The Bane of My Existence...

I'm not sure where this pet peeve came from or where it started but I have absolutely no patience with manipulative people. Like the worse kind of poison ivy, they get under my skin like nothing else. I am not exaggerating when I say I have had more than one nightmare about people being manipulated or manipulating and I'm the only one that sees it. I try to explain, to show people the truth but they won't listen, then I scream and yell trying to be heard but people are deaf to all but the lies in their ears.

As much as I may complain about my family, at least I can say we are incredibly honest people, so I suppose that moral was instilled in me from a very young age. One of the best compliments I ever received was that people trust me when I give a compliment because they know I'd never falsely flatter people.

My feeling is that manipulation is a way of taking away free will by twisting the truth. It blinds people and takes away their ability to choose freely. People do it almost without thinking, no one says, "I'm going to manipulate that person to get my way". They think that they're just really good at persuasion, and I've never known a person who practices manipulation to actually admit it and want to change. You can never convince someone to change when it is so easy for them to simply twist what you're saying against you.

I work with one of them. She exhausts me. Not only do I have to listen and reply to what she's saying, I must also be wary of what she is not saying and try to see what she's really getting at. I'm constantly asking myself why she is saying something and what her goal is in saying it. It is always ALWAYS a selfish goal. Today I had to give her an evaluation. It was a pretty bad evaluation. This requires her arguing with me about every sentence in the evaluation...for almost 2 hours. Looking back I cannot even tell you what her issues were, she was so convoluted and confusing, most the time I didn't even know what she was saying but her point was to make me feel like I had to defend what was written in the evaluation.

I am exhausted, I feel like I just battled a bloodsucking little fiend that wanted a pound of my flesh (yeah, that's about what happened). If I had to do it all over again I think I would have just told her, "It's my prerogative, I get to run the library, so just deal with it". It's not like she's ever recieved a bad evaluation before but she made is sound like all of the pages had the same issues with how I ran things.

That's another way to manipulate, make it seem like it's not just about her. These people are wasting a gift on selfish goals and desires, think what they could do if they used their powers for good, convincing people to give to the poor, save the whales, stop buying SUV's.

Those who have ears let them hear: I'd rather hear the blunt naked brutall truth than a bunch of convoluted manipulation anyday.