Random

[thessalian]

I've been thrown in the mix at Random Post!

Not like my friends list isn't random enough, or anything...

Speaking of friends, I'm going to do the venting thing that's probably going to get me reviled all over again, but frankly, how the hell much worse can it get?

I hate discoveries, but frankly, what my imagination can come up with is always worse than the truth, so I'll stick with the truth for now. I'll try to be unjudgemental, but unemotional is going to be a little bit beyond me.

Just this Tuesday gone, weaselbitch, dodgyhoodoo and I were at the local pub, scoffing away, and weaselbitch obviously had something on her mind. I pushed it, and eventually she told me something that corone had said to her on Sunday, by way of some kind of apology to her for asking me to leave 7th Sea. She feels a little bad about this because he told her not to tell me, but this is (and correct me if I'm wrong) negated somewhat by the fact that corone didn't give her the choice to reject this information before it was given to her, or indeed even wait for her to promise not to tell me before he blurted it out anyway. In any case, she told me, and I've talked to her about it and she was okay with me posting this, so there we go.

Essentially, corone told her that siroswold said that he'd leave the game if corone didn't throw me out.

None of us could believe that level-headed, fence-sitting, see-both-sides siroswold would say such a thing. We thought that corone must have misunderstood him. After all, siroswold had made no secret of the fact that he would leave the game if the conflict didn't stop, so I at least figured that corone saw my departure from the group as the only way to stop the conflict, and that siroswold had been (probably unintentionally) misrepresented.

I was wrong. weaselbitch approached him this morning and asked him outright. He said that he did in fact say that -- not in quite so many words, and did say that it would be hiatus rather than outright abandonment, but it came down to the same thing: "Get rid of her -- the source of the conflict -- or I walk".

Neither corone or siroswold bothered to talk to me to find out if there would still be a problem and if there was, whether it would affect game. Level-headed siroswold never even suggested that corone and I sort out our differences so that they would not interfere with game. Instead, the simple option came out. All these level-headed, open-minded people who pride themselves on empathy simply decide to cut a friend dead to make their lives easier and give thought zero to the consequences of that act.

And the cutting dead thing? It's all of them, with the exception of weaselbitch. I obviously can't expect much in the way of sympathy, condolence or friendship from corone, but cholten99 only wants to come round to pet the cat, who is openly afraid of him, and to drop things off, at least so far as I can tell. Neither markwelham nor Kat have made the vaguest attempt to e-mail me and find out if we're still talking, which leads me to conclude that they don't actually care. And if siroswold has decided to deliver ultimatums like that to corone without a cursory discussion with me about it first, he's far more afraid of conflict than he is fond of me.

I don't think there are the words to describe how sad this makes me. I don't know what I've done to deserve this treatment. In terms of the group, there is now no going back. siroswold is prepared to make ultimatums to remove me from his gaming experience, corone is willing to accept those ultimatums even with the risk of losing weaselbitch as a friend, and the others just don't actually care. I haven't been mentioned once. I've left, and either no one cares or they're just relieved. I don't want to know which; either way is equally bad.

Comments

'I don't know what I've done to deserve this treatment.'

[(Anonymous)]

I'm 'anonymous' here partly because I don't have a livejournal and partly because I have absolutely no wish to get dragged into this - it's been bad enough watching so many of my friends being upset by it (and I can say with total certainty that if you think they didn't care about all this you haven't remotely understood a number of them).

For the record, I'm not any of the people who's named above. I have been avoiding commenting up until now, since I figured anything I said would do more harm than good. If you're reading this now, I didn't hit 'delete' this time. I just can't watch someone keep making such a huge mistake without offering a word to help - even if it does mean risking a bunch of instinctive, ill-judged (albeit cleverly worded) aggression for it.

If you really don't know why it went the way it did, maybe you should think a bit more about it. To avoid something like this happening all over again with another set of friends, it might help to go back and read some of the things you have said - for any mutual acquaintance or total stranger to see - about the people you used to describe as your friends. You might also consider some of the things you haven't said or done.

You don't have to spend your life testing how much people will put up with and then saying they obviously never cared about you anyway once you've driven them away.

Also for the record, I'm actually physically shaking as I write this. I hate conflict that much, and I can already see the response coming to this. This is absolutely not intended to prolong the last argument - it's about you and your other friends avoiding the next one. If you're determined to have the last word on this, I'm happy to let you (though I doubt it will make you happy, and I also doubt I'll come back to read it).

Seriously, Jan - you don't have to keep doing this to yourself and the people you care about. We are all far more than just the sum of our past fucked-up experiences. I've been there - and I can promise you that here is a nicer place to be, and not impossible to get to if you really want to do it (I won't claim it's easy. I have a long memory). You just have to work on the assumption that most of the time most people are not out to get you, and that they're trying to be reasonable and do the right thing even if it may not feel that way to you.