Christopher Mel

The Mirror
2019-09-23 13:11:36 (UTC)

People who can't stop talking

I'm sure most have that one person they know who possesses the relentless gift of gab. It could be a coworker, friendly, family member, or other known associate who seems to lack the social awareness to acknowledge their own boundary-stepping and overbearing tendencies. These are the people who call every single day and talk on the phone for HOURS. And they're almost impossible to get off the phone with without seeming short or rude. They put themselves in this situation because they FORCE themselves on you. These people are usually lonely and/or exhibit narcissistic tendencies. Notice, all that time they keep you on the phone, you can't help but notice that they're talking about themselves the ENTIRE time. They either don't give you a chance to talk, or when you do go right back to talking about whatever it is without skipping a beat. Just waiting for you to finish your half a sentence before they go back to talking about themselves for another 2 hours. I had a friend who did that. Let's just call'em 'daman'. Put up with that shit for years like a fool. And it's like when you do say something he would have the nerve to correct you like you said something wrong. Dude you talked for hours don't fucking correct me like I said something stupid, especially when I'm just giving my opinion on something. But ya see, these people don't care. It was just a nice way of saying "shut up and listen to me talk about myself and my ideals". You are just an audience member; a toilet in which they spew their vocal feces into. All they care about is attention and validation. They honestly don't care about anything you're doing, which is why they don't ask. If you mention something about a promotion or something your family members may be undergoing, they won't ask: "what do they do?" No follow up. Because they don't give a shit. They're really talking AT you and not WITH you. There's a difference. When someone's talking AT you they're just going on a one-sided conversation, talking about themselves or being preachy.
Now this guy, 'daman'...it wasn't always like this. We were friends since highschool, but it took years for this to develop-or perhaps it was always there and I simply hadn't noticed until it became blatantly noticeable and overbearing. I've probably spent more real life hours talking to him over the phone than literally anyone else on the planet(family members included) Now back then, when you're kids, and you play video games and hang out all day it's fine. But when you get older, and have jobs, errands, responsibilities, a life, you don't have time to be on the phone for hours at a time. There's shit that needs to be done. Keeps trying to relive and hold onto past moments instead of living in the present and working for a future. Cut the umbilical cord and let people go to live their own lives. Live yours.

Over the years, it became like a sickness. Just to put things in perspective; I lived in the city all my life then moved upstate for a bit to take care of some things...the first thing out of this guy's mouth was "oh you forgot about me?" Not, "how was your trip?" And I had spoken to him days prior, fucking clingy little shit. Note- not everything is about YOU. I don't need your permission to run my own life nor do I need to acknowledge you every second of the day. This is the type of guy who would complain: "oh, I said hello to someone at work and they didn't respond." So? Who cares? If co workers are engaging in conversation and laughing he'll try to join in with something but get mad or disappointed when they get quiet and don't validate his interjection the way he was expecting. Stop forcing your existence on people. This constant need to be part of the group. "They invited them and not me" Who cares? We're getting older. None of this shit matters. And then make these people out to be scumbags if they don't acknowledge you. Grow up. And he can't understand why people avoid him. "Nobody calls me. I always have to reach out to them." See, right there. THAT is the problem. You're always reaching. It's not that anybody has anything against you. They'll all say the same thing. "He's a nice guy but he doesn't stop talking." Nobody wants to feel forced or guilt-tripped into acknowledging your or having a conversation with you. Or maybe, just maybe.....THEY DON'T WANT TO BE ON THE PHONE FOR HOURS. He even says he knows he talks a lot but due to his own lack of will power and self control has an attitude that the world has to deal with it. No, we don't. "No one's changing for me so why should I change for them?" Well yeah, everyone's flawed, obviously, but those people don't force their presence on everyone else the way you do. You put yourself in that situation to get ostracized when you keep putting yourself out there. He does it to friends and family alike, using some guilt-trip bullshit. "I called my brother and he didn't answer the phone...oh guess he didn't want to talk to me..." Now, his brother, who has a wife and kids, a family, on his day off, on a Saturday morning(he calls people 7-8 am in the fucking morning, btw...yeah...) who has worked his ass off all week should not have to explain himself or get shit for not answering the fucking phone at 8 am so his lonely, attention-seeking brother who needs an attention and validation fix can talk about NOTHING for hours at a time. Are you fucking kidding me? He has NO awareness. No boundaries. No respect for people's time. He'll call whenever, and he'll call several times. Just a quick consensus: what time would you consider a rude time to call? 7- 9 am, working, on or off a work day? Midnight or later? You'd be pretty pissed if someone called you at these extremely early or extremely late times, especially if you had to work in the next few hours. Unless it's an emergency there's no earthly reason why you would call someone to talk about gibberish at that time of night, unless they were drunk out of their minds. Not even my own family calls at those times. Why the fuck should I pick up the phone for you? Then his latest thing is guitar music, which is just another attention grab, so every phone conversation had to end with some guitar lesson and solo riff in my fucking ears. Once I fell asleep on the phone, and rather than hang up or "you sound sleepy lemme let ya go" he waited(and I was snoring) when I woke up, he was still on the line and continued talking. Obvious red flags are obvious. This guy needs fucking help. The angriest he has made me was when I went back to the city to visit my family whom I've hadn't seen in months, and he calls me around midnight( I had gotten there late on account of shitty job schedule) just as I was arriving to the old house. I answered the phone ONLY because I was angry and wanted to let him have it. He wanted to talk about a fucking guild wars game and I told him "I'm spending time with my family" and hung up. THAT made him mad. He told me and that infuriated me to the point I wanted to strangle the air out of his lungs just to get him to shut his fucking mouth for once in his fucking life. So, you're mad because I chose to spend time with my family who I hadn't seen in months, over you who wanted to talk to me about a fucking video game?!?! I blocked his number. It was years overdue. Got tired of enabling that bullshit. I don't understand how someone can be that oblivious. I think he acknowledges, just chooses NOT to because of the harsh reality that is no one wants to hear you talk about yourself. They don't like you BECAUSE of that. Gosh, how fucking stupid and desperate can you be for attention? I blocked him 'cold turkey' once years back because of the bitching nonstop but his recovery was to get back into my good graces and get me to talk to him again if he did something to appease me. So he would tell me just how much he had improved and how he wouldn't complain anymore. But, you shouldn't be changing for me or anyone else. He missed that point entirely. Also, it wasn't just the fact that you were complaining. It was the fact that you still talked on and on about yourself- a habit which was still present, so nothing was learned. The whole improvement speech was just to get me to talk to him again because I was his only audience member at that point. Same old shit. To this day his number is blocked.

