Stop Wasting Your Time on People Who Don’t Care
Cutting out those who don’t care is empowering, and necessary.
Last week, I was catching up with a friend, let’s call them “X”, because I wanted to and they reached out. It sounded like they were going through a hard time considering the quarantine, so I wanted to return the favor.
This friend and I had caught up for hours and it was fun to catch up. But, like most conversations with this friend, it ended up misleadingly inauthentic: they tell me at the end of all of our conversations that “we’re still good friends” and that they hope I keep in touch, when they themselves don’t really.
I will admit that, over the years, I have not been the best at keeping in touch with everyone I wanted to. I’ve been a bad friend to certain people — making empty promises like this person to only not fulfill them.
X and I used to have a game night tradition with another friend we share, so I decided to coordinate a virtual game night for us all to attend. The feedback for the idea was overwhelmingly positive. “Yes, Noah, we’d love that!” They said.
Too bad that the game night was supposed to happen at the moment I’m writing this. As of this writing, I am still the only one who made an effort to make it happen. I even texted “Happy Mother’s Day” to the group last weekend, with one of the friends saying “thanks”. But still no coordination on their end of making the game night happen.
Alright I get it, people are busy and sometimes forget to respond and stuff. But it’s different when you’re consistently inconsistent about it.
Why is it that these specific people always tell me through their words that they want to maintain a relationship yet fail to follow through via their actions?
The worst is when one of these friends, let’s call them “Y”, constantly apologizes to me for not being as present because they’re busy.
Again, I understand the busy excuse. I get it, I’m pretty fucking busy as well. You see, Y, you would know this if you read my blog. Oh wait, you don’t, because you’re too busy to do that.
There was this one time I texted Y my fiction piece that I thought they would like — this was a month ago. When we caught up on the phone a week or two later, they told me that they had not gotten to it yet and that they would read it some time. Still haven’t heard back about it. But when I send you another piece that is about Joe Biden you read and respond to it within the hour. What ever happened to being busy, Y?
It’s a weird situation to be honest because these people were there for me when I was at the most vulnerable in my life. It’s a bizarre feeling because on the one hand, I feel like I should maintain my relationship with them. Yet on the other, I respect myself enough to not waste time on people who can’t make it for me.
But it’s not only dishonest to tell someone that you’re going to do something when you don’t, it’s also pretty fucking disheartening. It makes the other person, in this case me, feel unimportant. Am I not important enough to stay in your lives, X and Y?
Readdressing the busy part, I don’t care that you’re busy. In fact, I’m happy for you because you’re probably busy for a good reason. I want to be supportive of that, and I am. But what I’m not supportive of is when you’re too self-centered to realize that you being “busy” is a shitty excuse to leave another busy person hanging. And I’m not going to be happy when you tell me that you want to do something and then I’m not important enough for you to actually make it happen.
A message to the reader: you are worth too much to deal with such nonsense. Even if someone was there for you before doesn’t mean that they’re there for you today. And just because they used the “I saved you in Vietnam” excuse to keep you in their lives doesn’t mean that you need to stay with them.
You are worth more than someone’s inconsiderate bullshit and I am worth more than someone’s inconsiderate bullshit.
Time is of the essence and life is not infinite. So why are you going to waste it on people who aren’t worth it?
