Adults Acting Out

On Dec 4th, 2012 my friend Sarah's facebook status said that her mother passed away that morning and later on in the day Sarah's husband of 3 years, Neil, also passed away.

I burst into tears. How? How does one person have to endure such devastation at one time? And so close to Christmas. I sent her a message right away with all my phone numbers and said, "call me when you need to scream, cry , talk, whatever you need."

She had a memorial for her husband on the 10th of December, the day before his parents were returning to England. It's bizarre how life works out sometimes. His parents had come to Canada on vacation and while they were here their son dies. It's so hard to wrap your head around stuff sometimes.

At the memorial I just wanted to keep my focus on not crying. I could cry after I left. I simply wanted to be a support. Sarah mentioned at one point to a handful of us who all used to work with her and each other that another mutual friend/ ex co-worker decided not to show up because he said it was too hard for him.

Sarah says, "too hard on him? I've lost my mum, my husband, and my cat, all on the same day and it's too hard for John to show up."

That is the way it goes though, doesn't it? People find the worst times to act out. What is with people acting out anyways? When my mom died, my Uncle's girlfriend spent the bulk of my time in Montreal grasping for attention. If she wasn't crying uncontrollably over some random something, she was getting rip roaring drunk. No, I wasn't a fan.

I've been thinking a lot about people who act out especially since there was a fair amount of it in 2012. I've decided I'm no longer rewarding people for acting out. I'm not going to react or give them my attention, neither positive nor negative. At some point we all have to get over ourselves. We have to work through our issues.

This is the next step in my healing and letting go of the energies that pull me down. I've overcome hanging out with people I don't like in order to spend time with pople I do. I say it straight out, if you've invited so and so I won't be there because I'm not a fan. And now I'm not giving my energy to people who act out in order to manipulate me into giving them my attention. I believe that acting out is a manipulation.

We only have so much time in a day and to spend it buried in crappy energy then with the hours or days of angry thoughts and feelings that follow the crappy energy. It's not worth it. Children act out. The rest of us should know how to use our words or figure it out.

Some people use anger to control us or stop us from speaking honestly.
Some people insult us in order to get us to change a "no" into a "yes."
Some people guilt trip us.
And some people act out when they feel insecure about some attention they think they deserve to receive at the expense of your feelings or what's really happening.
I'm simply not going to reward them for that behaviour.

In the grand scheme of attention, some people, some of my friends, are really going through serious hard times. I get choked up on a daily basis thinking about my friend Sarah. I've been sending her messages and ideas on how to cope. Telling her what helped me when I was grieving. I can't even imagine how to recover from such pain.
EY