It was about two years ago when I told a neighbor to stop her gossiping. Lies and reputation damaging words were spewing out of her mouth about other people that live in our neighborhood while two other women hung onto her every word. I told the Gossiper’s audience that they too were the problem because as long as a gossip has an audience the gossip isn’t going to stop.
One of the two women came to me later, and she told me that she agreed with me, and that she has found lots of the Gossiper’s words to be lies. She went on to say that even if the words were true, gossip has no happy place in this world.
The other member of the Gossiper’s audience became very angry about my stance against gossip. She lashed out at me that night, storming out saying that she did not have to listen to what I was saying. Again, all that I said is that gossip is a horrible thing, and providing an audience to a gossip is furthering the spread of hatefulness.
This GossipSoakerUpper has since publicly attacked me at a country dance hall with the sort of childish name calling you would expect from an immature, insecure classic mean girl in junior high, who is jealous of the pretty girl. It infuriated her when a man (the father of one of BrainyBird’s friends) defended me. No one that knows me would think for a second that anything the GossipSoakerUpper said was true. The Gossiper and her little SoakerUpper have to make things up in order to get people to like them and to hate others. Their victims are people like me, who have everything going for them in their lives.
I wrote a previous post about how much the Gossiper’s cruel words and lies hurt me, and then I let it go. I had no idea that the Gossiper and her SoakerUpper were still so envious of me from afar. I literally forgot they existed. That was until I went to get my mail for the first time in about a week.
It was the Sunday after my 40th birthday. In my mail, I found the most childish, pathetic letter that a grown woman has ever written. Please forgive the inability to punctuate.
Here is what the letter said:
Lordy, Lordy Look Who’s 40….
….AND STILL SINGLE!!!!!
You have no one to blame but yourself. Not only are you full of crap, you also enjoy creating and thriving on drama and then pretending to be the victim. The reasons why you don’t have real friends are because you are extremely fake, shallow, and you are a compulsive liar. None of us really like you but rather tolerate you, and some of us have decided to keep our distance since we don’t want to be associated with you kind. If you had a conscious, you would owe up to the fact that you are a drunk floozy who flirts with married men and sleep around, however, you pretend to be a righteous Christian. What a joke you are! I do feel sorry for your children but they will soon grow up and shall escape from the mess that you have caused.
You will always be single. Happy Spinsterhood, you disgusting bitch.
I will spare you what I would do to the back side of a child of mine if they sent a letter like this to anyone for any reason. And this is coming from a parent that does not spank her children. Instead, I will share with you what I learned from this letter.
1) Maybe gossip is for people that are not smart enough to carry on intelligent conversations. I think about all of the fun stuff my friends talk about and all of the ideas that they have, which fulfill our conversations. The letter is obviously written by someone that is dense. I never realized it until I read the letter, she gossips nonstop because she doesn’t have anything interesting to say.
2) While these two are not on my mind, I am on their minds. I need to be careful. I reminded my children that our doors need to be locked, even during the day, and that we do not let strangers into the house. I filed a police report to document the letter. The officer was sickened by it, and he said he knows the Gossiper, and that this didn’t surprise him. He obviously knew something that he wasn’t telling me. He said that he felt the mention of my children in and of itself was threatening, and he asked me to be careful. He has followed up with me twice since, and he is single and quite handsome :). I wonder what the neighbors are thinking about the random police car in my driveway. How ironic would it be if he turned out to be the one for me?
3) I have said it before, and I will say it again. I am blessed with an amazing, diverse group of friends. I loved seeing different friend groups get to know one another at my birthday party. I loved that they came together to make Sunshine’s plan an incredible reality for me. The only thing that they all have in common is the fact that they do not gossip. They have lots of interesting things to say without ever having to say bad things about another person.
4) I love being single. Do the Gossiper and her SoakerUpper really think that they have something on me because they are married? When I do something, I do it 100%. While there was a time when I thought that I needed to be married for “societal norms”, I am so far past that. There is no participation trophy in my world. Right now, my focus is on my Birds and on my career. I do not have time to make a husband the priority that he would need to be in my life. There will be a day when my Birds have lives of their own, and I will have time for the right someone. I sometimes think what it will be like to sit on my back porch with that man, and what he might be like. I even think that I know who it is going to be, but that is later in life. Right now, I enjoy every day, and I do not let sad little people tarnish my happy days.
5) Thank you to the mean grils for the reminder of my very blessed life.