Last Year's Drama

Well, it's April already and I still haven't done any review of last year.  I wanted to sit down and do it after my CELTA course... but life got in the way, as usual.

I had this enormous post planned in my mind, analysing and breaking apart all those significant events that took place in my insignificant life last year but now I don't feel like going into that sort of detail. I suppose the storm of the past few weeks has passed and I'm just a bit too tired to think about a chapter that has already finished. Yet an epilogue is always good to write...

2012 had this very specific theme of letting things go.

I'd say empathy is considered a desirable trait. We are encouraged to give to charities and look badly at anyone who dares not to help another human being in need. I seem to recall not providing first aid to someone being considered a criminal offence... but I'm not a lawyer. Problem is when you have too much empathy; when you care about others more than yourself; when you sacrifice your own well-being so someone else has the sliver of a chance to get better.

I suppose this is why others always told me to take care of myself.

Two things happened. My dad rage-quit his job and as he was in the process of moving, he decided he didn't want the place where his contract was about to end nor the new one that he signed the contract for. After spending a vacation at my mum's place, he asked me if he could move in with me while he's looking for a job in England. I agreed since he's my father and I wanted to help him. That was one of my biggest mistakes that year.

I got into arguments with him over smoking in my room. Thing is I rent a bedsit so this one room is all that I have available. My dad deemed it too hard to go outside for a smoke, especially since he saw other tenants smoking in their rooms. Of course, my dislike of him making a chimney out of my room was all my fault since I got unused to inhaling smoke and my sister and mum somehow survived it. The way I kept coughing was because I kept getting sick at work. The worst parts were when he started to shout and threaten me with moving back with my mum, without a job, so she won't have any money to live all because I couldn't handle a bit of smoke.

There were also other problems like my dad being unhappy that I'm not jumping with joy because he put up shelves that I didn't want in the first place, or him telling me how to use a fork, which all can be summed up by this nifty term called micromanaging...

I promised my mum I will put up with it for a month as was our agreement. Fortunately, all his talk of 'only for a month' actually being meant as a preliminary didn't come true. He moved out and I had a few weeks of peace. Until he decided the best way to approach the problem of why his son doesn't want to speak with him is to take a week off, go to my place and stay here until I have no choice but to talk to him. This too ended without me calling the police to get rid of him because my sister coerced him to leave me alone. I was shocked when my sister told me dad doesn't know why I'm angry with him because he didn't do anything wrong.

I guess somewhere along the way I got so tired of being treated like his soldier that I just quit. I wanted to have a good relationship with my father and not let it turn out like how his relationship with his parents is but I just had enough.

The other important development was with this pseudo-friend I had. Now that I look back at it, it's just strange. We met at work and hung out a lot. After a while we found out we had a lot in common... but to my chagrin, all attempts to actually follow up on those activities were ignored time and time again until I was told to just stop it. So all we did was hung out and chat about her problems whenever she called me. She asked me for help often and I kept on helping the best I could because that's just the way I am, I like helping people.

I suppose everything would have been fine if she didn't tell me how grateful she is for meeting me and that if I'll ever need any help to just tell her because I'm her best friend... and one day I did. I asked her to meet up because I wanted to tell her how the things she keeps telling me hurt me, she said she'll get back to me but then she kinda forgot about it. I just couldn't make any sense of it. It looked to me like she can only find time for someone she wants to sleep with or to get drunk but her best friend who she supposedly treasures so much is just not worth giving a grain of her time.

I confronted her about it after nearly a month. She claimed she didn't think it was important and was angry at me that she always has to take the initiative. That was a short conversation, we met up later to discuss matters outside of work. She said I was playing a game with her, that she felt cheated and that everything was a lie. I told her that I just wanted to share some of my life with her like she did with hers.

There was some back and forth between us for a while. During which she told my sister things between me and her were getting better, though I don't know how since she wasn't doing anything to make it better. Then we started to talk again and after a while she asked me to take her to the doctor's again, so I did... and it was the same thing again. I invited her to do stuff together a few more times but she kept bailing on me... and then she told me that the reason why she didn't call me at all was because she was too busy getting drunk... The same thing happened again but this time, since we weren't working together any more, I had to text her saying how much I hate her behaviour and her lies. She tried calling me but I felt too much like crying to have a conversation. Then she tried talking to me on Facebook but I went to make breakfast and by the time I got back she just told me now she knew what I really wanted from her. I explained myself again and we didn't speak to each other for several weeks.

Until she called me to ask if I would lend her some money... so I did. We talked a bit, she hugged me, said she was touched and yet I felt this sense of everything being false. I didn't expect to see that money back. I followed up with a test, I invited her for a Christmas dinner since neither of us had any family close. She said she couldn't come, as per usual. Last I heard from her, she called me crying, saying that she kicked out her boyfriend because he was tormenting her psychologically by being so jealous that she couldn't have any friends whatsoever and that she didn't know if she's just so immature to not be able to hold down a relationship. I listened but I felt like I didn't really care... not any more at least.

When all of that was going on I just felt like my self-esteem is eroding. I just felt worthless and used for my kindness. I didn't expect that standing up, getting the courage to feel I deserve better than this and actually saying enough is enough would make me feel so much better. I'm glad I did what I did, I really don't need that sort of self-absorbed people in my life... and I feel a lot, lot better now...