Thanks, August 11th

Today, I am thankful for friends… one of my closest friends, specifically. His name is Mike. I actually met him through the Internet and we’ve only hung out in person once. But he’s seriously like a brother to me. Despite vastly different upbringings, the amount of similarities we have in who we are are astounding… even if he is a hairy hipster and I’m not hairy enough or thin enough to begin to pull of that look.

Seriously though, a good talk with a good friend can really put things in perspective…

Oh, and by the way, Mike a talented musician, so I figured I’d share my favorite EP of his with you… and it’s free…

And here’s a more recent sample of Mike’s musical genius, which features his wife on vocals with him…

Thanks, Day 167

So, yeah… it’s been awhile… but I just need to check in and let you know I’m still being thankful each day.

Today, I’m thankful that I was able to share something that I’d been bottling up and make a decision to look out for a friend.

Follow Up: His Loss

I wrote about someone I had previously considered a friend and his “passive aggressive bullshit” the other day. This “friend” had ignored my texts for a week (in which, I :gasp: tell him that I had a few magazines for him and :gasp: asked if he’d be going to an event I was going to be at). When I wondered if everything was okay, I tried to message him through a social networking site instead… and… I was blocked from doing so. After asking him what was up and trying to address it, I finally decided not to let it eat me up anymore and I let him know that I was taking this as a sign that he didn’t want to be a friend. I told him that I was cool with that and would be deleting his contact and just letting it go.

Suddenly, he felt the need to respond. However, his response wasn’t about something I’d done, but moreso that my personality grated on him (honestly, I’m not fully sure what he was getting at, but I honestly don’t care). He, then, tried to back track by paying me backhanded compliments. Rather than bite, I simply told him to take care and I had nothing more to say. This led him to tell me that I was being a drama queen and that he’d “never broken up with an acquaintance before”. The drama queen thing was a petty comment but calling me an acquaintance did sting quite a bit.

Fast forward a day or so and I mistakenly stumbled upon his social media page (no, really, I wasn’t stalking him or anything, I seriously clicked on it in my history by mistake) and found this post: “Friends: quality over quantity.”

I had no intention of blogging on this anymore until I saw this… and I am blogging for one reason and one reason only… it’s to agree with what he has to say (despite the fact that it’s obviously about me).

I have never needed a lot of friends, just a few awesome ones. And to that, I have to say, I’m all set. I have friends that I know I can rely on to help with my kids, listen to me vent, pray for me, call me to pick me up, and care for me in whatever ways I need. I am blessed with those quality friends. And, I honestly believe that I am also one of those friends to many people.

I am a fierce friend. If you are one of my friends, you can expect me to defend you and your honor, you can expect me to be there when you need anything, you can expect my love and support, and you can expect that I will do all I can to be there for you.

To that I say, dear acquaintance, it’s your loss. I thought we were boys and apparently I was wrong. I feel betrayed and wronged in some way, but it won’t stop me from making new friends and caring for people… mostly because you aren’t worth me losing part of who I am because you decided to be an elitist prick.

Passive Aggressive Bullshit

So, I have this friend… or at this point I guess he’s just a “friend”… who I’ve only known for about a year. Over the past year, despite only hanging out a few times, we’ve talked a lot, mostly about music. We have, however, begun to share real thoughts on life. To me, it was a friendship that I valued as a burgeoning one, one that was growing, one that was not yet close-knit but perhaps headed that way. At the very least, this fellow had become one of my favorite people to debate music with and one of the few folks I know interested in discussing some of the quirkier interests I have (like researching motorcycle clubs and watching documentaries on racialist groups and gangs).

Over the past week, this “friend” had stopped returning my text messages, which was odd. I figured that perhaps he’d lost his phone, until yesterday. Yesterday morning, I had a question to ask him and decided to sent him a message through social media. I soon realized that he was no longer my friend or follower on any social media outlets. So, I reactivated my old Facebook account for a few minutes and sent a message. Only a few minutes after I did that, it showed me that he read it. Then I looked at my text messages to him and realized they had also been delivered, since we both had iPhones.

So, after a few messages asking if I’d upset him somehow and to let me know, he’s still ignoring me. I noticed that his wife had unfollowed/unfriended/etc. me on social media outlets, as well.

Why am I sharing this story? Because I wanted to shed light on how I feel about this type of passive aggressive action. First and foremost, I have no idea what I may have done to piss off this guy that I believed to be a friend. In order for me to make anything right, I’d need to actually know. In order for me to know, he’d have to actually tell me.

It’s okay for someone to be angry with me. It’s even okay for someone to not want to pursue a friendship and decide they no longer want to be in contact with me. However, I think being unwilling to tell someone how you feel is complete and utter bullshit. And, sadly, this situation has actually been eating me up for a day now. I care about people and don’t like hurting anyone. However, the longer this situation sits without this “friend” getting back to me, the colder my heart is going to grow towards him.

It’s not just him, though. So many people… so many “mature adults”, in fact… like to use passive aggressive means to handle their situations. Instead of confronting people who’ve upset them, they talk behind someone’s back, pretend nothing is wrong, or simply ignore someone. The Internet makes doing this even easier. Social media allows people to complain, trash talk, and vent without any “manning up” at all. Many times, people post about their friends indirectly hoping that those friends will see it and feel bad.

If this blog were my only way of handling my feelings on this, it could also fall into this category of online passive aggressiveness. However, I expressed how I feel to my “friend” before taking to WordPress… and I plan also to share this blog with him in the coming days.

In short, through this rant-y diatribe, I want to get one point across… whoever you are, you should own your actions and your feelings. If you are angry with someone, own it. If you are hurt or confused, own it. If you screwed up, own it. Otherwise, you may as well head back to the 5th grade and stop pretending you’re a responsible, mature adult.