dammit, where was the air raid sirens?

[katster]

Two and a half years left in a pile of smoking rubble in half a second.

and apparently, I'm not supposed to feel anything about this because, after all, it's "only IRC."

There's a reason I won't talk about depression around a lot of the people whom I consider my closest friends. I mean, yeah, they know I'm manic-depressive, but when I'm depressed, which seems like most of the time, I don't say anything. Usually their first clue that something's gone wrong is when I go storming from the channel in a rage over something or other. It sucks because that shouldn't be the only way I can have of expressing feelings. But it is, because I hate appearing like the depressed katster all the time, and because, to be honest, I'm not sure anybody would truly understand. Especially if IRC is in any way involved in my latest funk.

would these same people who are telling me not to let things bug me because it's only IRC be so quick to say the same thing about real life? I mean, yeah, you shouldn't let these things bug you because it's only RL. The latter sentence is patent bullshit, so why isn't the former? Why does the medium change the message?

Yeah, I have things I need to work on. I need to not let my temper have so much of a say. Granted, it's harder to keep it under control when I'm depressed, but I still need to learn better. Anger is a weapon only to one's opponent. Who's the better person, the one who doesn't know they're striking out indiscriminately with their anger, or the person who does know exactly what their anger does, but goes ahead and indulges anyway?

yeah, I should probably apologize to a few folks whom I was angry at indiscrimently. I'm not sure that I can so easily apologize to those who told me that my feelings don't matter. And in all honesty, it's just IRC, they prolly didn't even notice.

Sorry, I'm kinda bitter tonight, and that's why I'm rambling. It's been an utterly long day, and I'm still in kinda a state of shock that somebody who claimed she was my friend could throw away two and a half years of caring because I committed the heinous crime of disagreeing with her. In fact, the last I knew of said friend is that she asked for time alone to figure out what was going on in her head, and the next thing I know, I'm kicked off her LJ friends list and told basically that she wants nothing to do with me. This hurts. It hurts not only for the friendship lost, but for the trust that's lost if she was ever to come crawling back.

Ari (ameth) gave me the advice the other day that I can't be friends with everybody. This is a lesson I'm learning. Somebody else told me that he chose not to associate with me for a list of reasons which he hasn't divulged to me, and that's fine. I can't learn what made him hate me in the first place, and I can't correct them. That's fine. I prolly wasn't gonna be able to fix things anyway, so... *shrug*. I can't be friends with everybody. The best I can learn is to exist in the same place with them without fighting.

So, here I am, at three in the morning, randomly thinking, and ripping John Henry, for no other reason than I want to have the songs in my mp3 playlist. John Henry got me through some tough times in college, and rediscovering it has been a lot of fun. o/~ meet james ensor o/~ ! :) TMBG is always goofy and makes me feel better.

So yeah. I'll write more about my utterly crappy week, and my typical aversion to February a bit later. Now I should prolly sleep. getting random usually doesn't help, and when i'm rambling about utterly depressing feelings... :P sorry to subject you all to it.

Comments

... I see.

[mauvelous.livejournal.com]

I'm here, and I'm not going to address the depression or anything.. I'm simply going to toss my last few bits on this before I give up on resolving _this_ mess. (I just don't know how to keep my mouth shut, don't I?) It probably won't help your mood at all, but I hope it will at least clear up some views.

It is late here, I am tired and cannot sleep.

I wonder who told you that "It was only IRC." I know I didn't and I never implied as such... ... Even if Zib believes I meant as such, which was a gross misinterpretation on his part.

What I recall about this whole mess, which I have been watching from afar, is that I talked to you a few nights before about reacting to people and how to deal with things in a non-explosive manner. You know, that whole thing about treating people with common respect, and not punching them and stating "You are wrong!" and not getting angry/moody and leaving suddenly. Those last two both happened.

Sort of. Events, as I saw them unfolding, were "Ship goes ranting. Zib gets annoyed, treats her condescendingly. She leaves." [later] "Find out Ship isn't coming back. Mood attack all around. You leave. I make a few comments about treating people properly, vaguely aimed at Zib, he parses as 'Only apathetic people are allowed here!', leaves."

