No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Thanks to my upbringing and faith, I think it is better to give than to receive. That doesn’t mean I’m not selfish at times, or mean, or even b*tchy. I’m human, and dealing with cancer can make me cranky at times.

When I’m in pain, it’s harder to control my temper. But I try, and I try to find ways to give to those I care about even when life seems rough.

However, I also try to set boundaries because I think that’s healthier for everyone in a relationship.

That being said, I recently let someone ride roughshod over my boundaries.

Of course, I bear the responsibility for this myself.

Here’s what happened:

One of my Facebook friends decided that since I publish articles on Medium, I could help him do the same.

Now, he and I were, at best, acquaintances. I’d met him a few times several years ago as part of a gaming group and one time he drove me home afterwards. During that trip, he told me about how his brother died, and I offered sympathy and told him about resources in the area.

He left town shortly thereafter, and, aside from the occasional FB joke or comment, I wasn’t in touch with him.

So it surprised me that he was, out of the blue, asking for me to help him out with something that, frankly, would take me more time than I really had to give. This is because, if I offer to help someone, I take it seriously, and, frankly, given my health issues, I couldn’t really spend so much time. But I knew from the occasional FB post I saw that he was still really sad about his brother and so I decided it would be a nice thing to help him.

I came to regret that kind impulse, however.

To start with, the article was very badly written, plus it was on a topic I had no interest in.

He had no concept of grammar, punctuation, etc. When I told him he might want to use a nomme de plume, he made fun of my “big words”. Which made me wonder about his reason for wanting to write, since I always thought a love of language was part of it.

I tried to offer constructive criticism and then mention how busy my life had become, what with the cancer treatments, physical therapy, etc.

I assumed that he’d get the message and that would be the end of it.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Also, foolishly, instead of being blunt with him, I tried to let him down nicely, since I knew he was still sad about his brother.

However, each time he asked me to read one of his articles I did less to be helpful. The fourth time, I just told him that he needed to find someone else to edit his work since I couldn’t do it anymore.

His response was to lose his temper and accuse me of being a bad friend. He then tried to emotionally manipulate me by pointing out that he’d lost his brother.

At that point, I blocked him.

Looking back, the whole thing was really my responsibility — I knew better than to agree to do something that would take up too much of my energy. I need that energy to heal from cancer.

It’s not that I can’t give to others — I can and should. But I have to respect my own needs and set boundaries. Fortunately, my friends do respect those boundaries and have been very supportive. Not everyone who says they are a friend is one, however. This is something I was reminded of thanks to this recent event.

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This post was previously published on Shefali O’Hara’s blog.

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