Gary

I had this one co-worker, we’ll call him Gary, who’s the epitome of the grumpy co-worker. At the start of our interactions, we were on good terms, but somehow that began to change. In the beginning, he would always do this thing where he would tell me, “I don’t like this person, or I don’t like that person.” Finally, one day, that person became me, and he ended up blocking me on social media for no good reason. The truth is, there have been a number of individuals in my life like Gary. I’ve always thought that there’s something fundamentally disturbed with people like him. People who would just shut others out of their lives for seemingly trivial reasons or for the reason of harboring beliefs or thought processes that are different than their own. 

Yet, I’ve also come to learn that not all relationships are meant to last forever. Some people come into our lives and go, no matter how sweet the deal sounds initially. Some people always find reasons to leave. It’s fascinating how relationships like these form in the first place. There is always this superficial feeling to it, sort of like two very different people are put on a blind date, and the chemistry just isn’t there. 

I don’t know what made me think of Gary all of a sudden. Perhaps this is just a case of venting about someone who’s so removed from my life that there’s no chance that they’ll ever read this post. Yet, Gary is a metaphor for other people in my life. People who have walked in with a smile and decided that I was not the person for them. At the end of the day, perhaps it was me who’d subconsciously made that decision first.