Could write all this in my paper journal; keep my demons to myself. But what's writing for anyway? Could go off on that track but I'll attempt to stick to the point.
Despite my advanced years, somewhere inside I'm still an insecure kid who hates rejection. Another tangent there that I could go off on, but won't. I'll spare you.
So this morning, I tapped on the Words With Friends app on my iPhone. It buzzes and a message pops up. My friend, my close friend, who I've kept even though he moved on from my school a couple of years ago, has rejected my request to play another game with him. I did win the last one. Perhaps he'd been giving me a chance to beat him before he dropped me from his play list? He usually wins. He's a maths teacher, but by god he can smash me at Words - let's face it, anyone can - even though it seems he invents words that defy all the resources of The Concise Macquarie app. Invariably gets these 'gems' on triple word scores as well.
But there was the rejection. Believe it or not, my heart rate increased. After a few deep breaths to calm myself, tell myself to grow up, I texted Dan:
"What? No more words with friends? How come??"
That was at 9:13 a.m. (Yeah, I'm old. I play on my iPhone while Al's in the kitchen reading the paper.)
At 10:34, Dan texts me back:
"Pressed the wrong button after too much wine start a new game please". (Hope that message wasn't copyrighted, BTW, Dan.)
I'm so relieved.
So imagine how I felt when I discovered recently that my nephew's partner had un-friended me on Facebook. So hurt! Yet I barely know this woman, having met her only twice. Can't imagine what I've done. Only wanted to check out the latest pics of my gorgeous-looking great-nephew. I try to shrug it off, but it's difficult. Have I been cyber-bullied? Am I feeling, albeit in middle age, something akin to what kids these days experience when they're being sent to Coventry on-line?
That rejection led me to check out my meagre list of friends to discover, to my interest, that my son's girlfriend has also 'deleted' me. From Facebook and Twitter. WTF?? Probably easy to work that one out, I suppose. Dare say my son's given to 'projection'. I've been nothing but kind to this person but I can take no responsibility for what my son's communicated. He blathers, as does his mother.
So by unburdening myself of all this, hope I can stop waking up at 3 a.m. and reprocessing it. That's one reason I write. There's so much turbulence in my head. My brother-in-law described this as a radio constantly changing from station to station. If I write it down, it fixes it and I can move on.
But now I'm going to be paranoid about my son's girlfriend reading this and being inadvertently hurt.
Think it's time to hit the Saturday market. Maybe I can lose myself in running to the rescue in another petty crime.
oh my. it's funny how, as adults, we tend to feel just like kids when these things happen. our inner child rearing it's head.
ReplyDeleteand if you do anything interesting at the market, make sure to let us know! i started laughing all over again when i read your last sentence!!
Ah! And herein lies my problem with Facebook. It's far too much like high school. I constantly think of committing FB suicide. . but then there's no one on there who's photos etc I'd miss so I have far less invested than you.
ReplyDeleteThe friendships I have that matter I already keep up with them- and reading your blogs is far more interesting that logging onto FB- which you know I rarely do.
I understand completely. BTW do you think women mainly suffer this way?
When I get an iphone with you play Words with Friends with me too? ;-)
Stella x
Yep, like high school indeed. A former colleague says his time as year 8 coordinator was often spent dealing with kids deleting other kids, etc. From my perspective, I can't believe how puerile the whole thing is, that someone would make the effort to 'un-friend', when it's easy enough to simply block the person's updates from one's newsfeed. (I know all the lingo!) I have a few ex-students as FB 'friends'. I can barely remember some of them, yet I'd never delete them because I wouldn't want to hurt their feelings! So I took the 'un-friending' that I incurred as a potent message.
DeleteHow puerile am I, in my burgeoning middle age, to even care?
And yes, we can play Words when you get your iPhone! That's one of the good things about social media. (Think it falls into that category.)
Cheers.
I totally get it. My niece "accidentally" made most of her profile invisible to me for a while. I actually think it was accidental, but it's clearly still in inverted commas in insecure mind! If I played Words with Friends I would become addicted and lose and hate losing. So I don't. I am, of course, totally zen.
ReplyDeleteLOL! You and me both; totally zen.
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