When Someone Shows Me Who They Really Are, I Don’t Fight It — I Believe Them

Over the years, I’ve had a lot of people in my life who treated me like dirt just because they could. The funny thing about this is that most of them kept coming back for one reason or another, usually because they see I’m not a trainwreck anymore. I can’t understand why they’re so shocked when I ignore them, block them, or otherwise ice them out. After all, they showed me who they really were and I believed them. This is why I’m totally okay with leaving them in the dust…

  1. Good people don’t treat people who were nice to them like dirt. This is something that legitimately decent people don’t do. If someone ghosts me, drops me, acts like I’m an embarrassment, uses me, or otherwise hurts me just because it was convenient for them or because they could, that makes them a bad person — or, at the very least, a bad person to me.
  2. Sorry doesn’t rewind time. If a plate breaks and you apologize to it, it’s still broken. Sorry can make some things better after time, but it doesn’t take back what these people did. For me, saying sorry doesn’t fix things because those things shouldn’t have happened in the first time. Yes, people make mistakes, but treating someone like crap isn’t a mistake, it’s a choice.
  3. How am I supposed to believe they’ll be good to me once they’ve proven they’re willing to hurt me? Here’s the thing about me — I’m a proof-based thinker. If I see direct evidence that someone is a crappy person to be around, I’m going to believe that they’re someone I should avoid. Taking a leap of faith is a foolish thing to do, especially if the people who I’m putting my faith in have shown that they have no remorse in screwing me over.
  4. If they could treat me so badly when things were fine, how would they be in a crisis? Bad things can happen in life, and during those times, we need our friends to be there for us. I don’t want to risk investing my time and friendship into people who will stab me in the back at a moment’s notice. After all, it’d make more sense to invest more time to real friends than to take a risk with friends who have already proven themselves fake.
  5. People don’t seem to respect you if you give them second chances. It’s sad, but it’s true. Every time that I’ve given a person a second chance, it’s blown up in my face. What’s worse about it is that forgiveness and a fresh start seems to make people think I’m a doormat. Since people don’t seem to appreciate it, I stopped doing it. It’s just not worth my time.
  6. I know it’s petty, but it’s also a matter of payback too. I’m a believer in karma. If I was basically begging someone for friendship or help and they turned their back on me, trust me when I say I’ll remember it. The worst or best thing you can give someone is your absence — and I know that, in my case, the worst thing I can do is cut someone off from my friendship.
  7. No one is entitled to a second chance or forgiveness. A lot of people out there seem to think that asking for a second chance means that they’ll automatically get one. This isn’t how life works. You don’t see Olympic judges shrugging and telling athletes that they can get another try, do you? Of course not — so why do regular people have to give second chances to others? They don’t, and I wish people would remember that.
  8. If people don’t face consequences, they won’t learn. People who get to benefit from friendships and relationships without actually being decent people/friends/partners aren’t going to learn a lesson unless they get their privileges revoked. I want to think that people will think twice before they treat someone else poorly if they see the consequences of their actions with me. Maybe they’ll learn something about their actions with the next person.
  9. I deserve better friends than ones who have hurt me before. Just about everyone I know deserves good friends. You know why? Because most people are fairly decent human beings. This means that the people who hurt me in the past have no reason to be around me in the future. After all, I can always make new friends.
  10. I have better things to do than to give people I don’t care about a second chance. Life is really too short to deal with people who do nothing but tear me down and leave me guessing. Considering how little time we have on this planet, doesn’t it make more sense to just focus on people who are better for me, anyway?
Ossiana Tepfenhart is a New Jersey based writer and editor with bylines in Mashed, Newsbreak, Good Men Project, YourTango, and many more. She’s also the author of a safe travel guide for LGBTQIA+ people available on Amazon.

She regularly writes on her popular Medium page and posts on TikTok and Instagram @ossianamakescontent.
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