Over the last several months of my life I have gotten several reminders of what happens when you place expectations on the outcome of a particular endeavor. In a nutshell you more often than not end up disappointed and disillusioned, especially when the outcome of said endeavor depends upon the deeds of another.

Often times when we embark on a new journey, be it a new friendship or relationship of any kind or even a business venture, it is human nature to set the bar high in as far as what we expect or rather what we hope to get out of this endeavor. But when we do this we are essentially setting ourselves up for disappointment or even total failure. In other words it is wise to not "count our chickens before they hatch" so to speak, especially when as I mentioned before the outcome depends upon the cooperation or actions of another.

However, once again being the eternal dreamer that I am, albeit a very jaded dreamer, I ended up disappointed. In this particular situation I became friends with a woman I had met online - "Maggie" is what I will call her - the two of us share certain interests, and we met on a website that is essentially a little online community. At first things were fun and flirty, we had lighthearted conversations about nothing serious and we had no intentions of being anything other than casual friend since we are on separate continents (North America and Australia), we would just crack jokes and talk about our day to day lives just like friends often do. I then started sharing my writings with this girl and she was instantly interested and impressed by my poetry and my overall perspective on life. However she started to make comments about my writing often times having dark themes and very serious subject matter. At first this was no big deal and I tried to explain to Maggie that it was a form of therapy for me and writing about these seemingly dark feelings and thoughts is in fact a way of purging myself of the "poison" as I call it. It even got to a point where she could not even read an entire poem because my writing style brought her to this dark place within herself.

Over time we got closer, and she one day asked me if she could challenge me. "May I challenge you to try something?" she asked in her slightly broken English. Maggie was born in Poland, and English is in fact her third language behind Polish and Russian. Plus, the English she is use to speaking is Australian English, which of course has subtle differences from American English. "Sure," I told her, "What is is you would like to challenge me to do, love?" "I would like to challenge you to write something not so dark," she said. I agreed, however once I started trying to do it I quickly realized how difficult of a task this was going to be.

Finally after much back and forth banter between Maggie and I, during which time I broke down and did my best to explain to her how growing up with a physical handicap in a broken dysfunctional home with almost no support and the alienation of being "different" from other kids sort of carried into my early adult life. I got involved with drugs and a lot of very toxic things and people, and while all of this was going on my health issues continued to affect my quality of life. To make matters worse my mom died unexpectedly when I was 22, so all these crazy dark things continued to happen. Finally as I got into middle age I got my life in order and began to work on the core underlying issues. Suffering does not always build character as some may think, however crawling back from a bad situation or multiple situations that are painful does indeed show character in my eyes.

Anyway, eventually Maggie broke down and told me about her childhood issues and some things that had happened in her adult life. I had hoped she and I would bond from this experience, and we did. However, Maggie was insistent that things in my life were no different than in anyone else's. In a nutshell she was telling me that she felt like I didn't have it any worse than anyone else. I tried to explain to her that I did not think I was special or that I had it any worse than the next person. I was just trying to tell her that these things affected me and my writing was a way of dealing with it. She felt that my writing was in some way an obsession with negativity, and she thought I was dwelling on it. So we went back and forth, only I was willing to try to understand her. In fact on many occasions I went out of my way to try to help her to deal with her pain as this was a big underlying problem with Maggie. She felt as though by not thinking about her problems she was being more positive, even though she was continuing to have serious depression and panic attacks. Obviously this way of "not thinking about" her problems was not working for her, and it was certainly not healthy.

Over time I encouraged Maggie to try to write about her pain, and she even broke down and told me things she told no one else. Throughout all of this tumult, I really felt Maggie and I had bonded and that we now had a special kind of friendship. Boy did i ever find out how far from the truth this really was.

Suddenly out of the blue after Maggie and I had been talking two times per day and working through our problems together, she disappeared for a few days. I was a bit concerned but I knew Maggie was a busy woman, so I didn't worry too much. When she did surface again she admitted that she had been in a deep depression and had been crying a lot. She also seemed considerably more distant and completely disinterested in the writing "assignments" I had given her.

I tried several times in vain to get her interested in writing or even just interested in being my friend again, but she just didn't seem like she was interested. Meanwhile, she continued to talk with other people on our little community. When I tried asking her if something was wrong she was at best indifferent towards me.

I had taken several steps to try to cheer her up, such as learning to use an English to Polish translator to say silly things. I also sent her a link to an art event that was going on in my city as I knew she was interested in art. However, she did not even acknowledge this link and when I asked her she just dismissed it and even at a certain point began to be argumentative. Now one of my biggest pet peeves is when I do something to help a friend especially if I go out of my way more than once and then they do not even so much as acknowledge it but instead become argumentative with me. So I will admit, I became bitter, which is never a healthy way to handle things.

Finally over the last few days, things have gone from bad to worse and she finally pissed me off. I let her know how I felt. That I was hurt and irritated by the way she didn't even show appreciation for anything I had done. Meanwhile she continued to joke and have fun with other people on this site. My confronting her has only made matters worse and she is now just being more cold and distant. I think now it is safe to say the friendship is coming to an end. At best it is not what it was a couple of weeks ago.

So as I said at the beginning of this article, expectations are almost never a good or healthy thing. In fact I am utterly convinced that in some instances they are the root of all evil. If there is anything I can take from this situation, it is that when I see a glaringly obvious inequality in the amount of effort and respect that is being put into a relationship of any kind, I need to assess the situation, confront it if it is necessary, and if that does not work I need to just get out and cut my losses so to speak.

At the end of the day I realize that Maggie is a troubled soul and that she is going through a particularly hard time. She is a stubborn girl to begin with, but just some acknowledgment of my efforts and just a little give on the "agreeing to disagree" aspect of our philosophical differences would have gone a long way in as far as showing me that she did indeed respect me and value our friendship. But it is what it is, and perhaps things will be worked out. However, I seriously doubt it at this juncture, and besides I am not 100% sure this friendship is healthy for me at this point. And life goes on.....