For all my friends who have been following along, you already know that 2017 wasn't too great of year for me. I've spent more than enough time thinking, talking, and writing about it though. I'm not really here to talk about my strenuous season, but rather, its ending. I spent so much time letting all of this toxicity ruin my life. My anger, my doubt, my bitterness at so many things served itself us as a disgusting poison to my happiness, my sense of joy that at one time thrived every day. And I realized it all as it came to a peak in the most common, and unfortunately the most willfully ignored, form of toxicity: relationships. In this case, a business relationship. About this time last year, a relative of mine sent me a message on Facebook. He told me that he had a friend, someone he had known for years through their old church that ran a non-profit raising money for issues like homelessness, assisting those with drug addictions, ending human sex trafficking, and many other things of the sort. This friend was needing help overhauling their blog, and my relative suggested me as I had been doing a bit of freelance writing/media work at the time. I thought to myself, "Great, this could be an opportunity not just to pick up a little work on the side, but also make some new friendships with like-minded people!" So I set up a meeting with my relative's friend, we'll call her Trudy, for early the next week at one of my favorite coffee shops, Polonza's Bistro. (HIGHLY recommended) . When I met Trudy, it was clear that there was something different about her. A 50 year old woman, who introduced herself as nothing other than...crazy. Crazy. That's what she told me about herself. Yes, we talked about her non-profit, her goals, her reason for needing help with her blog, and all the business-y stuff you discuss at these types of meetings. But what I very specifically remember, is how she told me she was crazy. And she said it over, and over, and over. "Oh my gosh, I'm just so crazy. Like, you probably think I'm just crazy, because I'm crazy. I mean, I like doing this kind of stuff because I'm just so crazy." Friends. I implore you. If someone self-diagnoses as crazy...BELIEVE THEM. We spoke for over an hour, and the fact that she told me she was crazy is the majority of what I got out of it. Well that, and a fabulous iced honey latte. Seriously you have to go to Polonza's. So fast forward a few weeks. We had discussed my responsibilities, payment (much less than what I had been charging others, due to the fact that she was a "family friend" and that it was for a non-profit with a legitimate purpose/goal), and had decided that I would write five blog articles every week for her, and for the first couple months I would start writing these pieces without publishing them, as to build up a queue of articles that we would plan in advance. She insisted I make the hour drive out to her home every week, to sit and listen to her talk as I took notes to decipher the erroneous things she was saying in an attempt to create a decent published work out of it. Erroneous. That's too vague of a word to describe Trudy's beliefs. Let me expound. In my few months of working with Trudy, a woman who claimed to have Christian beliefs, she would tell me things like this...
I wish I could tell you I was joking. I wish I could tell you she wasn't COMPLETELY serious. But I can't. This was just how Trudy thought. I normally would have turned and ran from this kind of thinking. I wouldn't consider myself a very religious person, though I definitely value the idea of pursuing God in the everyday life. In that belief, I think it's dangerous to take God and try to mix Him into ideas that are completely, directly contradictory to what His word says. However, this wasn't just a business. I had a lot of respect for what Trudy was doing with her non-profit, and I was willing to look past our differences in the name of a greater cause. In this case, I so regret my willingness to do so. In all honesty, things weren't totally terrible from the start. On top of the articles, Trudy had me filming videos of her talking to publish on her blog as well. I "edited" them ( I give the air quotes just because I don't want to give you the idea that I have any real editing skills, I merely cut the video where she started, stopped, tripped over her words, etc., added music, fade in, fade out, easy kind of stuff). I posted them. Same as the blogs, we built up a little queue of these videos so that when we filmed videos, I didn't post them for a few weeks. Everything was going smooth, she would talk, I would listen, write, film, publish, all of the above, and Trudy would compliment me ENDLESSLY. I love your creativity and spirit of excellence. You are just so great at this, I'm so thankful to have you working with me. Thank you so much for doing all of the great work that you do. While I didn't really enjoy the work, or who I was doing it for, I was still happy to be doing it. Certainly not for the money, but for the end goal of funding a great cause. But alas, all good things must come to an end. I got a new job schedule, I started going back to school, Brooke