There aren't all that many things that make me leap into an instant frothing rage, but giggling over messing with other people's emotions is one of them. This morning, someone I felt I had a reasonably good acquaintance with mentioned in an obviously pleased sort of way that he sometimes randomly un-friends people he likes. Why? "It reminds people that life is too short to worry about this 'stuff.' To be honest, I have no cares. I refuse to live my life in worry."
A few minutes later, he was off all the friends lists I'd had him on.
Now, someone could turn to me and say, "You're reacting this way in overcompensation because of your embarrassment at choosing to live so closeted." And there's some truth to that. I'm not going to claim absolutely pure motives here. Certainly a lot of this is my reaction to past experiences being stalked and manipulated by guys who'd singled me out as targets for their "experiments" - that's happened to me three times, and that's three times too many.
I don't think there's anything fundamentally more important than the integrity of self. We are entitled to choose our responses to the world, and society owes us the space in which to think and feel our own thoughts and feelings. (This is, for me, a measure of oppression: how far is your soul constrained to suit someone else's agenda?) And I think there are few things so gratuitously, contemptibly mean as pranking others' sense of the quality of their friendship with you in effort to teach them not to care. Friendships and acquaintances do matter - they help us define ourselves, they enrich our lives. Sometimes they save our lives, literally; I would not be here now writing this without the timely intervention of people who cared about me in moments of profound crisis. The idea that we should strive to think of all that as expendable appalls me.
So my circle of acquaintances is a little smaller today. But stronger for the removal. I'll have to find some cool new folks to get to know. In the meantime, I'll coax down the fear and rage I always feel at these moments; I've closed up the files for today's work and will get back to them later. This passes, I know, I just wish it were past already.
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