It's not just you

I must begin with a disclaimer to this post:  I am NOT looking for you to tell me that you like me, or that everyone else is a dummy, or that I am Batman.  All I want to do is vent a little, save some therapist money, and let you know that crap happens to me too.  It's not just you.

Do you ever volunteer to do something because it's the right thing to do?  Do you spend a lot of time on this extracurricular, not-for-remuneration, volunteer activity?  Are you then told your input is not welcome even though they begged you to volunteer and even though you are doing this in your free time?  Well, it has happened to me.

I am now officially not in the cool kids club at my chosen place of volunteering.  Let's call it the CPV.  Yes, I am being intentionally vague.  Protecting the innocent and all that.  The CPV is governed by three, bull headed people.  I'll call them Kool and the Gang.  I was asked to volunteer at CPV in an area I have experience and significant expertise.  So, I think, "Hey, Amy, this is something you are good at.  Your CPV needs help in this area.  You can help them and get good-people points in the process."  I'm a firm believer in good-people points.  You may call it karma.  Or the Golden Rule.  Or your heavenly reward.  You get the idea.  But then I think, "But, Amy, you hate volunteering.  In fact, you really dislike sticking your neck out around people you have a modicum of respect for like Kool and the Gang, for example."  The good-people points part of me piped in with, "But maybe this is God's way of saying you NEED to do this.  You need to share your giftedness with Kool and the Gang and with CPV.  They will appreciate you stepping in when they asked for your help."  Humph, OK.

So I toodle off to CPV like it's the first day of school and sit down at the table with other, like-minded good-people-point humans and wait for all those good-people points to flow in.  Well, reader, it was a $%&# storm of epic proportions.  Month after month (and so far it's been 28 of em), Kool and the Gang shaded facts, misled, and generally treated me like something they found on the  bottom of their shoe after visiting a public restroom in a prison. One member of the Gang will have no conversation with me without telling me how much he cannot get along with me.  Seriously.  It goes like this:  "Listen, Amy, I know we don't get along and I think you know I cannot work with you.  But I love you, man."  I usually meet these pronouncements with silence.  What do you say to someone who says I hate you, but I probably need to say that I love you or I won't get any good-people points? They were mean.  They were dismissive.  They turned their backs or doodled on their phones while I talked.  They acted like they didn't see me in the halls of CPV.  They were rude.  But were they right?  Was I doing the wrong thing telling them what they didn't want to hear?  Was my straining for information too strident?  Should I hold my tongue, bobble my head in a "yes" motion when they speak, and go along to get along?  I think I should have.

See, my giftedness is seeing through the bull crap and getting to a nice, neat answer.  But to do that, I need all the unvarnished facts in all their goopy, stinky glory.  I don't judge the facts -- I only gotta know them to get to the solution.  Unfortunately, my mining for facts made Kool and the Gang think I was attacking them and waiting for them to fail.  I unfortunately could never get them to understand that I was like Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men":  You want me on that wall; you need me on that wall.  I want to protect.  I want to immunize.  I want to wrap up Kool and the Gang and CPV in bubble wrap and make sure nothing bad happens to them.  Ever.  They didn't know that the bubble wrap comes with a price.  You gotta show me the warts.  I wish I could have somehow conveyed to them that I know showing me the warts hurts but that my deep love for them means I can see the warts and love them even more.  Bubble wrap is my giftedness.  But obviously, telling them about the bubble wrap is not.

It all came to a head today when I was told that my current volunteering role will most likely be my last at CPV.  It wasn't said directly.  And it was said to a group of, I  assume, similarly non-cool volunteers at CPV.  And it's OK.  Did it hurt?  You bet.  Did I rage against the machine?  To be sure.  But they are right.  I am not cut out for this.  I should have listened to the Grumpy dwarf inside and not volunteered to begin with.  Even though Kool and the Gang CONSTANTLY talk about how to solve the case of the vanishing volunteer.

So, Kool and the Gang have prevailed.  They were right in so many ways.  I am not a good volunteer.  I do not play well with others.  I cannot go along to get along.  I have no idea what I am gifted to do at CPV but it obviously is not what I have been doing.  Maybe I need a new CPV.  Maybe I need to be a pure consumer at CPV and let others do the heavy lifting.  This doesn't feel right to me.  But volunteering didn't feel right to me, and that was the correct solution.  Don't do it.  I won't ever get those years back of letting them make me feel less than.  Less smart.  Less good.  Less valuable.  Less valued.  But I can step away when they ask me to in their kind, passive-aggressive, oh-so-quiet way.  I can step back, let go, and not worry that they have no bubble wrap.  In fact, I see lots of bumps coming that my bubble wrap would have prevented.  But I can't impose on Kool and the Gang any longer.  I'm sure God will send another good-people-points person to them who is more gifted than I to tell them what they need to hear.  Good luck to you.

Now, really, I am not looking for atta girls.  I don't need to be lifted up.  I think me listening to Kool and the Gang and getting out of their milieu will help tremendously.  I have 8 more months to serve at CPV and I will try my hardest to keep it eyes down and head nodding.  It's hard for me, though.  I'm not good at much except for passing out bubble wrap.  I need to understand that Kool and the Gang and perhaps CPV don't care for my bubble wrap or me.  And that's OK.  What bothers me is that the number of  people who think I'm one of the cool kids is getting smaller by the second.  And I'm afraid it was never as many as I thought.  And now I have no idea how to get good-people points.  Hopefully, this post will help at least one person to feel not so alone when someone yucks their yum.  And that can be my good-people point.