Inside My Closet

I do not usually sit inside my closet. This picture was posed because it has been a contemplative weekend and the closet seems like a good place to think.

Yesterday, my friend and visiting teacher was offended by this post about when she cut my hair. She commented and asked me to remove the picture of her stating that "it is extremely unethical as a blogger, and terribly rude as a friend, to post pictures of another person without their express permission..." I was not at home at the time I received the email with her comment. I immediately stepped outside and called her. She did not answer so I left a message explaining that I would remove the picture when I got home. When I got home, I did just that. Then I received a Facebook notification saying she had written on my wall saying the same thing she had posted as a comment on my blog. I noticed she had also posted the same thing as her own status, claiming that she had a right to publicly defend herself.

I was confused by how this had blown up. First, I am still unsure as to what she was angry about. It seemed like she was angry about the picture being posted, "especially when the pic of you is when you are looking your worst." I never said her name in the original post and she was not looking at the camera in the picture. Then I thought she was offended because I didn't like the haircut. But as a hairstylist, she has to be familiar with the feeling of people not liking a haircut. I would like to state that I now love my haircut. When I called my friend yesterday, I said that I would even have her cut my hair again. The only thing I do not like is that one piece of hair was cut too short and does not fit in a ponytail. If you know me, you know that my hair is in a ponytail more often than it is down. Then I thought maybe she was angry about my making it public. But that didn't make sense since her backlash to that was to make it... more public? My page visits tripled yesterday!

I am writing all of this not to gossip, but to give a background for my feelings. I am fully aware that my blog is public. I keep it this way because I welcome everyone to read it. I am proud of my family, my opinions, and my life. With that said, this is my blog. It is a place for me to write my thoughts, feelings, and opinions about things. I am not campaigning with these opinions. You may come to the blog, agree, and come again. Or come to the blog, disagree, and never come back. Or you can realize that people have different opinions, and come back again. Having a public blog means I welcome one and all. I don't care if particular people do or do not read it. I like having readers though and I frequently track my readers. I know their demographics and frequency in visiting my blog. I am aware that complete strangers, friends, and people in between read my blog.

My friend's Facebook post was quickly inundated with hateful comments about me. Things that I knew I shouldn't read, but I did anyway. Things like, "For real, unfriend that person, electronically and in real life. I don't even know her and can tell she exudes drama and 'look at me' in a complaining/high maintenance way. No time for that! She's not even worth all this." Or "Consider this my gift of exhortation. I'll give you some examples: getting your haircut because your kids and husband mess with it too much, b.s., can't put it in a ponytail anymore, b.s., you have a blog post dedicated to your hair cut, that you are complaining about, that a friend did for you, for crying out loud! That, in and of itself, exudes drama."

Whew. Okay. I have so many, many, many issues with me "exuding drama" since the drama was clearly propagated by my friend. However, I was going to turn the other cheek here. I wanted this all behind me. So today I approached my friend at church and asked her if she wanted to talk. She said, "No." I told her I wanted to resolve this like adults. She quickly walked away. My hope in discussing it with her was to understand what she was feeling so I could compensate for those feelings. I never intended for her to be offended and hoped to repair our friendship, especially considering she is my visiting teacher.

I have talked to Sam, my mother, my mother-in-law, and my sister-in-law about this situation. I have received excellent advice and tried to handle the situation with as much grace as is possible. I am not very good at controlling myself sometimes. I had to vent to Sam to keep myself from yelling at the people who were judging me so harshly, and so undeservedly.

My sister-in-law told me about a phrase in Spanish that says, "Caras vemos, corazones no sabemos." It translates to "Faces we see, hearts we don't know." I wish my friend would talk to me so we could resolve our mutual distaste for this situation. However, since she refuses to talk to me and would rather talk about me, I am forced to deal with this myself; trying to piece together my heart about this situation. I wish she had not assumed what my intentions were, as the assumption was completely off base. I never intended to offend her. I was recapping my own thoughts and feelings about the haircut. On my blog.

We are way too sensitive about ourselves and not sensitive enough about other people. My friend has since removed these posts from our walls. I hope this has brought a softening of her heart, as it has mine.