friend. I'm hoping I get a chance to talk to him before the others catch up with the nailbat. I can't stay mad at him (Sirglad says I'm too forgiving). I do wish this hadn't involved P, but that's all. For the most part, I'm just kind of worried about him.

(I was worried about A, until I talked to her. I must remember to give that girl more credit.)