One book in particular is quite riveting...I don't know how I even originally found this book. Maybe someone gave it to me, or I picked it up at one of the library book sales. But it has been in my stacks for a year at least. Wanting something not too heavy, I picked a book out of the stack and began reading about 9:30 pm a few nights ago. I read straight through the book that night. And read it again the next day.
I wondered why I had not heard of this book before and checked the pub date: 2011. That explains why I had not heard of this book. The title of the book is "Surviving a Shark Attack (On Land): Overcoming Betrayal and Dealing with Revenge," by Laura Schlessinger. I had not heard of this book in 2011 because I was recuperating from my own shark attack (on land), which happened in 2011.
In the years since then I have recovered and am even stronger now. In the years since, I had figured out "why" and "what" and so on. And made peace with the fact that those people are out of my life forever, and embraced the fact that those people are out of my life forever.
I've done a lot of writing on this blog in the past year or two or whatever it's been. So no need to rehash all of that. I was able to slash to the bone what happened and expose the marrow of truth.
But. It is interesting when I read what others have to say about people like these and see that I was right. I did figure it out.
Whilst this book of Schlessinger's is full of good stuff and on-the-mark analysis, I will post just a few relevant tidbits. The book should be available in most libraries and available on amazon.com. I encourage everyone to read this book!
It took a little while (maybe too long, but I give benefit of the doubt too often and too much credit to people who don't deserve it) but I finally figured out that the person who betrayed me was jealous. She wanted certain people all to herself. She conned them. She "won." But you can't con people who are truly friends, who want to stay in a relationship of any kind. Unless they want to be conned. And the "win" here is a tarnished one.
Here is what Laura Schessinger says on page 30:
Possessiveness
“Imagine making new friends, only to find them getting ever more cold and distant. For the life of you, you can’t imagine what has happened, and uncomfortable to try to get information out of them. Then imagine discovering that one of your prior friends has been poisoning their minds about you to turn them away from you. Imagine going to that original friend and presenting point-blank the proof that they’ve been spreading horrendous lies about you, your marriage, your children, your mothering, and so forth. Why would a “friend” do that? The answer is a horrible distortion of biblical writings: “There shall be no friends before me.”
The so-called friend’s betrayal of the friendship by spreading disgusting gossip about my caller was not meant to directly hurt her at all, but rather to eliminate all competition so that the “friend” couldn’t possibly lose the friendship. Clearly, she believed that she was only going to be seen as a valued friend if there was no one else to compare with—and some people see sharing as minimizing their gains. Possessiveness comes from insecurity.”
From page 23: “Perhaps this is only a misunderstanding that can easily be rectified with a friendly conversation aimed at clarification and a reestablishment of bonds.”
I had this same thought, also brought out in page 23 of Schlessinger’s book: “You are usually wise enough—especially after a night of sleeping on it—to know the difference between a glitch in communication and a frank betrayal of your trust, faith, privacy, truth, status, reputation, relationships, and so forth.”
Why do people do this? Why do they hurt others? Pretty simple, as the book says on page 24: “…hurting other people feels good when it is in the service of the hurter’s ego. Plain and simple. It is an endorphin and adrenaline rush to have godlike power over the life of another human being who has or is something you want or wish to be.”
So I had “friends” that this person was covetous of. She wanted these friends, all for herself. Instead of getting to know people and be included in a large circle, this person sought to shrink the circle. While she was destroying my friendships behind my back, she was asking me about others in the circle; trying to get intel on them as they were her next targets.
So it is all as I had thought. And as I have written about in the past few years. And I can sum it up in six words: She loses by winning the losers.
She is welcome to them, and they are welcome to her. I am thankful to not fit into that circle, but have created an even better circle that is inclusive. The only ones not included are those who perpetuate evil on innocent persons who have been nothing but kind to them, in order to cause the hurt they felt to someone else. But that is just an excuse—you are not powerless to stop.
When I was the recent target of evil, I stopped responding to this person and blocked her on Facebook. I didn’t go running to mutual friends; I didn’t have to. She blasted her hate all over her Facebook wall. While the intent was to hurt me, in private message and publicly, it did not. She hurt herself more. I had no intention of running to our mutual friends about her, bad mouthing her to them. (It was the same a few years ago when a "friend" was bad mouthing mutual friends to me, I did not go to our mutual friends as I did not want to interfere with relationships. But that is exactly what that "friend" sought to do.) I had no intention of hurting her relationships with people. But she is trying to do so, just as “someone else” did some years ago. And for the same reason: Possessiveness. Wanting to eliminate the “competition.” But why do we have to compete? Why can’t everyone just get along?
Rhetorical. Because I will never, ever be friends with such people again. I trusted too much. Gave the benefit of the doubt too much. They are all in the cornfield with Anthony…in The Twilight Zone.
Poems/prose on this site are original works, copyrighted Julie P. Clark 2015, and may not be used without permission. DISCLAIMER: Poems and commentary should not be taken to mean any person living, dead, or otherwise.
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