Soul Cleanse 25: Retired (Can't Rescue the Needgro)

Needgro (noun):  A person who needs time, attention, and/or material things up to the point that it causes unhealthy drainage to the giver, causing that person to go into retirement as it pertains to helping that particular person.  

This is for my detox.

I guess the best way to get this started is to go an excerpt of my “Heroine Takes A Rest” posting, which I scribed back on June 10^th, 2009:

 "I can no longer be a heroine. I have to accept that it's not my responsibility to save the world. It's not my responsibility to save everyone.

Most of my life, I've carried other people's burdens as my own, felt other people's pain. My ability for empathy is great--perhaps too great. My ability to sacrifice seems to come way too easy. I know that I get it from my grandma, since she sacrificed some of the things she loved for other people.

I know that the lesson she wanted to pass to me was to not do the same thing, to not end up sacrificing to the point where you are bitter, to the point where you are about to give up on things that make you the person you are. To not have the actions have you compromise principle.

Too much, and too often, others have pushed me on the border of compromising principle. If nothing else, the things I've gone through have taught me that if I am feeling emotional discomfort, the worse thing I can do is go against that.

Because sometimes, a person has to learn the hard way. If the person did not get the lesson the first time, sometimes the person has to go through it again..." 

It’s hard to believe it’s been a little over three years since the fallout.  The thing that severed the tie beyond repair.  I know you may not believe it but I do think about the times we hung out, particularly when it gets close to this time of year.  

No, I didn’t forget, but I stay away for a reason.

Yes, it appears we share quite a few people in common.  Some of these people I didn’t realize You were in affiliation with.  I appreciate those who came to me and let me know, even asked me if it was going to be some type of issue, and it isn’t.  However, if any of them, who knew about our friendship, ask me my take on what happened, we may have conflicting stories.

We can respectfully agree to disagree, but I can’t change the situation or how it impacted me. 

I couldn’t be all that You needed.  You needed me too much. 

The mistake I made was the moment I did things out of the goodness of my heart, you began mistaking those things as a requirement, as a must do, on a permanent basis.

At first, I didn’t really mind the one sidedness of the money situation.  I knew about your ends, and since at that time, my ends were somewhat abundant, I didn’t mind being the one always having to come that way, treating for the meals as well as the transportation.  We were spending time together and having fun.  You appeared appreciative of the time and seemed to value our friendship. 

As time went on, there seemed to be a bit of redundancy in the things we discussed.  You had big dreams but were agitated for their failure to fruition.  I am wondering what you are doing to make these things happen.  Yet you seemed in stalemate, waiting for the opportunity to come to you as opposed to doing the grass roots efforts and climbing your way up.  

I wanted to believe in you, and for a while, I did, but after seeing a lot of talk, but little to no action, it made me hesitant to take stock in the things you were saying.  I kept waiting to see an update which never happened.

Then, when you told me you never had a good birthday before, I figured it would be a great idea for us to celebrate together.  The things I did were because I wanted to make the day special for you.  That is what friends do for each other (so I thought).

I thought you were grateful and appreciative, and maybe at the time, you were. 

But when special occasions (Christmas, birthdays) began to come up again, you kept insisting on a certain thing and were disappointed constantly when it didn't surface.  

For me, it didn’t make sense for you to want this thing more than a definite roof over your head or some type of income that could help you get this object for yourself.  It was then when I realized the Grateful and Appreciative had been replaced with Entitlement and Requirement. 

I came into it, thinking our friendship was equal, but perhaps it was one sided all along.  I made myself available when you were going through your trials, yet the times when I allowed myself to talk to you about what I was going through, you made it seem as if it were no big deal, making comparisons to your struggles versus my struggles.  

True, you may have been experiencing the tougher time, but I needed you to have a listening ear and to tell me I would get through things, not a debate on who had it harder. 

I lost a relationship I invested almost six years into.  Then, I had to find somewhere else to stay.  Also I was putting in so many hours, I rarely had time for myself nor time to deal with all of the emotions associated with the heartache.  It was rough, and I needed you NOT to be petty and into yourself. 

Then, when your situation happened, I felt bad for you.  I didn’t want to take sides on the issue.  However I could relate to the burden she was carrying; she just couldn’t do it anymore.  Yet, you couldn’t clearly see it because you were caught up in your own discomfort.  You didn’t even put yourself in her shoes at the time.  That still boggles my mind.

I felt, after that time, you looked to me as a solution, a way out.  You thought the decision I made was an easy one but it wasn’t.  I gave it a lot of thought, but the words my grandmother gave me on a particular phone call put everything in concreteness.  Plus, she thought that after almost six years of living with one person, I needed a break from it all.  So I made the decision that I did, and I really thought you would understand why I came to the conclusion.

It just goes to show all Virgos don’t think alike. 

The thing which got me heated was that you twisted everything I did.  You took things I did out of friendship and made them seem like things they weren’t.  You perpetuated these things to other people.  That is what didn’t sit well with me.  That is what hurt.

Even after you initially insulted me, I tried to be the bigger person and check on you.  You had the nerve to demand an apology out of me, which I couldn’t give because I felt like I did absolutely nothing wrong under the circumstances.  Any other person would have been like, “I know things aren’t cool between us anymore, but thank you for checking on me.” 

That was the straw that made me sever the tie…that made me ultimately decide that I couldn’t do it anymore.  All of this stress in a friendship.  An outsider would have thought I was your woman the way you would act about certain things as it pertained to what you needed and the way you needed me.

I just had to say, "Enough, Needgro!"

For a while, I didn’t encounter you.  I bounced off of Yahoo 360, played around with Multiply for a bit before finally settling on Blogger to do my writing, and Facebook to catch up with everyone else.

The Internet is entirely too small.  Our paths are crossing again due to who we mutually know.  I know some feel through mutuality alone, we should reconnect.  

It just isn’t that simple.  

I don’t want to get sucked back into that Need.  

I’m not saying you haven’t advanced.  I don’t know whether you are the same person I knew from years back or not, but I am also honest enough with myself to admit that I’m too cautious (and too burned) to take the chance to find out.

Deuces