When People Show You Who They Are, Believe Them

 

I was debating whether or not I wanted to write about this, but there was an situation that occured late last year, and it was on my mind for a while, but then I was able to move on from it. Then the thoughts reoccured recently and started to linger again, so I decided to speak on it. As you see the title, from my understanding, Maya  Angelou has been credited for making this statement, and not to say that she didn't, but I first heard this from a YouTuber around 2017 who said his father would advice him of this when he was growing up.

Paraphrasing, he said his father would say something along the lines of, "When people show you who they are, believe them. Don't let me rationalize or explain it away. When people show you who they are, believe them, and you deal with them accordingly." As far as I'm concerned, no truer words could've been spoken, and this leads to the topic of this post. Before I begin, the reason you see this image is because I always thought that the person I'm going to mention in this post looked like Touche Turtle.

I'm going to go into more detail, but it seems to me that this little bitch got in his feelings because of a suggestion I made regarding his daughter. The 2-foot-3 motherfucker took it as if I was telling him what to do or how to handle things with his daughter, and that wasn't what I was doing. This situation reminds me of how petty most "Black" people tend to be, and had I known this individual was going to react the way he did, I never would've said anything to him.

Over the summer, I caught up with Forrest Craig, a former member of that shithole called the The Way of Yah Synagogue that we used to attend. He was one of the few I was cool with when I was there. He treated with me respect and vice versa. He didn't treat me like a clown, a joke, or as if I were beneath him, like most of those primates did, particularly their arrogant, sexually suspect leader, so I acknowledged when he reached out to me. Apparently, he left in 2019, which was a year after I was removed. Long story short, he briefly expressed why he left and never looked back via email, and the next day we had a phone conversation talking about our frustrations concerning our experiences with that place.

He told me that his wife, left six months after he did, however, his daughter decided to stay. Needless to say, he and his wife feel a certain way about that, which I can’t say that I blame them, but she is an adult, so that’s her decision. In August, he mentioned something about his daughter still being there again, and I made a suggestion.

I suggested that he let her be, and that she will see the light and come around eventually--hopefully sooner than later. I sensed that he took exception to my suggestion because almost immediately after I gave my reason why I made that suggestion, he got off the phone with me. I contacted him twice the following week, the second time was a test to see if he would respond. If he didn’t respond, which he didn’t, I would leave him alone, which I did. This was around mid-August. I haven't heard from him since, and I didn't expect to.

I also noticed that he unfriended me on Facebook recently, which was inevitable. I usually don't check my Friends list, but for some reason, I had an inclination to check it yesterday, and that's when I saw it. That's cool. I'm not the type to go out of my way to make friends, and I damn sure won't go out of my way to keep them. When people do stuff like that, my thought is, Fuck you and goodbye. 

A small part of me is tickled by this because it's so petty, most of me is floored because I'm thinking, What the hell? It was just a fucking suggestion, and I told him that upfront before I made the suggestion, so there would be no misunderstanding. Did we have a heated discussion or shouting/cursing match? No. Did I insult him or say something disparaging about his family? No.

None of this occurred, but he chose to shun me off over a suggestion. It wasn’t a direct or subliminal command, because I do understand that some people will make a "suggestion," but it's actually a low-key command, but that wasn't what I was doing. I wasn’t standing over his shoulders telling him how to handle things with his daughter, although apparently that's the way ol' Touche took it.

I wouldn't do that to other people because I know what it's like to have that done to me. I had to block and remove someone I knew for a few years on Facebook about two months prior to this nonsense because she decided to assert herself in my situation acting like my parent, standing over my shoulders, lecturing me, and telling me how to handle things, and she had to go. I wasn't having that, regardless of the intent, but that's a topic for another entry.

Some might look at this as hypocritical that I blocked and removed her for her "advice," but here's the difference: as I already mentioned, she stood over my shoulders, lecturing me, and telling me how to handle things. She was following me in my DMs with the bullshit, leaving long ass messages that I just skimmed through. I didn't do any of this concerning him. As I've said before, I made a suggestion, then I told him why I was making that suggestion--nothing more, nothing less.

I know some people might say that I'm not parent, so it probably wasn't my place to say anything. That's fine. You could make that argument, but that's why I didn't come at it from that perspective, it wouldn't have made sense to do that. I came from the perspective of being the son of parents and having siblings-- a perspective where we both could relate.

In other words, whether it was experiencing or witnessing how our siblings dealt with our parents' advice, I learned that in most cases, the more you try to get people to see things your way, the more they're going to resist, and you wind up alienating them, even that's not your intent. On side note, an exception would be if the person is involved in some illegal/criminal activity, I understand the parent(s) asserting themselves in the situation, but otherwise, people are adults, you have to learn to back off at some point.

Anyway, this is what I told him: if you try to get her to see things your way, chances are, you're going to wind up alienating her. I called myself looking out for him; I didn't want to see him in a situation or potentially in a situation where he ended up estranged from her. It was not a lecture; I was stating why I was making that suggestion.

I'll admit, it's more of a theory than anything, but the reasons why I think this is the case is because, for example, although he continues to follow the religion that we came out of,  I mentioned to him that I no longer follow religion, and he continued to speak to me. I know in most cases, something like this can divide people. It wasn't until I made that suggestion, that he decided to give me the cold shoulder. No, he didn't say it flat-out, it was the non-verbal communication that I caught.

It kind of trips me out because it was just a suggestion, in other words, something to think over or consider. He didn't have to take a damn thing I said. That's not my daughter. As long as he's not abusing her or anything like that, I don't give a fuck what he does. This also reminded me that there are some who will take exception to people making suggestions--I've seen this on and offline.

Between my experiences before and during the Way of Yah, and stuff like this are reasons why I don't fool with a lot of people and prefer to keep my circle small. A part of my policy is I don’t run behind people, and I don’t want to be bothered with someone who doesn’t want to be bothered with me, I don’t care who it is. If he’s that petty, fickle, and bitch made to shun me off over a fucking suggestion, then I don’t need to fool with him anyway. I left him alone, and he doesn't have to worry about me contacting him again. I'm moving forward; I don't have time for people and their foolishness.

People enter and leave your life for a reason. In some cases, people will re-enter your life, and it reminds me that in a lot of cases, it's best to leave the past in the past. The one thing I did learn from being at TWOY is not getting too attached to people, and one of the many things I've learned in life is when people show you who they are, who they really are, believe them and deal with them accordingly.