A lot of change has happened in my life during these past two or three months. My fiancée left me for a D&D-obsessed deadbeat dad, I started a band with a complete asshole and put him up after he kicked his pregnant wife out, I got fired from one job (thanks to aforementioned asshole), got laid off from another and now I'm getting up at 4:30 AM every morning to be at a part-time job at 6:00. I've had to pretty much change up my entire circle of close friends, and I realised that the reason I've had to do all this is because I was surrounded by assholes.
The worst part, in my opinion, of being surrounded by assholes is that you come across as an asshole yourself when you are. It's a bit more than guilt by association: when you're around someone long enough, you start to exhibit characteristics of theirs, regardless of whether you find them desirable or not. Hang around someone who says the word "fresh" all the time, and I can guarantee that in two months' time you will be saying "fresh" every chance you get. I've already picked the "eh" back up from my Canadian aunt since she's moved back, eh? It's funny how that happens.
The worst part about it is that it's not just surface features like appearance, dialect and demeanour that change. Hanging around an asshole can completely reformat your system of values without your even being conscious of it. For instance, I've always been one to burn bridges after someone's fucked me over, but I've never been one to burn bridges BEFOREHAND because I think someone's about to. I've jumped the gun three times since my friendship with aforementioned unnamed asshole, and I'm not proud of it. I have irreparably and permanently separated myself from three human beings. Now, granted, that's three out of 6.3 billion (or whatever the number is today), but those were three actual human beings, three souls that I could have benefited, three minds I could have melded with, three lives I could have learned from. On top of that, I developed an indifferent attitude towards strangers that I NEVER happened to have. I also developed a sort of indifference to my online life and friends, which explains my two month absence. I can't say I was being manipulated by this asshole, but I was heavily influenced. I spent my weekends drinking fifths of vodka and partying in town (and not really enjoying myself) instead of bettering human society in my own little way, by waxing philosophical such as I am right now.
In a sense, my former best friend and guitarist treated me like a battered wife (in every way except this wasn't a romantic relationship gone awry, but a musical one). I was so happy to have found my musical soulmate that I pretty much floored myself to keep him around, and he walked all over me like he owned my soul. I'd pretty much given him free reign over the musical content, what I wanted to do took a lower priority to what he wanted to do, where I wanted to go was second to where he wanted to go, and everyone I wanted to associate with was "gay" and not worth being around. And I was so deluded by his amazing skill on the guitar that I pretty much became a doormat.
So I woke up last week when he decided to throw a temper tantrum and hurl a bucket of tools at the back door (which now sports a 16" crescent-shaped hole in it), and realised that this violent, immature asshole had to go. That's when I realised how much of an asshole he'd been to me, to his bandmates, to his ex-wife, to his latest girlfriend, to basically everyone in his presence that didn't give him 100% of what he wanted. That's when I realised that I was being emotionally supressed. that I wasn't being myself, that I was letting everything good in my life fall away just so I could be in the presence of a skilled guitarist. I let the Mirror die, I let my online friendships die, I let my IRL friendships die...basically, everything that wasn't directly involved with this asshole I let die. And now I have to try to clean up my life and resurrect these friendships that mattered and everything else that I let dilapidate. It's a real pain in the ass. It's spiritually draining. It's emotionally draining. It's actually physically draining. And I have to do this on top of my grandmother dying last week (I was a pallbearer at her funeral, by the way, and it wasn't fun at ALL) and everyone in my family (those who suffered the worst, IMHO) still being numb and griefstricken over the whole ordeal. Grandma was really close to us. She and my aunt Joanne are the only members of my family to fully, 100% support my pursuit of music as a career (and, now my younger brother, who drums for Cancer Rising now).
So, I ask that you take a moment right now and evaluate your friends. If you needed $50 and they had it, would they lend you the cash? If they needed $50, would you lend it to them? If you got cut real badly, would they run you to the hospital? Would they go out of their way to help you if you needed or wanted it? Would you do the same for them? If not, and it's as simple as this: cut them off. If you don't think they'd help you in dire need, or that you don't feel the same for them, then you're wasting your time with them. The bonds of human emotion are too fragile and precious to waste on assholes. So, if someone's an asshole, get them out of your life, lest they reflect on you. And trust me, coming from someone whom a lot of people regard as one, I can say you don't want to be an asshole.
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