Jessie_7_I

So I have this "friend" who frequently accuses me of smiling "too much" and she is not joking when she says it. She is possibly the most negative person I have ever met and employs every one of the negative emotions discussed in the chapter on a pretty regular basis. We're in an organization together and I can honestly say that the other members of the group and I have tried everything we can to improver her disposition and nothing has worked.

This girl was very suspicious of me for a very long time. I'm really a very cheerful person (you're all shocked, I know) and she didn't see how someone could be that cheerful without having some dark motive. After knowing me for a while and not seeing any dark motive appear she concluded that I am, in fact, an idiot. I'm going to let you all in on a little secret, I am not an idiot, just annoyingly cheerful. And honestly, if she just wanted to think I'm an idiot I would have been OK with it. But she started treating me like an idiot despite all the effort I put into being nice to her and that made me mad. I was still nice to her, but I started looking for ways to knock her down a peg or two. I had developed that dark motive she was looking for. When I realized what I was doing I had to take a step back and re-evaluate my relationship with her. I decided that I just had to stop dealing with her all together on a personal level.

As much as I enjoyed this chapter I feel that it really needs to warn the readers that there are just people like her, people you just aren't going to be able to get through to without drugging them into submission. When I was growing I always heard this saying, "stop throwing good after bad." I really think that there comes a point when you just have to accept that someone is unreachable and you have to stop wasting your resources on them before they drag you down with them. I would really be interested in Simmons' "professional" thoughts on when that point occurs and how to deal with it once it does.