An interesting call.....

Yesterday while I was doing laundry, my cell phone chimed off in my pocket. Normally, I don't carry it around but was expecting a few return calls and didn't want to miss them.

The call was from someone I know from the wat, the one I wrote about last summer. It's something I thought was gone from my life. Lots of things happen behind the scenes that we never know about. I'm coming to learn that.

The guy (I'll call him Ta) told me about several things that have been going on there and asked for my help with straightening it out. There was a criminal act committed and because of language barriers and so on, they're not getting the response they need from the police. I agreed to talk with the police for them and continue following up until it resolves.

That's not the real point of this message though.

I am the sort of person who needs to be needed ~ and I need that community as much as they might seemingly need me.

But I've discovered now a second person in my life who seems to consider me to be a personal service object. Both of them like the idea that I should be sitting home, exclusively available to them when they might happen to have a moment in their overcrowded lives to acknowledge my existence. The people at the wat wanted to reach me some time ago and she denied them my phone number. She had a conflict with someone out there and is angry. I get that. I know what happened and I would be angry, too. I supported her choice to remove herself from the community. I just question her right to use me as part of her revenge. It's impossible to even fathom that kind of self-serving meanness.

Ta told me that they'd asked for my number several times and she said "no". Just "no".

And by doing this, she has denied me the right to make my own choices. She had no right to do that!

I may or may not choose to talk with her about it. For now, I will ignore her calls until I am over these negative feelings. If I talk to her right now, I will burn the bridge.

My thought at this point is that I will just carry on and do what I want to do and not discuss it. The thing that makes me so upset about this is that she knows I've been wanting community, that I don't like being alone. Rather than honor my need and be a part of making my life better and allowing me to help her make her life better, she intentionally isolated me for her own purposes.

I am beyond pissed off. I'm far too hurt to be pissed off. I'm disgusted!

What I want to do is concentrate on how to recognize people like that so I don't draw any more people in my life who figure I exist for their convenience.

Any suggestions?


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One of the things I committed to doing once I became mobile again is to get involved in things outside my own home and immediate environment.

I've been driving around like a whirling dervish, trying various things that interest me, volunteer opportunities and ~ well ~ just anything that sparks me at the moment.

Last Saturday, I went out to another local wat (yes, more wat drama) because they offer language classes that I'd like to take.

I don't think I have ever encountered a less welcoming group of people, all of whom stood around in their small groups, not interacting with each other in any way. By nature, I'm not a socially aggressive person and wandered here and there, trying to find a comfortable opening. They were having their usual Saturday morning feed. While the food smelled great, I had no interest in having any.

The reason is that it didn't seem possible to penetrate those cliques. (Maybe next time, I'll take a bunch of Tupperware, buy it and bring it home.) Seriously though, I don't think even one person made the effort to say "hello", "sawadee", "who the devil are you" or "kiss my a... ".

Typically, I do better with groups that have a common focus ~ such as reading groups, classes of some sort or a common activity. It seems much easier that way. The socializing can come after getting to know each other when there is already a commonality established.

I left that place feeling almost shell-shocked. I'm not accustomed to blatant rudeness and am usually received well, wherever I choose to go. I might not be adopted into the family or included in anyone's will ~ but I'm generally treated kindly and with courtesy.

So I'm looking at the idea of giving it one more try tomorrow morning, just to see if perhaps it was a bad day ~ or there was something going on that I don't know about. It would be easy to just write them off as a snobbish little community, satisfied among themselves but that might be a bit premature.

I'd be interested in hearing your views on this.... not what I should do so much as what you would do. How do you handle situations like that? Burst in like you own the place, back off, write them off or keep trying....

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