Growing Up

There are very few things that upset me. I quote my friend and scout leader, Corry Cloward, "Wyatt, you have a very long fuse and when it reaches the end, there is not much of an explosion." One thing that upsets me is senseless action, doing something for no reason. A thing that I despise is senseless emotion, feeling a certain way about someone without reason or because of outdated reasons. There are two people in particular (I am very tempted to tell you their names, but I will not) that seem to hate me senselessly. Here is some background:

Person number one is a girl I have known for a while. She and I used to play together when we were little. She is the only girl I'm her family and got anything she wanted. I was the youngest of six boys and the opposite was true of me. She would try to make me do what she wanted and, when I wouldn't conform to her will, she disliked me. Fair enough, for a five year old brat. Now she is almost fifteen and treats me like my scout crew treated the giant spiders in the last post: so disgusted that the only thing you can do is pretend to not see them until you are forced to pay attention enough to smash them. She despises me. She let things that happened almost ten years ago rule her way of thinking and it makes me sad. I wish I knew the friendship that could've developed, if not in past years than more recently. Sure I could've been more Christ-like when I was seven, but I was seven.

Person number two hates me. He tries to run my life and hates almost every decision I make. Some days he pushes me too far. The other day I wrote this:

"[He] has driven me almost to the point of hate. He is so quick to judge me, tries to run my life and is altogether a complete and total jerk to me. I don't understand his logic. I really do try with him. I don't yell at him, I take his taunts and his putdowns without a word against him and I try to forget about what he does to me. It does not work. I could have all the patience in the world and [he] would still wear it down. My only hope is that someday he will actually treat me with human decency." 

I have been thinking about these two people more and more over the past week or so. They are not the first people to hate me or will the be the last. I have had some of my current friends hate me, but I was able to turn them from enemy to friend without too much trouble. I cannot figure out what to do with these two, though. I almost never give up on people, so the thought of not trying to be friends with them seems un-Christ-like to me. But there is nothing active I can do. My mindset now is if I try to be their friend, they will like me. I need to think more along the lines of, "If I continue being as kind as possible to them, I will have no fault. They will be the ones suffering and I will be fine." I love them and want to be their friends, so all I can do is just that: be their friends.

So I guess this is what growing up feels like, eh? It is not as painful as I imagined.