I have only recently learned that I have been a drama sponge for much of my life. Over the years I’ve attracted drama like fruit attracts flies.
I used to think that life was supposed to be like this. In order to have a relationship, you had to have drama. It was a package deal. Whether you liked it or not, you had to embrace the fact that others would bring drama into your life and in return, you would bring drama into theirs.
It’s bad enough that the vast majority of my relationships with women have been overflowing with drama at times, but I’ve also surrounded myself with “friends” who revel in it as well.
Quite frankly, they should all be up for Oscars as Best Actor or Best Actress and I should at least get a nomination as Best Supporting. For that’s what I’ve been.
I never want to get the Best Supporting nod again. I really don’t like drama. Sure, I’ve had my share of it. Geez, just read all these RobZerrvations or my Memoirs of a Buccaneer. I’ve been stuck in Drama Hell forever, largely because of my own doings.
Yes, I am taking the hit for this as I am ultimately the one responsible for it. We all are. It’s a hard lesson to learn and an equally hard pill to swallow.
But events that played out in the past week showed me clearly that living a life of drama, whether I was absorbing it or projecting it, is a total waste of spirit. As I said, it sucks you dry. It consumes you. And it eats away at you, robbing you of peace and joy in your life.
As the old adage says, “misery loves company.” It’s so easy to get sucked into this vortex of doom and gloom, he saids-she saids-they said, because you want to help your friends. After all, isn’t that what friends are for? Or your significant other?
I used to think so. But what I have come to find is that I was only an enabler. Trying to be there for someone who has an addiction to drama is no different than trying to help someone with a drug problem live drug free.
Even if you’re successful at breaking the cycle, they will eventually get pulled back in and so will you. They crave the drama because it gives them what they need, whether it’s to be the center of attention or simply because it gives them the illusion that their pitiful life is everyone else’s fault, not theirs.
Admittedly, drama can give you an incredible high. It can make you feel powerful. It can take your mind off what’s really at play. And it can let you go about your life without ever having to do anything about it or take any responsibility for it. Your life sucks, it’s everyone else’s fault and you can go on with it, happily playing the victim.
If you’re on the receiving end, you’re also a victim. But you choose to be. Oh, sure, you can claim that you’re caught up in someone else’s drama because you’re being a good friend or good mate; that you’re being supportive.
But you have to ask, what does it give you? A sense of importance perhaps? The thrill of being needed?
It made me feel liked and even loved. I thought I needed to be immersed in drama because if I rejected it outright, people who I thought were my friends wouldn’t like me anymore or that I would lose the love of a girlfriend or spouse.
I brought drama into my life so that I would feel liked or loved.
That’s really hard to admit here. Because I do have a deep need to be liked and loved. I suppose we all do. But at what cost? Is a friendship or a relationship really worth living in quicksand?
That’s really what it feels like. I know this now because I’m finally building relationships on more solid footings, things like trust, loyalty, honesty and unconditional love.
Once you find a solid foundation, you start to realize that everything else was built on quicksand. Sure, things started out fine. You felt it was solid. Then you started to become embroiled in the drama and the more you struggled, the more you were stuck in the quicksand of a relationship filled with drama and perhaps nothing more.
You know the lore of quicksand: The more you struggle to get out, the more you sink deeper into it. Even though you know it is killing you, you still want to save the friendship or the relationship. As you sink into deeper, you’re still trying your best to find firm footing somewhere, even when you are waist or shoulder deep in the muck of the moment.
I know because I just spent the last year in it. I knew I was, but I really wanted to be liked. Then someone came into my life that allowed me to see what relationships are really like. A really solid one doesn’t have any drama at all.
When this happens you start to see some of your other relationships for what they truly are: pure drama. The drama was there all the time, of course, you just weren’t willing or ready to see it.
For me, the struggle is still there. I still have trouble leaving it behind. I worry that I am risking good friendships by stepping away. Then I realize that any true friendship or relationship isn’t based on drama, but on those things that give you the solid footing you really need, whether it’s with your kids, your significant other, friends, acquaintance or coworker. It’s being true to who you are and what you stand for, and being willing to step away from the microphone when you’re up for Best Supporting Actor in someone else’s drama.
In the Emerald City, relatively drama free at the moment.
– Robb