You know that thing when someone’s behaviour tweaks your gut? You give them the benefit of the doubt thinking maybe it’s an off day. Fairs fair, we all have them. Then you realise it wasn’t a bad day, it was every time you saw them.
What I do is to sit with it. Happened to be this morning while I was drying my hair that I had an opportunity to sit with the gut tweaks and consider what was really going on and why the person behaved the way they did. (It’s actually do because I don’t think this will change.)
I analysed everything they’d said to me over the last year whether it was in person, via text, or on social media.
Funny how things become quite clear when you take a step back and observe.
I was exhausted after seeing this person for two hours, they did not stop talking about themselves and their choices, but those choices were now somehow other people’s responsibilities.
That doesn’t work to well for me.
We all make choices, every day. The grownups among us accept our choices are our choices and no one else should pay for them. That’s how it works. You make a decision to change something in your life, doesn’t matter if it’s deciding you no longer want to wear a particular colour, or you’re chucking your jeans out and going with skirts, or want to move, or switch jobs or stop eating porridge and switch to Weet-Bix for breakfast. Whatever it is, own it. Do it. It’s your life. Have at it! No one else can make decisions for you. No one else has to live with your choices (unless you’re a parent, in which case one would expect the child to be taken into consideration.)
No one else is responsible for your choices. It’s your life to do with as you see fit.

Sometimes in life, our ability to choose is pulled out from under us by things no one can control, for example: an illness or accident that changes how you can interact with the world, sudden death of a family member, or even a terminal illness.
In those situations what matters narrows. Things do not. People do. The world is suddenly small and finite. Energy is reserved for those that matter the most.
And nothing else matters.
When drastic things happen inside someone’s life – it is about them, not you.
Friends understand that when bad shit happens the world around that person shrinks. They give space, support, love, reach out every now and then and say, ‘Hi, I’m here. If you need me.’
But they know the person is fighting a fight that has nothing to do with them. They know they are owed nothing by way of explanation. They know not to put demands on the person who is already dealing with enough.
Shit happens.
Don’t be a shitty person.
The end.

I need another coffee.
Also: books are great escapism. 🙂