I Don't Care About Ethnicity
I am using this title to explain how I feel about my current bad social situation. In other words...
I am not usually too concerned with a person's ethnicity; I just want kind and caring friends whatever their personal background.
Recently, I've had some strange social problems I have not really had before though I have always been a bit eccentric. But moving to a whole new town threw me.
I had this type of frustrating experience with people:
I would meet someone I got along with, someone I liked who seemed to like me. I would feel good believing I might have found a friend in my new community. Two of these people I met through a close friend who lives in a nearby town. Some I met through my church (I've gone there for about two years). Then there were my 5 roommates at my house.
The pattern was that we would start out very friendly but then, suddenly, with no signs or warnings, the potential friend's behavior would do a 180° and that person would either become hostile and stop speaking to me for no apparent reason, or their personality would change to being hostile when we interacted. They would refuse to answer questions like, "Is something wrong?" Or, "Are you OK? You seem angry." I got no answers.
When I asked my close friend in the next town about it (since she introduced me to several of these people) she evaded the subject, then told me some obviously incorrect information...when I pointed this out, she admitted she had done this but insisted she did not really understand why her friends were behaving this way. I got the impression that was the truth yet I also got the feeling she strongly suspected something but did not want to tell me for some reason. She seemed a bit embarrassed by her friends, as well she might of been since the behavior of two of them was truly, and surprisingly, awful.
One of her friends offered to loan me the use of her car to take a driving test at the DMV so I could reinstate my drivers license. When we went there, this woman was extremely hostile toward me for no apparent reason. Then, after we got there, she secretly cancelled my early morning appointment so that I would have to sit for hours in a hard wooden chair to await my testing--I am 73 and arthritic so this was tiring and painful. When the test finally happened, it became apparent that she bribed the examiner to flunk me! I passed the test though the examiner behaved strangely. She was screaming and furious when the examiner gave her back her money. I could hardly believe this was happening.
Later, she admitted to her friend and mine that she had done this--but she is not clear why.
Another lady was very friendly and gave me her phone number asking me to call her so we could get together sometime. Then, when I did call, she behaved in a very strangely hostile manner, and later went to some length to be unfriendly and even slightly threatening.
At church, a young woman befriended me and we discussed me helping her can her garden vegetables (she wanted to learn home canning). We exchanged information. When I saw her a couple of weeks later, she avoided me after her husband leaned over toward her and whispered in her ear. She looked unhappy about it, but after that she avoided me and wouldn't talk to me or even look at me.
It has taken me quite a while to unravel this and figure it out. There has been friendliness at first, then sudden strange unexplained rejections and odd behaviors. And no one would explain it to me, though it became increasingly clear that my close friend had some idea but did not want to tell me what it was.
This did nothing for my self-confidence. I have a hard enough time reaching out to people without these sudden odd rejections. I questioned everything about myself. I worried about everything from possible body odor to how I dressed and questioned my every word and action. Gradually, I became angry and then depressed. My loneliness wore me down. And I lost sleep wondering things like whether someone had found out some fact or mistake from my distant past and hated me for something I did or said in, say, 1965. Ridiculous, I know, but my situation was so frustrating and strange it threw off a lot of my common sense.
Finally, I did figure it out. I won't go into how I figured it out except to say it took time and was not easy.
It was, amazingly, my ethnicity. I don't necessarily want to name my background, but some people are prejudiced against it. People liked me when my friend introduced us, but then they found out about my background. That explained a lot. I finally got it.
Now that I know, I am relieved. I know now that it's not my fault, and there is nothing much I can do about it. My plans to move to a new town are now accelerating. I believe I just need to be in a more ethnically diverse situation. And I need to do it as soon as I can.
I am not usually too concerned with a person's ethnicity; I just want kind and caring friends whatever their personal background.
Recently, I've had some strange social problems I have not really had before though I have always been a bit eccentric. But moving to a whole new town threw me.
I had this type of frustrating experience with people:
I would meet someone I got along with, someone I liked who seemed to like me. I would feel good believing I might have found a friend in my new community. Two of these people I met through a close friend who lives in a nearby town. Some I met through my church (I've gone there for about two years). Then there were my 5 roommates at my house.
The pattern was that we would start out very friendly but then, suddenly, with no signs or warnings, the potential friend's behavior would do a 180° and that person would either become hostile and stop speaking to me for no apparent reason, or their personality would change to being hostile when we interacted. They would refuse to answer questions like, "Is something wrong?" Or, "Are you OK? You seem angry." I got no answers.
When I asked my close friend in the next town about it (since she introduced me to several of these people) she evaded the subject, then told me some obviously incorrect information...when I pointed this out, she admitted she had done this but insisted she did not really understand why her friends were behaving this way. I got the impression that was the truth yet I also got the feeling she strongly suspected something but did not want to tell me for some reason. She seemed a bit embarrassed by her friends, as well she might of been since the behavior of two of them was truly, and surprisingly, awful.
One of her friends offered to loan me the use of her car to take a driving test at the DMV so I could reinstate my drivers license. When we went there, this woman was extremely hostile toward me for no apparent reason. Then, after we got there, she secretly cancelled my early morning appointment so that I would have to sit for hours in a hard wooden chair to await my testing--I am 73 and arthritic so this was tiring and painful. When the test finally happened, it became apparent that she bribed the examiner to flunk me! I passed the test though the examiner behaved strangely. She was screaming and furious when the examiner gave her back her money. I could hardly believe this was happening.
Later, she admitted to her friend and mine that she had done this--but she is not clear why.
Another lady was very friendly and gave me her phone number asking me to call her so we could get together sometime. Then, when I did call, she behaved in a very strangely hostile manner, and later went to some length to be unfriendly and even slightly threatening.
At church, a young woman befriended me and we discussed me helping her can her garden vegetables (she wanted to learn home canning). We exchanged information. When I saw her a couple of weeks later, she avoided me after her husband leaned over toward her and whispered in her ear. She looked unhappy about it, but after that she avoided me and wouldn't talk to me or even look at me.
It has taken me quite a while to unravel this and figure it out. There has been friendliness at first, then sudden strange unexplained rejections and odd behaviors. And no one would explain it to me, though it became increasingly clear that my close friend had some idea but did not want to tell me what it was.
This did nothing for my self-confidence. I have a hard enough time reaching out to people without these sudden odd rejections. I questioned everything about myself. I worried about everything from possible body odor to how I dressed and questioned my every word and action. Gradually, I became angry and then depressed. My loneliness wore me down. And I lost sleep wondering things like whether someone had found out some fact or mistake from my distant past and hated me for something I did or said in, say, 1965. Ridiculous, I know, but my situation was so frustrating and strange it threw off a lot of my common sense.
Finally, I did figure it out. I won't go into how I figured it out except to say it took time and was not easy.
It was, amazingly, my ethnicity. I don't necessarily want to name my background, but some people are prejudiced against it. People liked me when my friend introduced us, but then they found out about my background. That explained a lot. I finally got it.
Now that I know, I am relieved. I know now that it's not my fault, and there is nothing much I can do about it. My plans to move to a new town are now accelerating. I believe I just need to be in a more ethnically diverse situation. And I need to do it as soon as I can.
70-79, F
