Selfishness

I have a friend who is, well, selfish. Sorry, but it's true. Now, generally speaking this doens't bother me, cause, well, that's just who this person is and I've learned to stop thinking that's ever going to change.

But this story isn't really about this person, it's about how this person makes me feel when I hear the things they say.

See, what makes me feel bad is that when they tell me things I just kinda write it off as trivial, cause I hear so much of it, and a lot of the time it's poking, consciously or otherwise, to see if I'll react a certain way, so it's generally in my best interest not to get worked up about it.

But they had really exciting news for me today, something, though once again purely about themselves and really not for me to know but for them to have someone to tell (at least that's how I see it, I'm really sorry this is true most times), and I just couldn't be happy for them. I'm almost positive they just wanted to share their joy about it with someone, maybe, MAYBE me in particular but I doubt it, and I wanted to at least pretend to be excited, but I couldn't even do that. I did my best to maintain the conversation, respond at least somewhat appropriately for how incredible, in all honesty, this news was. But yea. Not a drop of real actual happy there.

Now that's just straight fucked up on my part and I knew this the whole time. What's worse, is that what was there instead of happy was, in fact, some resentment, anger, and a lot of competitive/defensiveness. I'm obviously still trying to figure out how to deal with these feelings, since they're irrational, and not how I want to go about viewing the world. But all the same, all I could think of was how I would someday acheive greater, or that it somehow wasn't all THAT special. Especially not compared to the things I see myself accomplishing in my mind. But how stupid is that? I'm sitting here shooting someone's reality down with my hypothetical future. And it's making me feel better.

I feel terrible about this. My friends should be able to brag and show off something they're proud of. Lord knows I ask the same of my friends. They should be able to do it without me or anyone else trying to steal their thunder, which without trying I was coming close to.

Maybe it's because a day or two ago this particular friend really kinda scratched me a little too deep with a couple passing comments in their unique but consistent manner, and I was still licking my wounds and brooding over it when they came to me with the news.

But it's no excuse. Maybe this person deserves my spite, but, they deserve my congratulations in a time of celebration regardless. Ugh.