Today I received an email from someone I’ve never met in person and really haven’t been in contact with very much.  Their comments were sarcastic and borderline rude; and, even though we’ve only exchanged a few sentences here and there, it won’t stop bothering me.  I re-read every line to try and figure out if I actually said something erroneous (you know sometimes your tone can be interpreted incorrectly if someone doesn’t know your inner voice), or if I was reading their words in the wrong way, or if maybe they are just a jerk and it has nothing to do with me?  It hardly matters because no matter what it is, I feel personally attacked and it’s eating away at my psyche.  Why does that happen?  Someone so insignificant, that probably won’t give the written conversation another thought, doesn’t care for me or my opinion.  So what?  Why can’t I let it go?  I’ll probably never meet them and the topic isn’t the slightest bit important, but I know I will play things through in my mind over and over again, maybe for years to come.  Help!

My thoughts have always been, perhaps, too introspective.  Any judgment on my character either by someone else or in my own reflection, is enough to keep me awake at night, replaying every moment in my mind.  Like everyone on the planet, I’m certainly not without imperfection; but, living with the recollection of the flawed moments of my life is worse to me than having them in the first place – so I try my best to avoid them.  It’s probably why I usually think things over a time or ten to make sure I’m acting in a thoughtful and caring manner.  I try not to hurt people’s feelings (intentionally or unintentionally).  I plan out my words carefully to get my views across in a positive and affirming way, without any hint of conflict, if I can help it.

However, in those instances when my emotions happen to get the best of me and I find myself doing something horrid (and by horrid I actually mean quite trite by the actions of many others in the world), I’m shocked with myself that I let the passion of the moment get to me.  In fact, it usually haunts me for years.  I’m sure I don’t remember every unprincipled thing I’ve done or every time I’ve hurt someone’s feelings; but, I do dwell on things that most people wouldn’t bat an eye at, and I can’t seem to escape.

How are people able to let things go so easily, while I harp on them for what seems like an eternity?  That bad-mannered stranger I snapped back at in 2004, I still recollect the awful feeling of that moment and have replayed perhaps how I should have handled it a hundred times.  So, I do a few dozen good deeds every time it starts bothering me, in the hopes the good will outweigh the bad, but it’s still there even 14 years later – and it was a stranger.  An impolite stranger that probably doesn’t even remember my snide side comment!

But, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  At least I can hope that someday that memory will fade because although it is something I feel badly about, it didn’t involve someone significant in my life.  That isn’t always the case.

I know, more than once in my youth, I absolutely let a friend go to the wayside because I was involved with a new group of people.  I’ve noticed that happens a lot when you find yourself all of the sudden surrounded by a collection of new co-workers or the cast of your newest play.  You find yourself living through a bunch of fresh experiences with a completely new set of people that may or may not have been around the day before.  The uninvolved friends of yesterday aren’t there to live through those same moments with you.  And, even if you don’t notice it right away, by the time you turn around, your old BFF has someone new over spending the night, and you have someone else to visit the mall with on a Saturday afternoon.

It’s never intentional.  At least, it never was with me.  Usually, I was abruptly thrust into a new cluster of friends when I’d start a new play.  There you are bonding at rehearsals or spending one on one time practicing lines.  What are your “friends from before” supposed to do, come sit and watch you from backstage right, hoping you have a moment to bring them in on the jokes and gossip?  I’m sure it is the same experience with being part of an athletic team.  The “required” time spent with these new people instantly bond you.  And, clearly you already have something in common that brought you to try out for the team, audition for the play or even get a summer job at the local camp.  It’s a similar desire, that brings you together, but it ends up being the catalyst for sometimes separating what was there before.

A different kind of passion that messes things up, but an emotional passion just the same.  And, as innocent as it is, I feel badly about the friends I let go, no matter how long ago it was.  And, I think about them even more often than people like that rude stranger.

If I was fully aware at the time of how difficult, but still very possible, it is to juggle groups of friends, even ones that don’t mesh perfectly together, I hope I would have tried harder. But I guess that isn’t something you do when you’re young.  It’s all about the moment, and the excitement, and the troubles of the present.  And, you make mistakes.

I am proud to say though that I was never part of a “girl gang” for lack of a better term.  You know that group of friends that suddenly turns on one of the group?  I may have lost friends along the path of life because we got new boyfriends, or started a different job or even moved away; but, I never wanted anyone to be alone.  I learned that from my mom who was always looking to add another lonely soul to her cache of friends.

Maybe it was my mom that somehow deep inside brought on this culpability of not always being the best person or the best friend I could be in every situation.  I certainly didn’t learn it all at once.  It’s taken years to creep its way into both my heart and mind.  A blessing and a curse, I guess.  It hopefully makes me a better person overall.  But for those times when I falter, ugh!  I manage to make myself suffer far longer than I probably should.

And, about that email I received today…even though I did nothing wrong (I do think this person is really just a jerk), I know their words will still linger and linger and linger.  I deleted it from my inbox, but it isn’t so easily erased from my memory.  No doubt, it will hit me just as I’m falling asleep tonight and probably many other nights too.  I will still question my actions and if I could have said or done something else to receive a different outcome.  Anyone has a good remedy for “uncertain action anxiety”?

*This is dedicated to one specific friend I lost when I was 16.  I wish I could tell her that I’m actually sorry we stopped being friends.  Back in school, I started to hang with a new group of kids – when I started to hang out with new cast members from the latest musical – and we just seemed to have less and less in common as the days went by.  Then, one day, she was gone.  It doesn’t mean I don’t still think about her.  In fact, when I finally got a chance to date one of my high school crushes, she was the person I wanted to call; but, I couldn’t find her.  Of course, now there is the internet and technology and Facebook, so we’ll see.