or just the one

If you insist on reducing everything to a life-changing moment, denying all of the countless events that made it so that one radical change was not just possible, but ultimately inevitable, then the moment I realized I was too nice happened when I got hit by a car and nobody did so much as stop by to see if I needed anything. I didn't even like these people, they weren't about to do me any favors, so why did I spend so much energy helping them? I always told myself it's just what any decent person would do, and maybe that's true, but if it is, none of them were decent people.

(We're ignoring all the other times people let me down when I tried to lean on them. The truth, of course, is that being everyone's doormat was not sustainable. But we can pretend for now.)

Practicing saying "no, I don't want to" is easy enough, but it's another thing entirely when someone's right there demanding emotional support. But the anger that I'd built up over the years of giving and giving and giving without so much as a word of thanks flowed through me then. So yeah, when the kid who said he couldn't pick me up from the hospital because he had nebulous plans to "hang out" with his new girlfriend came by the house and started complaining the relationship wasn't going well, I told him I didn't actually care about his sad white boy problems.

(Watching him go from "I need your support" to "fuck you, you stupid bitch" was priceless.)

Being casually but deliberately cruel, in case you're curious, is a good way to alienate your friends, but the only person who ever seemed to think of me as more than a walking source of favors was gone, so what did I care? I was done being nice. A few people, possibly to their credit, asked if I was okay, said this wasn't like me, and I just laughed. "Never fucking better," I said.

This lasted for, oh, a month or two. Then I spent all evening just staring at the wall, unable to move or think or do anything but wonder what the fuck I was doing to myself, and then when the sun came up I gave notice to my work and landlord, packed everything up, and skipped town.

At least it was good practice, I guess.