From 180 Degrees To A Full Circle

Ever since I’ve been a child I had a pretty good feeling for people. I knew if they were fake, just insecure, good or plain mean. I had many moments when I was told to be nice to someone because my parents had met them and liked them. But I knew. I knew it was not good. I knew that person wasn’t nice. And I knew that eventually it would come out.

You can get away with it while you are still young. As a child you will get told off and it will be explained to the person that you just had a bad day or just behaved badly. But then you grow up. And there are many situations in which you would probably like to just walk off and never have to deal with a person anymore. But you just can’t. That’s where the acting comes in. Or maybe that’s when the questioning of your instincts sets in.

If you get told by too many people that the person you just can’t trust or you just don’t like is actually a very nice and likeable person, a person that does wonderful things for the community and so on, you might suddenly believe it yourself.

It happened to me last year. I’ve met the lady in my daughters dance school and I couldn’t stand her honestly. Something was off but I couldn’t put my finder on it. And as you know you do the polite dance around, trying not to engage too much. Until the girls became friends and another mother had the idea of going for a coffee while the girls dance. I had all sort of excuses the first couple of times as I just didn’t want to spend time with that lady. I’m for sure not anti-social. In the contrary. But I like to choose who I spend my time with and that woman was for sure not one of them.

One day when she wasn’t around the other mom told me about her and all the great things she does. I listened and the more I listened the more I started feeling bad. I thought I might have been wrong and so I gave it a go and had coffee with them the week after. I still didn’t really like her but we made it a weekly thing and then the play dates for the girls started. I admit I kind of grew fonder of her but there was still that little voice inside my head questioning my 180 degree turn. I ignored it.

I ignored it until the day she mobbed two girls out of a team. I ignored it until I overheard her talking down the dance instructor who always stood up for the weaker girls in the class. I ignored it until she made a scene because her older girl didn’t make the team of excellence of the studio. I ignored it until I heard her mentioning my name and the name of the other mom, claiming that we said certain things. And then I knew. I knew that I was always right. That she was a person you can’t trust.

My 180 degree turn turned into a 360.

Too often we ignore our gut feeling. With little things but also with major things. We ignore it because we get told from a young age that it isn’t polite to act in a certain way, although it would actually be true to what we feel. We are programmed to ignore the very feeling that kept us alive before we had all the crazy technology.

I don’t want to ignore it anymore. I want to stick to what I feel deep inside. Because I know I can trust myself. And I definitely want my children to stick to it as well. I want them to keep listening and follow their instinct as much as they can.

There are too many people out there you just start accepting because you have to or because you are told to. Yes, it’s something we can never get around but that doesn’t mean we have to include them to our personal life. And that’s what it’s all about. Keeping your personal life private and free from people you don’t feel comfortable to be around.

In response to the Daily Post Daily Prompt – 180 Degrees