Are they just trying to get you to friend them so they can blast you on your wall and embarrass the crap out of you for all your friends and family to see?

I really have a love/hate relationship with Facebook these days. Ever since I caught my BF getting too chummy with a few girls on it, I’ve seen the danger of Facebook firsthand. It’s just too EASY to get yourself in a compromising position. There are an awful lot of lonely people out there, and some of them don’t give a damn about what your “relationship status” is. On one hand, I love seeing what people are doing on a day to day basis; it helps me feel like I’m part of their lives. But the reality is some of these people have not picked up the phone and called me in over five years… why should I CARE what they’re doing?

The strangest request came from an old boss. I was pretty sure he had nothing else to say to me at the end of our last conversation; I had publicly humiliated his wife on my blog, and he made it very clear that he felt I’d ripped them off while working for them. It was easily the worst work break-up ever (even worse than being escorted out of the telecommunication comglom), because I really DID do my best for them. I was berated, threatened, and slammed because I didn’t want to continue working for a company that paid me $15 an hour with no health benefits, a strict schedule, and an hour commute with rising gas costs. As a single mom, that situation was not working for me, and I’m sad they could not understand that. So when I saw the friend request, I instinctively had the urge to duck beneath my desk to avoid meeting his intense and demanding gaze. No thank you. Nothing personal. Ignore. Block.

Another request came from my old high school boyfriend. Again, we did not leave on the best of terms. In fact, the last time I saw him, he was choking a girl on the front sidewalk to prove that he loved me more than her (We do things a little different in Louisiana.) Needless to say, 20 years passed since that little incident… until he found me on Facebook. When I saw his picture, I stopped breathing for a moment, and not in a good way. That one sat in my inbox for a long time, until I finally decided it was time to see what happened. Curiosity killed Kristie. Accept. He’s matured a bit since then…. thankfully. He assures me he hasn’t choked anyone since then. That’s reassuring.

And this past week came the second request from my ex’s new stepchild. I have no relation to this kid in any way, but she *is* my daughter’s stepsister. I have nothing against the kid at all; she seems like a good kid, and I’d love to friend her.

It’s the baggage that bothers me.

I don’t know what kind of Facebook person her mom is, but considering the woman has no scruples about stealing husbands, I just don’t want her to be one step removed from all my personal information, you know? The kid might be the sweetest kiddo on the planet, but me and her mom have a past… and while I’ve learned to forgive and move on, I’m pretty sure it’s not written in the manual that we have to be friends, Facebook or otherwise. That’s asking for an awful lot. It just creeps me out. Do not like.

I’ve considered getting rid of the account all together. The BF dropped his shortly after I confronted him about his “conversations.” Of course, now I just live in fear that he’s communicating to floozies in some other way. At least Facebook makes it easy to catch a cheater: after all, that’s the way Husband #2 went down. I long for a secure and safe life… and the more I try to steer that direction, the farther I get from Facebook. I remember a time when I happily posted every waking moment of my life for the Internet to read.

Sometimes I wonder what the hell I was thinking.

A big freaking disappointment.

I know it’s too early to write off an entire year, and I know I’m being overly pessimistic. But honestly, I’m just SICK of being disappointed. It’s one after another, and seriously?

I deserve better.

I remember being 15 years old, on a road trip with my parents, my best friend, and my two cousins. The younger of the two was hopelessly in love with his girlfriend. This was well before cell phones, and he talked constantly of her. My father and his sister teased him about how hopeless he was… but halfway through the trip he caught a flight home.

We were floored. Really?

But now, looking back, I WISH someone would be that into me. I wish someone cared about me with that kind of passion. I can go weeks without seeing the BF, and he barely seems to notice. Years pass by, and I’m still standing at the same dead-end street.

Why am I still standing here?

“That’s not a nice thing to say.”

“That’s the nicest thing I can manage to say about her.”

“Oh. Stick with that, then.”

I’ve seen apologies I never thought I’d see.

I’ve endured the mother of all betrayals.

I’ve watched karma bitch-slap those I thought deserved it; and took no pleasure in it.

I’ve watched karma kick me in the head, and went down for the count.

Through it all, I had to survive without the one man in my life I could always count on to be there for me. I didn’t know how I was going to survive without my daddy. He was there when I called him at 4am in a panic because my bathroom was flooding… and spoke the common sense I always counted on him for.

“Turn off the water, sunshine.”

So many little pieces of wisdom, so much advice I always ignored… yet he never told me “I told you so.” Well, maybe once, after my first divorce. But after that, he was just always Daddy, encouraging me to let things go, move on, and stop being so uptight. My heart aches at the thought of his rough hand holding mine, the endless bear hugs, the smile that greeted me at the door no matter how late I go in at night. I miss his voice, and how he would sing all the time. I miss sitting on the living room floor, watching him pick out the same old songs on his guitar. I miss the stories of his childhood, and how well he told them.

I miss him so much. I try not to think of the years ahead I still have to get through until I can see him again. While I know he is in a better place, and I truly believe that, I just wish he was still here with me.

I’ve ruined a few friendships in the past few years. I did it in the name of “truth,” but I think that I didn’t really know the truth at the time. I said how I felt, forgetting that not everyone has spent as much time as I have cultivating the thick skin required to survive as a designer in a cruel and ugly world. There’s a high level of hypocrisy in what I do now; I am intolerant of intolerance. I’m not really good at spreading the joy, but I love to tell people they’re being rude. Nothing frosts me more than people screaming at a cashier for a mistake, or bitching at a customer service rep who clearly has no power, or honking at someone paused in their vehicle to avoid running over a kitten in the road. It’s kind of comical when you think about it; I get pissed at other people who are pissed for what I deem a “stupid” reason.

