feeling trapped or haunting from the past?
Ok, so it is July and usually at least for the past 12 years or so I have held the Quantum meeting at my house. Quantum is a group of usually wonderful people that have been a terrific part of my life since 1989 when I moved to Indy.
This particular group of people has been very comforting of others in the group, a pretty tight knit community. We have kept the size to a small group. This has been done on purpose. We do however often invite in others for a meeting or two, mostly because they were visiting someone in the group or just stopping by. We even on occasion have invited COJ to the July Quantum or in Sept or Dec combined the two.
We have seen members come and go. Some due to not contributing for long periods of time, some due to one or more members of the core group (it is not a democracy it is a dictatorship for the Captain who was chosen by the group many years ago). Not all of us are good friends as there are a few I would like to see go, but because of my good friendship with other I am willing to be good for years on end. Sometimes this is good and sometimes it is not.
There was a time when a particular guy in COJ really gave me the creeps and made me nervous every time I was around him. There were others that also felt this way so this person was not invited to Quantum most of the time. I had openly stated that I would not ever let this person in my house. He REALLY made me feel this uncomfortable. This guy was friends with a dear friend (call her “A”) of mine who was also in both groups. I told “A” that as much as I loved her I did not want him in my house. “A” was ok with this. Then a few (5-6) years later I and another female in both groups had a tiff. (Let’s call her “B”). “B” had now become good friends with the creepy guy. Several folks in both groups could not understand why I was having difficulty getting along with “B” as I had been good friends with her for several years. The things I was seeing and telling others were not making sense to then and frankly the majority thought is was me being petty when in fact I was going out of my way to be friendly most of the time. So to show I was going out of my way to be friendly and to show that she was the one freaking out I let “B” bring mr. creepy to my house. Everyone in the group new how strongly I felt about it and saw it as me really trying to be nice. What this did was cost my friendships with “A”. It also was the start of the members in Quantum seeing both of these people for who they were. “B” was nuts and he was and still is a liar. It ended up causing rifts in both groups which I feel very responsible and guilty for. However most people in both groups really started seeing what I had been seeing in the for some time when “B” refused to finish out her presidency at a January COJ meeting because she was not re-elected.
There are just times that these people make me crazy (ok crazier). I mean I feel like the fly in the window whose buzzing is irritating, but from the fly’s point of view it is just trying to get out. No matter how hard it tries it can not get through the glass and the harder it tries the louder and more irritating it gets. But if you try and shoo it to a door to go outside it flies the other way. By this time you don’t care if now becomes a cat toy.
So was losing “A” worth it by going above and beyond because I wanted the others in both groups to see it was not me being petty and that I really was trying to be nice; Or should I have let “B” continue to convince everyone that it her being nice and me being nuts? I miss my good friend “A” and hate myself for stepping back from what I believed to make the others in both groups happy.
Ok enough whining and sulking.