See, the thing was, there was absolutely nothing anyone could have done once the ball was rolling; but you should not just _react_ and _hide_, you should sit down and _learn_ from this experience. See where things went wrong and work towards bettering yourselves against them. To be honest, the majority of people I have talked to thought it was an rather large overreaction, from all parties involved.

Learning from this, would be to see that treating someone badly or looking down on someone just because they irritate you is a good way to make things worse. Additionally, running off because SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS is not a good solution either, because it only makes people wonder and _everyone_ falls back a bit. Not to think about things, bu to _not_ think about them. To evade, to avoid. Because it hurts to see such things happen to friends.

Proper solutions would generally involve trying to treat each other with common dignity and, well, treating each other like _people._ Way back when I was running the show, what would happen is someone would say a few things, it would get interpreted wrong and someone would get offended, and the thing would fly back and forth for about a month before everyone realized how retardedly stupid it was and went back to being normal about things.

But that is exactly what has happened here. Tossing away two and a half years of friendship - indeed - I seem to recall _this_ happening a month or two happening before I left, except with different parties. You may or may not remember this.

It is an overreaction, plain and simple. This could _easily_ have been avoided had even one of the involved parties sat back and acted calm about it, withut getting indignant, without getting moody, without getting offended, without... well, you get the drift.

All you can do is learn and move on, without regretting what has happened. It is hard, but if you just sit here and dwell on it, or , rather, _react_ instead of _act_, nothing will change.

I have noticed a great deal of maturity added since I had left. This was not handled with any of it. Period.

I am sorry if this is blunt. I am sorry if it hurts. I am tired, and frustrated at seeing this happen over and over and over and over again. The solution is _not_ apathy, the solution is _not_ to get moody, the solution is _not_ to get ranty, the solution is to learn why and move onward from it, vowing not to cause again.

I took a long time to learn, and I am still far from being done.

Re: ... I see.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

Sort of. Events, as I saw them unfolding, were "Ship goes ranting. Zib gets annoyed, treats her condescendingly. She leaves."[later] "Find out Ship isn't coming back. Mood attack all around. You leave. I make a few comments about treating people properly, vaguely aimed at Zib, he parses as 'Only apathetic people are allowed here!', leaves."

Zib gets fed up with several months of consciously insulting, borderline racist attitude which more often than not had the feeling of trolling at best, decides to be the first person to say something about it. You know, rather than keep silent about everything.

Ship proclaims that she is allowed to flaunt said attitude and nobody in North America has the right to question said attitude, declares Zib recipient of 100% of the blame. Others explain, tactfully as well as otherwise, that Ship's attitude is a problem with the immature way she's been acting. Ship responds, after some self-flagellation, with a "fuck you all!" and leaves, plonking unrelated people on the way out by association and generally hurting folks she claimed to consider friends.

No one else witnessing things, including folks who Ship decides to write off as friends for no reason, gives a fuck. A few state publicly that caring about what just happened is "stupid bullshit" and that they otherwise not only don't but refuse to care. La la la la! I can't hear you!

I'm sorry, but when supposed friends respond to folks being hurt with "I'm going to go over here and not give a shit about what's happening to you" or that my closest friend being hurt this badly is "just stupid bullshit," it just somehow gives the impression that they don't care.

You know, probably how you'd feel if people started saying "I don't care" in just as many words to your frustration about being avoided on other networks awhile back.

I'm assuming that the folks you talked to didn't have a clue what was going on even if they were there, not least because they were consciously trying to acknowledge that anything happened to begin with. And I'm pretty sure you don't want to hear any of this since it's just another angsty soap opera like anything else that seems to happen, but I'm telling you anyway. Because if you're going to lecture people on what happened in a situation, it helps to know what happened. I'd kind of hoped you'd known me well enough to know I don't get this upset for no good reason. It used to be that folks asked what's wrong with their friends before deciding not to have anything to do with it.