Friday, August 1, 2008

Everyone has bad days

I get that, I truly do. I have my fair share of them.

And yes, sometimes the karmic gods conspire together to rain down crap on your life. Days, weeks, months when it seems that the old adage "if it can go wrong it will" apply to life.



I am usually the type of person who, when I ask "How are you?", I am asking because I honestly want to know. I really do care about your answer, not just flapping my gums because it is the expected thing to say.

But come on now!

It gets to a point when someone only ever has negative things to say that I start not listening and not wanting to know. When not a single day goes by without a "woe is me" attitude, when nothing even remotely good can happen to a person, then I start to not want to be around them anymore.

I have a co-worker who is in this self-pitying rut. We used to have lunch together every day, laugh, share jokes and stories and just generally have a nice 1/2 hour break in the middle of the day. Now, I am going out of my way to avoid her. I don't want to spend my lunch hour listening to her drone on about every little thing that is wrong in her world. I want to talk with someone who shows some interest in me and what is going on in my world too. I want to go back to my desk after lunch feeling refreshed and recharged, not drained and pulled down.

I wish I could help her. I don't know if she is suffering from depression, or some other diagnosis. Any attempts that I have made have always been shot down with "you wouldn't understand", or "it's much to bad to ever be fixed" type answers. So I will continue to eat my lunch at my desk, say hi to her if I see her in the hallway and hope that her life soon takes a turn for the better. She deserves it.

3 comments:

Heather said...

I didn't know you worked with her:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Downer

;)

(Seriously though, I do hope that she gets whatever help she might need. I just wanted to make you smile this afternoon!)

Lori Lavender Luz said...

That's a tough situation to be in. Hopefully she'll be open to hearing a gentle "kick in the pants" message from you at some point.

I may not have liked it at the time, but in hindsight I am so appreciative of my "kick in the pants" messengers. They ended up to be way more valuable than the enablers.

But she can't be helped until she's ready.

Anonymous said...

I have a friend like you no matter what I am talking about...say...how much fun we had in St. Louis but how exhausting...she has to chime in with why her weekend was even worse then mine....yes, her sister who was scheduled to come arrived...OMG how exhausting and terrible for her...They get a long great BTW...


I let her fester for a few days even a week and then slowly start reconnecting...maybe that can work for you and your work friend.