and I moved out of her parents house and into our own apartment and decided to start trying to have a baby. All within a matter of one or two weeks. I wasn't able to commit the time to her cause anymore. So on that sunny August day, I gave Trudy a call. And the kindness came to an abrupt halt. The moment, THE MOMENT I told her that I wouldn't be able to do the job anymore, she flipped the script. Suddenly, she was rude. Insulting my work, telling me that I never did that good of a job anyways, a lot of "whatever"s and "yeah thats fine"s. It was honestly incredibly immature for a 50 year old (hell it was immature for a 15 year old). I made the decision at that phone call that I would not speak on the phone with her again. I wasn't going to let her treat me so poorly just because my priorities were changing. . But we came to an easy agreement, Since my work was merely to write her articles and film her ridiculous, repetitive speeches every week, and then post them as she requested them, my work was done. I had done everything she paid me to do up until that point. So, I would just send her the remaining articles and videos that had not been posted, and we would be done. She offered me more money to do this, but I told her that would not be necessary. However, my reason for having to leave my work with her was because of how insanely busy my life suddenly was. I wouldn't be able to do it right away, but I would make an effort to get her everything that was hers. And she agreed. She agreed. And yet, this is when it got ugly. It took me about two weeks, but I finally got her everything she needed. I emailed her every file I had. Every word, every frame. And yet, it wasn't what she wanted. She wanted a flash drive with all of these files on it, and for whatever reason, she couldn't just download the files and put them on a flash drive. So I told her I would upload them to her Google Drive, and that was the best I could do. I wasn't in a place to make the hour trip out to her house just to give her files she already had. Of course, this would take more time. And not two weeks later, to the day, I got a ridiculous email from her, that I would love to copy and paste so you can really get a feel for how this woman treats people who stop giving her what she wants, but if you've made it this far already, I don't want to bog you down with a lengthy email that can be summed up in a few lines: I'm done waiting, so instead of giving me my files the way that I want them, you will upload all of the articles and videos to my blog, in the timing that we previously agreed upon though I will not pay you anything more, or you will pay me $300 and drive to my house with a flash drive of all the files. If you don't agree to do either of these things within 7 days, I'll be taking "further action" I guess $300 was the magical amount she felt entitled to. 🤷 I was upset that she would do something like this, but I quickly realized that Trudy was the kind of person I needed to just cut ties with. So I agreed to post the videos and articles like we had previously agreed upon, for no payment. I started doing this right away, and yet, of course, it still was not enough. Just a few days later, I was busily working at my job, serving customers in a very long line, when out of the corner of my eye I see a rush of frenzy. I look over, and it's none other than Trudy herself, speed walking to take a spot in line. Right away I knew what this was. I was being ambushed. At my job. She patiently waited in line until she got to the front, where she proceeded to create the following scene in front of my boss, my coworkers, and all our customers. "Hi. We need to talk. You need to choose a time to meet me today because this is getting ridiculous and I'm ready to take this to small claims court." I was shocked. I had been doing the work, like we agreed. I know she had seen it because the system we use to upload files shows me which users view the files, and she was listed under them. I didn't know what to say, so I tried to set up a time we could meet somewhere (somewhere incredibly public obvi) but she insisted that I meet her that very same day, and informed me that she would be coming back in at the time I was getting off to talk. And that, she did. Exactly ten minutes before my shift ended, Trudy and her 12 year old son showed up at my job, and just stood in the lobby waiting for me to get off. Why she brought her son in to witness the disgusting event she was about to create, I'll never know. I actually feel bad for him. Of course, this conversation was entirely one-sided. For whatever reason, she said she had not seen the posts that I had published. Once I had her pull out her phone and look up everything I had posted (making sure she saw that she had definitely seen them before), she gave me a spiel that went something like this... "Well, I still wanted to come up here, because I wanted to talk to you face to face. You haven't returned any of my phone calls*, you aren't replying to my text messages**, and this is ridiculous. If you wanna do that, then you are saying 'fuck you' to me, which is fine, because I'll come and say 