All good things must come to an end eventually. Sometimes the good turns into the bad quite unexpectedly. Recently I got confronted with a situation like this. I must say, for me personally, everything that has happened has opened my eyes.
The mentioned situation is the disbanding of my World of Warcraft guild, Stormcrows. For quite some time I lived with the illusion I had left my guild in the capable hands of my officers. I was a little burnt out with the raiding game and decided to cut back on playing a little and favoured spending my time with my girlfriend. This doesn’t sound too weird yet, does it?
My girlfriend lives in England, while I am living in the Netherlands. Add to this that I make reasonably long days – I’m away from home from about 7am to 7pm, sometimes longer if I’m unlucky. Leaving home that early means getting up early, which means going to bed reasonably early in the evenings to ensure being well rested the next day. Basically this leaves me about two, two and a half, hours with free time to spend as I see fit.
This whole situation means that, to me, every little moment spent with my girlfriend is a treasure. We don’t get to see each other much and we’ll have to make do with whatever means of communication the Internet offers us.
Apparently the people who I considered my friends thought differently. I discovered that in the months that have gone by they had been gossiping amongst themselves and expressing their displeasure with the situation. I guess, with the power of hindsight, they had a point. However, in all their self righteous wisdom they decided they wouldn’t tell me or my girlfriend about their frustrations, in fear of the “consequences”.
Needless to say I was quite upset when I found that feelings and frustrations over this had been building up over months without anyone telling us. God forbid if you actually talk to someone! I refused to take blame for their frustrations towards me. What did they expect? I can’t read other people’s minds. I blame it on them for not coming to me at an earlier stage.
I mean, only recently, in March, we had a guild meeting. Everyone involved in this was present. If the feelings of resentment and frustrations truly existed for as long as claimed, why is it that nobody spoke up? Why pretend everything is fine and dandy when you have the opportunity to speak face-to-face and avoid misunderstandings?
Back to the topic, I refused to take the sole blame on me. I still refuse to. I can see how both sides might have acted incorrectly, but I’m not going to budge and pretend I was wrong and they were right. Drama ensued as people mistakenly took this for indifference to the situation. Tempers frayed, things were said, people decided on the spot to leave. They claimed that my reaction is exactly what they feared, while my reaction was only fuelled by the way they had gone behind my back for months.
What I find well and truly disgusting is seeing roughly fifteen people turn their backs on me, half of which I considered close friends, without so much as a word. They didn’t even have the courage to tell me in my face and opted for leaving instead and indirectly placing the blame on me. Even someone I have known for well over twenty years turned around and left without a word.
I have lost all respect for these people. I can no longer see how I ever considered them as friends. That’s what you do to friends, yes? You don’t talk to them when something is wrong, you just turn your back and leave. Obviously.
As icing on the cake, some of these people who left without so much as a glance over their shoulder dared to approach me. While the words were different, they were all along the same lines telling me how they hoped I didn’t have hard feelings towards them. Excuse me?! Talking behind my back for months and leaving without a word and I’m supposed not to have hard feelings towards them?! Wow.
How does one handle a situation like this? Truth be told, I don’t know. I tried to ignore most of it. I’ve been icily courteous to others, being very careful not to voice my opinion of what they had just done. Preferably I’d rather not have anything to do with most of them ever again. I wish them the best of luck in their lives, but I ask they leave me out of it. You left me, don’t even think of coming back to me and pretend nothing happened.
Actually, this is only a partial photo, but it shows the bits that I want to show. You’ll see the coach standing at the table of players in front. There’s a few tables to the left and right that have been cut out of this picture. The important thing to notice however, is the table at the back. Look at it for a second. Then look at the first table again. Noticed something yet? No? Okay, maybe I’ll have to drop a hint. Look at the skin colour of the players in front and then of the players at the back table. Oh!
