Why Is It...

When someone is impossibly rude or clueless, or perhaps equal amounts of both, why is it, "I" end up feeling like I am the one who is being impossible?  

I'm easy going and understanding up until a point, and the "point" is when I feel like I am being made a fool of or taken advantage of. 

So if that makes me a bitch, I'm okay with that, because my bitchiness is a reflection of what has been received on my end.  

For those who don't like it when I drop a reality bomb, perhaps you should've treated me better.

On a related note...

Yet another person has found themselves off my "Crocheted Gifts" list. A dear friend IRL, in fact. 

The whole scenario started off innocent enough, with me thinking ahead two sweater projects from now, to possibly making a sweater for MzMochalicious.

So, I sent her an email with the link to the page on WEBS website for Berrocco Comfort (chunky). She's got 44J jugs, and I figured the chunkier yarn would work up fast, given that the yoke alone will kill my hands. I asked her which of the available colors does she like.

She inquired what I was planning on making. When I said I was thinking of making a sweater, the response was a lackluster, "Ohhh..." 

So I pushed and asked if she'd wear a hand made sweater, and her reply was just so stunning in its insult, I still haven't really recovered from it. The insult, "Well, as long as it didn't make me look like someone's grandmother."

My sweaters are my babies that I give to friends to love. My sweaters are not dowdy! And there you have it, sight unseen, she's going on the presumption that my sweater will be unattractive (or at a minimum, "matronly.")

So my reply back was, "Ah. Too risky. Never mind. Don't worry, I won't make a sweater for you."  Which was met with, "After all that, you're not going to make one? smdh" 

The final reply of mine was, "What part of I live in pain do you not get? I spent August & September in pain, in a neck brace, unable to crochet. So, the way I see it, spending two months to make a sweater for you, which you in all likelihood will NOT wear, is not a good use of my time."

Several days later, she hit me up, two texts on my phone (to me text = more urgent than email, email being the best way to reach me), to see if I wanted to go out for breakfast on Saturday.  I already had plans, a dental appointment and an art trunk show. And even if I didn't have plans, I'm not ready to deal with her at the moment. 

ETA: She hit me up via email yesterday, roughly what? 4-5 Days after the insult? And inquired what's up, what's new, and my reply was one word, "Pain." And rather than dummy up and ask me (yet again), her reply after was, "Hope you feel better soon." /END SCENE. 

Note added 2/25/26

In the end, my intuition was tingling way back when I posted this originally. 

Due to other reasons (her chronic cell phone use), I started putting more distance between our lunch dates, and it eventually came to a head when she implied I wasn’t putting effort into our relationship—which of course enraged me (internally) to the point where I said how infrequently we get together she is constantly on her phone, and how it made me feel uninteresting or unimportant to her, and that I was perfectly capable to go to lunch by myself. 

The cellphone dynamic had been going on for years. We were co-workers until 2007 and this went on until 2016. So it was an entrenched feature of our lunch dates, and that point we were seeing each other every other month. And rather than an apology or even one of those “I’m sorry you feel that way” which really isn’t an apology, she was done with me, and just ghosted me. And when a mutual friend of ours died from a stroke and I emailed her the details, even that wasn’t enough to re-establish communication. 

Increasingly over the course of 9 years I knew if I said something, it would hurt her feelings, and I swallowed my OWN feelings all in the name of maintaining this friendship, thinking, “isn’t it bad enough ONE of us feels shitty? Why must we BOTH feel shitty?”

And in the end, I still feel some kind of way (shitty or shitty-esque), meanwhile, she has moved on. I am not necessarily “stuck,” but when I see this blog post, it brings me back to those moments. And rather than missing her or missing the illusion of what I thought was a friendship, I am re-reading the words I wrote and I am trying to find some constructive use to even keep this post on my blog. So here it is: I am going to try to honor my intuition by acting on it sooner, rather than be overly concerned with making myself smaller in order to make other people more comfortable when clearly they don’t care about my comfort.