Friends in conflict with individuality?

Ok, so a little background first. I know it will sound a little gossipy, but I need to vent it out of my system.

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I had three acquaintances-cum-friends.Imagine people who believe in a poly-amorous society, where almost everyone flirts everyone else and every one dates everyone else. So, let's call them A, B, C.

A who's a single young woman, elder to me was in a relationship with B, B was simultaneously courting C who was another woman of a similar age. A, B and C were all aware of each-other's presence in each other's lives. Things didn't turn out between A and B the way A wanted. So, she gets all furious and bitchy about C as well as B as well as the woman B finally gets attached to (let's call this new woman D).

Now, I do not have a clue between A. B. C because they are all usually tight lipped n their personal lives and I don't poke in my nose where it's not wanted. It's AS SIMPLE AS THAT.However, I end up in a fix in the following manner....

A posts something very offensive about C on the public forum (think of someplace like face book) where most of us usually interact with. I do NOT know the background. I end up commenting on it in a very general way. The some days later A tells me that the offensive words were a personal attack on C. I feel manipulated. I felt that something I said in a spirit of fun and humor, was portrayed as support of A in a personal warfare against C. I felt duped by A because if it was a personal attack, she should have either educated me (in case she was looking for a support from me), or should have removed my comment from there. She had done neither. And I had ended up hurting C.

Then some days later A and I talked with it again. And I told her she shouldn't have slandered someone on a public forum. She said C and B used to play games. I told her it didn't matter. One's personal dignity is one's own responsibility. A said she knew it looks bad, but she doesn't care and she's happy as she is and she doesn't need my advice.She also said apparently she was drunk.

Three months later. C posts on some other thread that the offensive words don't help even if they are used behind the shield of pms, mood swings or other such. I see this as an opportunity to apologize to C (remember I am NOT thinking about A, because I am NOT a part of their personal war, whatever it is, I care not!!!). so, I admit to C on the same post that I agree it's bad to call names, I called someone a similar name and I regret it now (I mention none of the parties involved)

A thinks I am cruel. WOW!!! Thinks I'm not a friend, I don't support, I am picking on her and shattering to pieces (she seems to be having lots of issues with other common acquaintances/friends as well)

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Now my perspective,

1. I take people at face value. Unfortunately for me, I expect the same.
2. The fundamental value system I hold is - I avoid poking my nose into who does what with whom? who sleeps around with whom? who is marrying whom, unless I am invited to OR unless all parties are common friends and tell me themselves about it. Summary - I don't like, understand or participate in typical gossip. Friendly banter is different however.
3. When I first got involved in the feud, I was completely unaware of it being a personal attack, but it was however taken by me in a completely different context. A WAS AWARE of this. But she didn't play the friend and/or reproach me then. Rather she manipulated me.
4. Had I known it was a personal attack, I'd run miles away from it, till the related people settled it among themselves.
5. When I came to know the reality, it was too late to apologize, because I couldn't figure out how to do it to C.
6. I told A clearly it wasn't the right thing to do and she chose to overrule how I felt.
7. At my opportunity, when I apologized publicly for the mistake that I had made, without absolutely any reference - A feels offended and questions not only my fundamental integrity but also my friendship and support.

Here's what support means to me:

• It is unbiased.
• It has to be justified in my eyes.
• It has to be in a manner that it doesn't hurt people.
• Support does NOT equate to taking sides in inter-personal conflicts of a personal nature.

Apparently, A doesn't understand this. But I am not going to let her play with my guilt conscious. I am still A's friend. I DO wish her good from the deepest of my heart. BUT, I a not someone who'd compromise on my personal value system for the sake of a friend who chooses to manipulate me for her own reasons and then play with my guilt when she's at the disadvantage.

Between friends and personal integrity, I make a choice to choose the latter and accept the consequences. And I might *feel* guilty about it, but I'm not going to give in to the guilt.

I wish you understood me better A.

© anu (Exploring Myself)

Accepted

Today, I watched a movie Accepted.... A wonderful movie, talking about the rejection of kids from the colleges they apply, their desperation, their parents playing safe and ruling over. A student who's flustered and gets frustrated by the pressure and the disappointment of His parents, goes ahead, makes a fake website and gets a print for His admission to a fake college. Given the check towards the fee, He gets a building on lease, renovates it with His friends, and even goes ahead to find a fake dean for the college, who pretends to be a Dean when the kid's parents want to meet him.

The Hampton college administration gets against them for the heck of land and for the very reason they're proud of their ancestry...REJECTION.

