Sometimes Gossip Is Nice...

Word has gotten back to me recently about some things that have allegedly been said about me by some family members. However, it's not the usual "she's a Satan worshiping banshee" gossip I'm used to this time. For once, this family gossip has me as the subject of something I would consider rather complimentary.


Last year, when my paternal grandmother died, I saw family members that I hadn't seen in decades. Most of us stayed and spent some time together even after the service was over, lingering after the potluck dinner was long finished so that we could catch up and get reacquainted.


There was some conversation that left me feeling singled out, but I told myself that I was just being paranoid, and tried to give the instigator the benefit of the doubt. After all, it wasn't going to do me any good to get upset about it whether it was intentional or not, so why even acknowledge to myself that there might be an intentional insult in the form of conversational topics?


Now, more than a year later, I've been told by more than one person that another person in the family whom I have MUCH respect for told someone else (you know how gossip works) that "So-and-so was really trying to get Angela all riled up and she wasn't going for it."


Perhaps sometimes I'm a bit too motivated to give the benefit of the doubt, as I'm very good at convincing myself that I'm not being wronged when others declare to me that I'm a fool for not seeing it. Self-deception has come in very handy to me in my life, with so many situations much easier to deal with by remaining in denial. People can be cruel, and it seems pointless to allow oneself to experience deep pain at the hands of the heartless when all one has to do is choose not to acknowledge the behavior, which pretty much makes the cruelty pointless and unrewarding for the perpetrator. What better justice?


The only drawback to this is that I seem to suffer from more self-doubt than I otherwise might. After all, you can only hear that your impressions are wrong so many times before you lose faith in your judgment, even if it's your own self telling you that your impressions are wrong.


(Wow. I just had a moment and realized that I didn't understand the above statement until just now. See how beneficial blogging can be? Explaining things to others who don't know the situation and require more information than I would put in a private journal is very effective at getting ME to understand the situation better. Coolness!)


So anyway, this very mature, wise person for whom I have much respect had seen that someone was trying to push my buttons, and the fact that someone else - especially this person - had noticed what was going on and discussed it with others as an obvious event validated the reality of what was going on.


I'm aware that I have matured somewhat over the past couple of decades, but as someone who has gone through life mostly misunderstood (Thank you, Howard Stern! You are not alone!) it is a very rare event for someone to "get" what I'm really about.


But it happened, if only once, a little more than a year ago; and I'm so glad it got back to me. I'm savoring it.


A.