The Trashcan is My Friend  -  Donna J Evans 4/24/18

It’s 3:00 am and I can’t sleep, my mind being too active.  It’s like that,  getting stuck in loops and processing and regurgitating crap over and over. Constantly bringing back the bad things, people that used me, let me down and disappointed me.  It all brings back reminders of my own weaknesses,  failings and neediness.  I’ve written about all this in my diaries many times over the years and sometimes I could let it go a little only for it to rear it’s ugly Loch Ness head when things would get bad again.  Each new recent  encounter with some nasty, self-centered person would start bringing out the smell of rotting corpses I thought I had filed away.

Oh, I’m so much better now about not getting involved and moving on fast.  Life’s too short to deal with some people.  So, I’m down to only a few people I trust to talk to, like my mom, sister, son and husband.  Those are the only people I think I could call in the middle of the night with an emergency. 

Then the computer and online interactions became more of a part of my life.  With less real friends these sites were enticing with the possibilities of casual friends and common interests. I’ll have to admit I did learn a lot and found lots of resources for things that weren’t locally available, but the downside was also daunting.  Every crazy, unbalanced, self-centered asshole now had a soapbox to comment and weigh in on something anyone said.  “Better to keep your mouth shut and appear a fool than open it and remove all doubt”, seems to be the banner for internet conversations.  Everything that sucked or was mediocre had a podium, of course making the creator think they were true rock stars as someone out there would probably uck it up.  The nastiness of insults never ends against innocent people, a place people spit out garbage expecting their opinions to have validity.  Their insults say more about their lack of intelligence and morality than the people they are referring to.

I do have to admit I did meet a couple of really nice people and there seemed to be more if I’ld wanted to take more chances, but I also met a couple of the most asinine characters who at first put on a front of being helpful and friendly.  Over the years, I’ve gotten good at sizing up people pretty quickly and knowing who not to get involved with.  Unfortunately, that’s meant a lot of people.  I guess I’ve gotten pickier over the years.  I know my own problems and I consider myself intelligent, capable and have been working on my personality for years.  With all my efforts, I’m still not the person I want to be so it’s really hard to be around mindless, low information people who don’t even know they have a problem, let alone want to work on themselves.  From time to time I do still get tripped up as I try to give most people the benefit over my doubts.  I do try to see the good in people. But…..

One guy seemed to be a half-decent songwriter online and he’d had a lot of classes with a pro-writer in Nashville, so I befriended him to learn to write a little better.  Unbeknownst or overlooked by me he was an old nasty drunk soured by a life that he wasted, four failed marriages and a music career that went nowhere.  Most of it was his fault in that he is incredibly lazy and self-centered and never dealt with his problems. The kind that doesn’t even know he has a problem but blames everyone and everything else.  A classic case of an addictive personality.  One day he ruthlessly attacked me and a song I was writing that he didn’t like, probably in a drunken stupor.  My husband would have never talked to me like he did.  Of course, I let him know in no uncertain terms that our friendship was over.  He left a bad taste in my mouth for writing with internet people.

More recently a Facebook young guy tried to friend me and at first I thought he just wanted someone to be helpful and interesting to talk to.  I should have known although I wanted to believe he was a good person, but he wanted to engage in over the computer sex.  Ha! He knew I was the age of his mother and he still tried to come on to me.  Of course, I had to cut that one short since I am happily married to a magic man.

Anyway, back to 3:00 am and I can’t sleep rehashing all the wrongs in my life, I came across a site that suggested an on your computer trashcan where you write about the people who wronged you and you drop the writing in the trashcan.  At some point you can even empty the trashcan and they’re gone.  Finally purged from your life and forever gone ever knowing them.   So easy, so nice, mental house cleaning.