Do “weak”, subservient people with little/no opinions get attacked too? Or is it just being strong that is a bad thing?
This post is reminiscent of my CABW one a couple of years ago. I’m tired of being attacked. It’s even worse when you get attacked because people expect you to react a certain way and when you don’t, they just assume your silence is critical. My friend sent an email about how people were critical of her marriage decision and the way they went about it. I assumed it was a general email she’d sent out to a bunch of friends and just responded saying, you know people probably didn’t mean any harm, we all just didn’t understand the situation. Then I realized it was actually targeted to me and a few other people. My first reaction was to laugh cos it was precisely for this reason that I had kept my opinions to myself about the whole situation. I didn’t want to be the critical, opinionated one, especially in a situation where I know my opinion didn’t matter.
But she’d clearly assumed that my not saying much, and also interpreted the little I said, was being judgmental. I apologized. Then I got angry. Why do I have to over-compensate because people automatically think I’m a certain way? It’s very unfair, to say the least! My anger was further fueled by someone emailing me to ask for my help (yet again) and asking if I was now “a nice person”. How annoying is that? I think about the numerous times my “not-so-nice” self has helped her in the past, when she gave me absolutely NO reason to. Yet she keeps talking about how I’m not very nice. I wonder if I’d feel better if I was actually the b*tch people portray me as.
(For my very born again friends, please excuse the *dodgy* words in this post (and others) – as you all know. I write it as it comes to mind)