'fuck you' right back, except what's different about me is that I'll say it to your face, because I love you*** and love is bigger than that." *She had called me twice, left voicemails each time, and I answered her questions via text. Like I said, I had no interest in speaking to her on the phone **Fake news ***WTF I'm really good at holding my emotions behind my facial expressions, which came in handy that day. There was a lot of nodding, a lot of "yes maam"s and "yes, yes of course"s and anything else I could say to get her to LEAVE ME ALONE. Oh, did I mention she insisted we have this conversation in the lobby of my job, again, in front of all my coworkers and our customers? So I continued on, posting everything she wanted me to. She wanted the entire queue posted, again, without paying me a dime. In her final episode, she said that I didn't edit a video right and left me a voicemail saying she was done trying, and that the next day I would be hearing from her lawyer. She was taking me to court. This was it. And I had already been getting nervous. I couldn't eat. I was having trouble sleeping. I was developing canker sores in my mouth because of the stress. But as I went to work the next day, thinking ENDLESSLY about what she said and about how she was going to be taking me to court, I had a magnificent revelation. I DID NOTHING WRONG. She can't take me to court. I did everything I said I would do, and now I'm doing even more. She has nothing to sue me for except the fact that she was butthurt that I wasn't going to work for her anymore. She was mad because she was wanting to use the nonprofit as a way to make money (confirmed in a conversation we had previously when I was working for her) and now that I was leaving, she didn't have a way to do it. I was exhausted because of Trudy. She was toxic. And at the height of all this, I saw that, and decided I was done. So I texted her back, and said just that. By this point, I had done everything I could. Do you remember back when she told me that my other option was to pay her $300? At one point I actually offered to pay her the money just so she would leave me alone. She declined. Of course. When I texted her back, she decided to call me. I was so over all of this, I decided to just bite the bullet and answer the call. I told her the truth. I told her that her demands were ridiculous, that it's so unproductive to leave me texts and emails and voicemails threatening to sue me every time she finds an issue, compared to just telling me what the problem is. I told her that she was being unreasonable. None of that made her happy. But my last "mistake" really pissed her off. I had edited a video but I hadn't taken out a part where she stumbled over her words at one point, and in her mind this was a conscious mistake I purposely made to spite her. To embarrass her. I assured her that this oversight had less to do with my feelings about her, and everything to do with the fact that I was still putting the new house in order, going back to school, working 5AM shifts, you know, the usual. So, she relented. She told me to just get her her files, and we would be done. But this time, I was the one who wasn't satisfied. I mean, when I say that I was done with toxic relationships, I was DONE. OVER IT. So, I told her that I would do it on one condition. She had to send me a message, saying that after I give her her files on Google Drive, she would never attempt to contact me or my family (Brooke), ever again. In any way. For any reason. That made her even more irate, but she agreed. And that was it. By sunset that night (it was Thanksgiving, actually, go figure) I had a message from her saying that our work was done and she would never contact us again. I haven't heard from her since. The reason I'm writing all of this, is to finally GET IT OUT. I can't tell you how many times I've told this story to no one while driving or sitting at home alone, just to be able to say it and not just think about it. Trudy really messed me up, but in a way, she helped me. She helped me realize that toxic relationships are an awful thing to be involved in, and helped me see how much better life is without them. Since, I've been able to pinpoint other toxic relationships in my life, and cut them off. It's not always as easy, or as obvious as Trudy. But it's heavy, nonetheless.
I'm kind of glad this article is so long. Hopefully, most people will be turned off by its length and turn away without reading more than a paragraph. I'm not writing this to tell you how crazy Trudy is. I just wanted to write this to, symbolically, build an altar, a monument marking a place I've been and have since swiftly left behind.
1 Comment
4/5/2018 11:02:14 pm
Greedy Heifer. You are way more patient than I am. I love interacting with idiots like fhat. I set back, pop some popcorn and watch them unravel. But after all. She did inform that she was the conductor of the crazy train.
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@NickALakatosThe musings of a man who experiences the highest of highs, and the lowest of lows. Archives
January 2018
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