And in the midst of all this, a kid who'd been admitted to the Hampton college is and is abused, mocked, humiliated, ragged and beaten as a newbie, applied for the accreditation of this fake institute to be a real one.

Through a series of dramatic speech following the rejecting looks on the education ministers' faces etc. The college gets an accreditation for a probationary period of a year.

Why am I rambling?

Because I felt myself alive again. I am alive. I realize why did I choose to drop, why did I waste 4 so called prestigious years, why did I choose arts? why did I write CAT when I didn't want to do MBA? Why didn't I take admission into MBA after securing 94.62%?Why did I drop another year?

I Damn realized all that!!! Because I don't care whether I get ACCEPTED or not!!!

I do not give a damn about whether the so called social norms find me capable enough of being successful, for I am and I exist, exactly as I am. The four years I dropped, I learnt. Every passing day taught me, what endless number of my peers do not know even today at 26. It taught me who and why and what humans are. It taught me to accept failure. And not as a failure, but as pride.

It taught me knowledge for the sake of knowledge. It taught me, learning was a NEVER ENDING process. It taught me that people who simply conform to rules, generally do nothing else. Just that. Confirm to rules.Period.

Today for the first time, I realized I accept myself as who I am. A person with my creativity, with my passion, with my love to be and embrace who I am, a writer at heart, a teacher by choice, not by force.I today realize that the day I start teaching full time,I'd be doing it because I love it, not because it fetches me bread and butter. I realized, I'd be one of those few people who love their jobs:)

I realised, that I write not because my parents, teachers or my bread and butter ask me to, but because I love doing it.

I realised to be successful I need not an assortment of high degrees, but my self, my true self and my true commitment. And to be that, to have that, to relive it every moment of my life. I accept who I am.

Not exceptional, may be. Not average either may be. Disoriented may be. But I'm sure I'm not brainwashed. I'm sure I'm, not just another track follower. If I disappear and get lost, I'd be remembered as a lost cause. If I succeed, I'd be remembered as an ivory tower may be. But definitely I'll not be just one of those 100000s who get up, go to work, come back, eat and sleep and then follow the same schedule the other day :)

Today, I'm really proud of being who I am. Today I really feel accepted, truly accepted by me:)

QS, Friend, Your food for thought, followed by the movie has brought a change I had never expected and wouldn't have ever expected. Thanks.

Love and regards,

©2010 anu (Exploring Myself)

I am but a part of You

I look at the sky,
the roof so high,
spread equally over head,
hiding the cosmos shy.

I look at the earth,
the Terra firma.
spread beneath the feet,
vast hiding lava and magma.

I view the oceans,
spread vast and beyond.
with water unrestrained,
hiding... of tears and salt.... a bond!

I wonder where on this vast land...
A tiny speck like me has a stand?
I realize, I'm but everywhere,
as long as I care, as long as I share.

I'm nothing and
None the less a being divine too,
for Lord, I'm nothing,
I'm but, a part of You.



©anu (Exploring Myself)

I am who I am

I have beeen thinking last few days about who and what type of an individual am I. I sometimes feel that I am what the reality is... and at others what my fantacy is.... While I am both a slave and a tyrant when I read a medieval story, I am the white wizard if it comes to the wizard fantasy fiction. I am both a dragon slayer and a dragon ride, I am both Brida and also the magician. I am also Athena, as well as her teacher.

All these traits do not mean that I'm losing my mind, or that I do not know who I am, or that I have become Don Quixote who's lost in a world all unreal. The only thing this means is the fact that this world is just not the right for me. I picture myself as one who would design all these charachters. When I read these books, I live each of these charachters. There haven't been few days after I read Don Quixote that I worried I might once become like him. But, I somehow knew that I'd not be able to.

The only fact is that I wish to be larger than life. Though I do not underestimate myself, I know that real heroes turn out to be heroes, not because they are larger than life, but because they live each moment with all the passion and intensity they have. However, I wish to be who I am, a sensible human being, and yet in some way a woman whom the world might call Heroine.

I know my struggles are neither large nor small. They are just my share of all the struggles that people have to suffer. I also know that there's nothing like the best hero or the one and only hero. All the heroes who live life the way they should are sung of, and even the singing is not important. One does not need a saga written in one's name to be remembered, one just need the acceptance of oneself in one's times and by one's people, and perhaps that's what I crave for, in all the different roles that I read of, and that I can think of.

I have a whole lot of thoughts muddled in my mind right now, and in order to rearrange them, I'll take a break, and rest my fingers that have been typing for last 10 minutes incessantly.

Till then......

I am who I am!

©anu (Exploring Myself)