Or "Takers" will take advantage of you till you have no
more to give, and then still expect you to help again. Having a sweet,
kind, heart is a wonderful thing until you give too much to the wrong
people. I am a giver who has given way too much too often to the wrong
people. Who are the wrong people? The ones that take and take and take and give
little if anything back to the giver. This includes your time and emotional
energy, you spend time with and give emotional support to people who expect you
to let them have your time, your house, your food, and your emotional support
without any limits and evidently no sense of the fact they are using you.
Years ago I met a wonderful
woman, a single mother with two kids in the school our children attended.
She was delightful and her children polite, upbeat, positive, and I invited her
family over for a visit. She came and we had a good time together.
After this one visit she came to our home again and again without a prior phone
call, she just showed up. She would go to our refrigerator and say,
"What do you have to eat?" At first I thought this was
endearing and I was glad she felt like family but then...
She would show up unannounced
at 11 PM when I had a migraine and the lights were out at our house, we all had
gone to bed. I wanted to be polite, I would tell her, "I have a
migraine this is not a good time" and she would push the door open saying,
"I'll just be here a short while, I wanted to see my friend." Once
again I would let her end and offer some tea. No one else got up in our house,
it was 11 PM. My husband wisely said, "I'm not getting up, I need my
sleep, she is your friend."
As years went on she actually
showed up unannounced with her two kids often, opening the refrigerator and
expecting me to feed everyone again. I did. One holiday she brought her
husband, he had been in Nigeria for years but now was back in the states. She
introduced us to him. Once again I prepared nice festive party foods and after
the visit, he actually said to my friend, "Your white friend is using you
for her token black friend." He actually thought I talk to people
about my friends and what race they are. I told my husband, "This is
preposterous, and I have had enough."
Next visit she was in town and
told me she and her kids needed a place to stay the night and knew I would put
them up, no worries, they could all three sleep in my living room on the floor
they brought blankets. Enough, I told her, "No you cannot. This is
Christmas and we have plans, you will need to stay somewhere else."
She looked surprised as if she expected me to allow her to intrude once again
without question. The blank look on her face said everything, she was a
taker, and there was no end to what she would take if I did not set limits.
Unbelievable, once again I did not know there were people like here on earth. I
always looked at others from my perspective, I would never take advantage of
someone's hospitality knowingly.
After this encounter, months
later, she and her family moved to another state and I kept her on my Christmas
letter list, I liked her, I like to hear about her family, I did consider her a
friend. She would send a card or maybe call in January in response to my
letter, never mentioning our last contact in person. Years went by and I
stopped contacting her but last year I did. I had seen her at the tulip
festival in Albany and asked how everyone was, she was in town visiting her
mother.
She does not stop in anymore
when she comes to town to visit her family. And in the card I sent this year I
asked, "I was wondering after all the times you came to my house and we
fed you and your family, why did you never once invite me to your house for
dinner?" She called and left a voice message and we played phone tag,
last time she was “it.” She never called again...
Thankful I learned to set
limits on takers, she was a good lesson for me. That one was sly, slipped
in under my radar of kindness, that will not happen to me again.
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