DISCLAIMER:  This is my blog, and therefore my place to vent/share.  To anyone reading this who knows more about what I’m talking about than described here, please understand that I’m not trying to be hurtful or upset anyone.  I just need a way to deal with my own hurt feelings, and rather than put another person in an uncomfortable situation by bringing it up, I’m doing it here, without any need for a response.  It’s cathartic to let it all out.  Don’t read on if that’s not something you can deal with.

There’s some stuff going on right now with a person I thought was a friend and several people I know are still friends –  no need to get into the details.  It has resulted in some people being left out and hurt feelings, including my own.

Opportunities have arisen for me to make comments that would be a passive-aggressive way of being petty – things that I could say offhand, that would be seemingly innocent, but that would be for the sole purpose of trying to pass some of the discomfort I feel about the situation onto someone else.  One of these opportunities came up this morning (Ahhh, Facebook), and I almost wrote something, but then I thought about it.

What was I going to get out of making such a comment?  Does making someone else uncomfortable (or hoping that they’ll pass my comment along to to the real person who has hurt me) do anything to improve the situation?  Would that momentary lapse in honest civility actually make me feel better in the long run?  No.  No, it does and would not.

Anya and Sierra have no idea that any of this is going on – why should they? – but I thought of them just the same.  I try very hard to set a good example for them.  I hope when they get to that tween age they can avoid that catty girl exclusion dynamic (you know what I mean if you’re a girl and you’ve ever attended a public middle school, ugh) with their friends.  I very much believe in the “treat others the way you want to be treated” rule.  I thought about what I would hope they would do in a similar situation, and it wouldn’t be to pass some of their hurt on, at least not that way.

So I said nothing.

Again, the girls know nothing about this and they aren’t going to learn anything from my actions this time around, but I’m the adult, and I should act like one, even when they aren’t watching.  I already did my time in middle school.  This is what growing up is.  Surprisingly, it feels GOOD to acknowledge that, and to know that I made the better choice.

Ack!  Here I am being all responsible, and, I admit it, I’m thirty years old.  I guess I really am a grown up now, no matter how much I’d like to claim eternal childhood.  🙂

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