coincidence

How true these words are.  The past few days I have grappled with the notion of whether everything is meant to be.  I have been struggling to deal with someone who has the same personality traits as a person who caused me great pain. I had no choice but to be in touch with this person on a daily basis, regardless of how I felt about the situation. I tried using every reason I could think of to relieve myself of this situation, all to no avail.

“It was meant to be that you ended up with her as a buddy”, I was consistently told.

“No, she just happened to be the third person that I walked into. It was just bad luck and coincidence”.

The other day, I had a phenomenal conversation with a good friend of mine, Lulua.  She managed to (somehow) convince (stubborn) me that this actually was meant to be. This was a way of dealing with a type of person that has consistently shown up in my life. Personality disordered, drama-fuelled, bullying, unable to take on feedback, throws tantrums…basically, difficult people, albeit nowhere near as bad as abusive Voldemort.

“So why does this keep happening?” Lulua probed.

“Just my bloody bad luck. I have learnt how to identify these people and that I have committed to cutting them out of my life. I do not need the destruction that comes along with this personality type.”

“No. Everything happens for a reason. There is a bigger plan of why you are in this scenario.”

“Really? Because I enrolled in LJ to move on from the hurt I felt because of the same type of person, how exactly is it beneficial for me to deal with another one?”

“How long are you going to run from it? You get to deal with it now.”

I realised how much truth was in this statement. I can’t run forever, I will encounter these people over and over again, it’s just life. So, I spoke to my buddy, put a system in place to deal with her. I dealt with it. I didn’t run, I confronted the issues face on. I stood up for myself, I had a voice, I stood firmly in my belief and right that I will not be bullied or accept any form of verbal retaliation for something I say that is not an attack. I will not accept erratic behaviour and I will not walk on eggshells around her.  Basically, I will not allow anyone to treat me the way that I was treated by my ex-fiance. I went through hell because of him and there’s no way that the suffering I endured would be futile.  I learnt some important lessons from that and I am doing myself a huge disservice if I do not implement them in my life.

It just so happened that after this conversation, she quit LJ.

But through her, I recognised how far I’ve come.

So thank you, buddy.

I guess after all, it was meant to be.