gossip folk

Word to the wise… don’t tell me anything someone says about me, good or bad. It is my experience that gossip is the worst form of communication ever spoken. I will admit, I have had my share of gossiping about someone who was not present to defend themselves, or state their case. And I have felt horrible about it, especially when I am talking about someone that I have considered a friend. It makes me wonder what kind of friend I really am, to harm someone while they aren’t even around. There is something very exciting about knowing something that someone else doesn’t. It happens all the time… “Oh, you mean, you didn’t hear? Oh well, listen to this…” is how I have started out many a conversation. And my motives are completely impure… It isn’t necessarily to talk negatively about the person in question, moreover to let you know that I know more about the situation than you do. It’s like I enjoy letting you know that I have the inside on someone else’s personal life, and you simply don’t.
It’s the same obsession with tabloid and fashion magazines, as if I read this week’s issue of US Weekly, I am closer to knowing Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan better than you could. How many times has it happened, friends and I will get together for coffee or shopping, and I will find myself saying something very matter of factly like, “You hear LiLo is back in treatment, and she has BROKEN UP with SaMANtha Ronson… can you believe that?” Just in case you were wondering, I do not know Lindsay Lohan, nor do I plan on meeting the girl. But, if I do, then please remind me to apologize to her for ever gossiping about her personal life behind her back… Because if she and I were to meet, I can assure you, we would be instant best friends…
You might be asking yourself, why all the recent concern for hurting someone who probably won’t ever find out you ever talked about them… It’s funny how all of a sudden it is a different scenario once you are the person in question. I know people have talked about me before. Mostly, because if someone is gossiping WITH you, then you can probably bet that they are going to gossip ABOUT you at a later date. Also, I know this because we all run in the same crowds. It was brought to my attention on New Year’s Eve by a close friend that I trusted, that someone told him something terribly harmful and cruel about me. After he confided in me that someone had badmouthed me to him, I of course want to know who said it, and what was said… Mistake number one… I should have never taken the bait… But I of course wanted to know what was said. Forgetting that this could cause more harm in the situation if he told me, I begged for him to tell me the information, promising that I wouldn’t go anywhere with it. But when he told me what our “friend” said about me, it took everything I had not to confront them later that night when I saw him. I was crushed. I was hurt. My heart was broken, and it was all a problem of my own making. I didn’t need to know that badly what someone had said about me. And what was the first friend’s motive for telling me that he knew someone had said something bad about me…
That information completely ruined my entire night. Instead of walking around carefree, I spent the afternoon believing what this person said to be true. It’s like, if 60 people tell you something good about yourself and one person tells you something bad, most likely you are going to harp on the one negative thing that someone says. And not only did I harp on it, I believed it to be true. I cried all of my makeup off, and was completely sad. Again, I thought I was willing to suffer through that just to know… I guess I was wrong. I guess I will never know the real reason that my friend told me, however I will let you know what I told him a few days later. After gathering all of my senses, and talking to some people about it, I saw my error in the situation. I pleaded with this friend to tell me… Yes, my mistake. But when I next saw the friend, I told him that I didn’t want to hear anything that other people might say about me, GOOD or BAD. If I hear something good about myself, then it will go to my head, and I will think too much about it. And if it’s bad, then I will believe it to be true, and it will make me feel worse. I simply cannot live my life on secondhand information; it gets me nowhere. I learned a lot from this experience, though. It isn’t the first time someone has talked about me, and it probably won’t be the last. But I know that I need to watch myself when it comes to gossip, compliments and criticism. In the end, it isn’t worth hurting someone, and it isn’t worth feeling hurt, just to know the details. Some things are better left unsaid. Period.