When did I get so judgmental?

I guess my beef is with mean people. I’ve always been a nice person; I eat a lot of crap with a silver spoon. And it always bothered me that no one would stand up for me. So now, when I see someone getting bullied (especially by fat ladies at a Hobby Lobby checkout line; I have no idea why that ratio is so high), I just get mad. And now, I speak up. I realize how counteractive this action can be; instead of lightening the mood, I’m just going to spread the rancor by yelling at the yellee. But damn it, someone has to stick up for someone else. These mean people have to be stopped.

I think this is why old people are so cranky.

“Yeah, I know.”

“How did you do that? I didn’t know I looked that good.”

“You don’t. I Photoshopped your head onto another model’s body.”

“Then I want my money back.”

“Why is that?”

“Because that’s not even me!”

“Seriously?”

“Maybe he’s just dense.”

“I cannot think of any way to make my intentions more clear. You know this.”

“Maybe he was in an industrial accident and cement trickled into his ear canal, set, and left a brick in his head.”

“At this point, we cannot rule that out as a possibility.”

“Don’t get any ideas about bricks.”

“Too late.”

“Um… why?”

“Because if you leave your shoe next to the door, in the morning, there will be a toy in it!”

“Where did you hear this?”

“A girl at school told me. If you leave your shoe next to the door, Christopher Columbus will come tonight and leave a toy in it.”

“I think you’re getting your holidays mixed up, baby. I’ve never heard of this.”

“I’m leaving MY shoes by the door, too. Then I’ll get TWO presents!!!”

That can be said about a lot of things I’ve wished for. I wished for patience, and God gave me plenty of opportunities to use it. I wished for clients, and now I have so many that when I look at my calendar, my head swims; I can’t even wrap my brain around it. I wished for things to get easier, and in a strange, twisted way, they did. I wished for a solution, and it fell right into my lap.

And then there was my relationship.

I complain about my relationship A LOT. It drives him crazy that I don’t talk about all the good times, but I’m not sure we see things with the same eyes. Actually, I KNOW we don’t. He talks of how perfect our relationship is, and how wonderful things are, and how good we are together, and how he’s so happy… and I wonder why I can’t see things the same way he does. When it’s good, I’ll admit, it’s REALLY good. But it seems to me that he has far less needs than I do, and maybe that’s why our opinions always differ so much about our current status. I certainly could be a better girlfriend, no doubt. But I’m loyal and honest, I don’t cheat and I don’t hide things, and I think that makes me a pretty decent girlfriend in most people’s book.

So I wished for patience, and things got pretty uncomfortable for a while; so uncomfortable that I was forced to compromise on things I didn’t want to compromise on. Then I wished for understanding, and things got even more difficult as I tried to comprehend how our lives could possibly work within the messes that we’d constructed for one another. Then I wished for the ability to forgive, and with forgiveness came a new numbness that left me with a diminished faith for everything and everybody in my life. So then I wished for change, but I forgot how terrifying change can be as things changed so rapidly that I feel I’ve lost touch.

So I now I simply wish for love, as I sit back and wait. Actions speak so much louder than words.

I’ve been warned to refrain from speaking in absolutes; never say never. Maybe because I was already knee-deep in an emotional crisis, maybe because I was simply too tired to fight, I listened with an open heart and a clear mind to what he had to say about what has happened to my family.

I’m not sure where it went so wrong. I believe that most people do things believing they have the best intentions, despite the fact that they may not appear to be. Listening to him describe his pain in a calm, clear manner was refreshing. Here was the grown-up conversation that needed to be had. It restored my faith in people; it is still possible to have civil conversations, no matter how much you’ve been hurt.

In the end, we just had to agree to disagree. We did agree that another family feud sucks. I asked for a solution to the problem; how do we repair this? What do you or your mother need to see/hear/say to make peace? He couldn’t give me an answer. Granted, I wasn’t making any promises that what they wanted would happen, I was just curious what he felt would be an appropriate solution. I think the pain and anger are clouding everyone’s vision at the moment; I’m sure, in time, the fog will clear.

It always does.

The thing that stood out the most, though, was his continued pain over my father’s death. I feel like my father was the glue that held this family together; without him, it just seems to be crumbling around the edges. As I look into my own life, I see that my father lives in me; I, like him, can move across the classes, see the good in most people. I place blind trust in people, only to be hurt, but give them the chance again. It’s taken me a long time to get here, to realize that people you love will hurt you, but you have to forgive them. You don’t have to stand around and take it, but for your own health and sanity, you have to let it go.

I remember sitting on the curb of my driveway after discovering Chip’s infidelity. I was devastated, sobbing in the street. My father sat down next to me, and in a firm quiet voice, told me:

“Sunshine, people you love are going to hurt you in life. You just have to move on. Staying here won’t help you.”

And then he stood up, pulled me up to my feet, and we finished packing the U-Haul. At the time, I thought it was kind of harsh, and I didn’t understand. Just pick it up, dust yourself off, and move forward? But my whole life just came unglued.

I told my cousin that if Daddy were still here, none of this would have happened. But the reality is, he’s not. So rather than sitting on the curb crying about who hurt who, or who said what, or who’s saying what about who…. I’m packing my truck and moving on. You can stand in one place, crying over the pieces, or you can go find a new set of dishes.