You Never Can Keep a Friend

Posted on April 10, 2010 in Disappointment Reflections Responsibility

After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs.

Emily Dickinson

I find the ease with which some people slough off accountability sociopathic: say you have a misunderstanding, a miscommunication. My practice is to get to the heart of the matter. If it is because I misread or misspoke, I quickly acknowledge it. I don’t stand on lies to myself or to others. My question for the world is how can others not admit mistakes of this order? These things happen and, at least, for me are easy to forgive and drop. Unless….

Here is where the sociopath takes off its trench coat and shows its ugly bones. Suppose I have responded exactly to what was said by a stranger. Suppose that person gave me no clue at first that he/she meant the opposite, but called me “stupid”. “Wait;” it could have been said at first. “What did you think I said?” Suppose someone else comes into the picture and castigates you for misreading the other person? So you quote exactly what was said, adding now that you’re willing to leave it at a misspeaking. “This kind of thing happens,” you state. “Let’s leave it there.”

You honestly want to stop the argument, but Third Party wants you to apologize for misreading what the other person said. But that’s not what happened.” You read all too well what was said. And you’re willing to leave it. Is this other person saying “Oh, I didn’t mean that!”? No. Third party directs the eyes of the room upon you. This clever ventrilloquist causes all the mouths all to say that you should be the one to apologize. The argument will not die the quiet death it deserves.

And this hurts precisely because you believe that we should be accountable for what we do and nothing more. You lose friends over it and it is written off to your stubbornness — maybe, in my case, your mental illness. It’s hard to undo because you naturally question yourself and what you do. “Am I missing something?” And on darker note, the sociopath in you makes a suggestion: maybe it is because you showed weakness by admitting your own faults in the past.

Fortunately, you ignore the sociopath. But you are still left with sadness: why do the rules of the world apply to you in this one way and to others in another? You may decide in the end that these are friends not worth having, but you keep hearing the voice of your mother saying “You never could keep a friend.” And so you have to fight the urge to let your grief step all over you.