Gut feeling

While I have taken a more liberal stance than most people in my acquisition of adventure, excitement and learning in life, one in a similar position will often times find themselves attracting unstable people.  Those who live on the edge tend to gravitate towards one another, feeding off one another's abilities and input as well as create situations that not even the most gifted of writers can create.  As I age, I have become more fond of peace and quiet as opposed to the endless noise that was once enjoyed.  One thing, however, that does not seem to ever go away, is the presence of dramatics.  There are many layers to our personalities, some things will ignite a fire and other things will not, and variables are fluid for all people.  While I am not trying to speak to nor feed into individual or group angst or paranoia, it is a disconcerting feeling to know that there are people out there who we may encounter who are unstable.  You could never know that the person is unstable, but when they prove themselves to be unstable is when another chapter of a story is written.

Part of me wonders why I seem to attract more crazy people than the average.  In the past, I think I was more open towards others, but have learned to keep things closed from the general public.  One must now trust their gut feelings after getting to know a person, rather than jump in head first no matter what the situation may be.  It was one of these situations that presented itself to me.  After becoming acquainted with a person online with several talks and whatnot, I was at an impasse.  What to do now?  I had this feeling deep within that I really should not bother any further with this person.  It was not a particular instance, word utterance or behavior that caused me to think this about him, it was my inner feeling telling me that this is not something I wan to pursue for whatever reason.  I've been in the game long enough to know that if something doesn't seem or feel right about a person or situation, it usually isn't.  You may never know what it is or is not, but if you choose to ignore it, it will always linger between you and that person.  I decided that I would not pursue this any further, and made an alternate plan for the evening.

While at my alternative plan location (a coffee shop in the city for an amateur comedy night, made aware of it thanks to a new buddy of mine), I received a phone call from him.  Earlier in the day he had sent a text or two which I never responded to.  With a sweep on the touchscreen of the cell phone, I swept it out to voice mail and continued listening to the comics on stage and chatting with others.  After saying our good-byes and leaving the place, I was attempting to drive home and then ran over something and got a flat which put off my travel time as I would have liked, but thanks to AAA eventually got home around 11pm.  I placed my phone on its charger, then took a shower.  When I emerged from the shower I looked at the phone and found there were many texts and missed calls, which I read.  The tone went from inquiry to that of anger rather quickly.  He escalated from wondering how I was to anger at my not responding to him, he then proceeded to deflam my character and make accusations (I'm an inconsiderate bitch, I'm a dyke, I'm self centered, etc.).  True?  Well no, I'm not gay to be sure.  Inconsiderate?  At times, yes.  Self centered?  No more than the average.  Perhaps the icing on the cake was that he somehow managed to google me and my information and found a rather hysterical photo of me and another buddy of mine at the Trump rally in March.  He and I went to the Trump rally to be part of the excitement and insanity (which there was not a lot of save for the media hype), and then decided to cap off the afternoon with a bunch of goofy pictures taken of us holding Trump signs.  S decided to do some magic with PhotoShop and then put the two of us on the beach in the final scene of the Statue of Liberty buried up to mid chest level in the sand at the end of one of the Planet of the Apes movies.  That got a lot of likes and funny comments.  His next texts were all political in nature and started going off on tangents I had never thought possible nor relevant to the situation.  I then went to the Verizon website, looked up how to block a phone number, and did just that.

This is not political in nature by any means, nor is it a statement about mental health nor feeding into paranoia.  But I do feel that I need to make a statement about putting one's ego aside in certain situations.  No one likes to be rejected.  Hell, I've been rejected more times than I care to think about, but I don't let it keep me from being active nor do I let it deflate my opinion of myself.  Ultimately you have to tell yourself "It just wasn't meant to be", "Life goes on", "(Name) is the loser, not me", etc.  And then you go back to whatever you were doing and barely a week or two later, you don't even remember that person's name.  Unstable people do not think in these terms, they make it all about them and become angry when they don't get their way or they are not the center of attention.  Sometimes the best thing you can do is to just keep silent and not cause a stir, it shows you have class.  He never did ask me who I am voting for in this election, which is Mickey Mouse.  And as always, keep calm and carry on.