Don’t give a shit about people who don’t give a shit about you, honestly

I might perfectly encapsulate elements of the 20–40–60 Rule, because I turned 40 last November and in the intervening time, while struggling with a few things (notably drinking), I kinda stopped giving a shit about people who clearly don’t give a shit about me. At some point, life is too short. Best case scenario I probably got 45 years left; likely reality is less than that. Why would I bother with people that don’t care? It happened a few notable times to me in the last couple of months — the best man in my first wedding, a lawyer in Tucson, decided to cancel me after I visited him during probably the toughest weekend of my adulthood to that point and all my decisions apparently weren’t perfect. (Here’s that story.) A dude I spent multiple weddings, NYEs, and reflective discussions with told me “we were never really friends.” (Here’s that one.)

This stuff does hurt and sting in the moment, because you’re changing and reinventing. Admittedly that’s all adulthood actually is at the base level, but it’s hard to always realize that. I’ve been divorced (‘17), and the sad part is, you divorce the friends more than the person, because by the time you get divorced, the relationship is shot to shit, but you’re probably still friends (often from afar) with people. Some people can manage that out and be friends with two exes, but…