"How can you block someone you've been friends with since forever?" It's not that we changed, it's just that I started seeing more of someone that I couldn't stand or do anything to help. Remember, he couldn't take advice from me, because he was too busy lecturing me to make himself sound good and projecting on accounting of his problems he refused to face. I was just a podium to stand on. Never listened to me anyway. His sickness became all the more apparent with that midnight family run incident I mentioned earlier. He needed to get through his fucking skull that I don't owe him an explanation for what I do with my life on my spare time. That I do not have to be obligated to acknowledge you every minute of the fucking day. You are not my parole office and I don't need your permission to do shit. You aren't my caretaker or wife, so why the FUCK are you bitching when I don't call you. Maybe that's why I stopped calling, because you wouldn't let me or other people live their lives. Leave people alone. Stop forcing people to acknowledge you. Stop calling me multiple times at work when I tell you in text that I'm busy. People have families for fuck sake, what are you doing with your life? Stop making everything about YOU. Don't apologize for calling late or early as fuck because you're not sorry when you turn around and keep doing it. You have no respect or boundaries when it comes to other people and their time and just want to be fucking heard whenever it's convenient for you.

.....know what's funny? Number blocked but text isn't. He never texted though, because he 'hates' texting. He gave some bullshit reason for why he doesn't like texting, but the real reason is because it's not the same as talking for 5 hours or playing guitar noise in someone's ears. Can't get all those ideals and talent out in a small text. Better to talk for hours than to convey your main points in a few lines of text...In any case, he needs the type of help I can't offer. Also, it's not my responsibility. We're in our 30's. Getting too old for this nonsense. I don't want to make the rest of my life about YOU so I'm washing my hands of ya. This was months ago and now I fucking feel great! It was like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. I can actually relax and enjoy my days off. No more anxiety about some attention hog trying to call me at retarded hours of the morning then obsessively calling throughout the day and not having someone guilt trip you all the time. I don't feel guilty at all. In fact I actually feel liberated. I developed 'fuck you' mentality. Feels great man! Oh, just to prove how much this guy never cared I had made a bunch of game videos that were terrible, as they were meant to be. That was the point. Friends, coworkers, complete strangers managed to at least glance at my vids. But my so-called friends of 20 years couldn't have been bothered to even click a link. And know what? Because I knew him so well, knew that he wouldn't. All the years of me being there for him and being a listening tool when he bitched about his problems and when he was at the lowest points of his life(which was constantly), was somehow too busy to take an interest or even a curious eye in anything I was doing, even in something as trivial as a shitty video. Now the vids didn't affect me. I just wanted to highlight why it was so easy to block him out physically and mentally. I had asked him for a favor ONCE in my life and he never came through, despite the tiny sliver of effort that it would have required. But I was expected to pick up the phone and listen to him for hours with no benefit to myself? Yeah, that was a no brainer. It's because of his complaining for years that I no longer have a tolerance for people when they come to me with their problems. Been there, done that. I'm done. Calling people obsessively... jeez, narcissistic people are overbearing. I mean does that seem normal to you? Who does shit like that? To be fair it would've been normal to have just kept his number blocked the FIRST time I did it years back instead of enabling it thinking things would be better. People don't change, remember?




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