Don't Go Breaking My Heart

                                                     

Now, you are singing that song, aren’t you? I love Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, but I am not talking about Elton John and Kiki Dee. This blog is one that no one wants to write, which is why I am sitting here with Grimm in my lap trying to be nice when I write it. This will be full of the truth that everyone wants to say but are afraid to say. I know everyone will say that I am being overly harsh but suck it up, Buttercup and learn to deal.

I will say that some of this is going to be taken from my own problems but some will be from stories I have heard from others. If you recognize yourself in my blog, sorry, but this is from my perspective. If you don’t like it, I guess you can stop reading or comment below. I will not be using names, either, as much as I may want to.

Time to get started.

Where shall I start? I guess I’ll start at the beginning, not of my life but at the beginning of my online life.

Let’s see, I am a techno newbie. I have always loved books and libraries so I never felt the need to get a computer when I could drive two miles and spend my day perusing the shelves at the library.  To be honest, the only reason I wanted to get a computer is one day while I was at my nieces, she was telling me about some author she read having a cool website. I figured while I was there, I would look up one of my favorite authors, Sherrilyn Kenyon. 

Wow, was I surprised at what I found. I loved it. I decided right then that I needed to stop fighting it and start shopping for a computer. It took me about six months to figure out what I wanted and get the opinions of every tech person I knew.  My niece finally got fed up and took my ass to Best Buy and picked out my computer.  She set it up and off I went.

First thing I did was go back to Sherri’s site and get signed up. It took me a while, but I finally started to get the hang of it. I had lots of help from some amazing ladies there who were nice enough to teach me the ins and outs of the site. A few of them may be reading this blog. I hung out there most evenings just chatting away with everyone. We became friends and found that we had more in common than just the books.

Here is where I found out that people are really not what they seem. There was one person that I talked to everyday for almost two years. We lived just a few hundred miles from each other and we talked about me driving over to see her. We timed it so that we could meet Sheri at the same time. I packed up my car and off I went. I found that when we actually met in person, it was strange.  We really didn’t have that much in common. Am I glad I met her? Maybe. But it just wasn’t the fun filled trip I was expecting. I found that she was judgmental and kind of rude, too. I was expecting the person I talked to everyday, not the person I actually found. That was burn number one.

I learned a hard lesson that weekend: Never trust your online friends to be the people you expect.

Now, when I moved on over to Facebook, I found several of the people I had met at Sheri’s site. I am glad I did, too. They have been the most honest of my online friends. I have known them for years and, although some of us are not close, I still count them as good friends. They have been nothing but supportive of me and many others. This is what friendship is about.

Now, on to my second lesson in online friendships.  

I met a few people on Facebook and in Kris’s Chats. As many of you know, our chats tend to get really personal and we are very open and sharing about not just the books we also what we read in our lives. I met a few women and we became friends. My first instinct with a couple of them was to be wary, but I let others sway me. That was a mistake.  With time, I started to notice a few things but I so wanted to believe in these ladies that I overlooked things that should have been warning signs. I am not just talking about things said about other people. Now don’t judge. Not one of you can say you have not done that. Anytime you get a group of people together you will find that they gather into small groups and talk about others. We have all done it. The question is ‘Are you just bitching about someone or were you downing the haterade and spreading lies?’ Most people just bitch and are really not malicious about it. Others are what we like to call, ‘shit-stirrers’ and live to start crap between people.

A couple of them started out with the standard, ‘I will do this for you or with you’ and then before you know it, you are all alone. These are normally the friends that just spread themselves too thin. Others just want to be included but don’t really want to do any of the work. I will be honest. I have done the spread myself too thin one. I, sometimes, think I can do something but life happens or whatever. Do I tell the other people most of the time? It just kind of depends on what the project is and if they really need me to help.

Here is where I am going to probably piss people off...

As a rule, I am what I seem to be. If you don’t want my opinion, whatever you do, don’t ask me. I will tell you. I will try and be as nice to you as I can be but sometimes it just doesn’t work out that way. I don’t normally set out to hurt anyone, but if you are crazy enough to ask, I will tell you. I wish everyone was like that. I would rather have people tell me I am a fucking bitch than to be all sweet and kind to my face while they sharpen the blade they are about to plunge into my back. I have been lied to and talked about by not just other people but also by authors who really only see readers as dollar signs. They pretend to be your friend and then when they feel they have found someone else who can help move them up the ladder, they ditch you and start badmouthing you to others. To me, this really shows the character of people, and it really makes me want to hunt them down and do terrible, terrible things to them. I could tell you who these people are, but I will take the high road and let them survive and just hope that Karma swings around and beats the living hell out of them. This is as close as I am going to get to calling them out. I could have been really mean and said things to other readers or in our group, but I decided to just leave well enough alone. I am not alone in this little drama. There are other readers and authors who have been stabbed repeatedly by not only these people, but also by many, many other fake friends. This was one of the hardest lessons to learn. I have learned it and survived. So I will not make that mistake twice.

Now that that rant is over time, it’s time to move on.

We have all been burned by friends, and we won’t even get started on family.  So what is the one thing that bugs you about your friends?  

Sinfully Sarcastic,

Shmuttmeister