I remember from my management days the old adage "Choose your attitude." I remember countless conversations about how we, as people, are the manufacturers of our own destinies, that we choose what kind of day, week, month, or life we will be having. No matter how many times I'd repeat that in a professional setting, I'd get home, or face a situation somewhere in my personal life, and feel like the situation was out of my control.

Well, I'm in another one of those situations. I've never been good at ending things, especially not relationships. I have problems writing conclusions for a paragraph, when I move I can't seem to break that barrier with the last few random things in my house, I have countless projects sitting around that just need one simple task to become completed, I don't know how to get off the phone at the end of a conversation, and no matter what Paul Simon says, there may be 50 ways to leave your lover but I never could figure any of them out.

I have a situation where there is a relationship in my personal life that I am no longer interested in continuing. I want to close doors and move this friendship to a different level, where we can be cordial and polite but no more. It seems dumb to say I want to "just be friends" with someone I'm "just friends" with, but that's kind of how it feels. I don't know how to go about this, because our lives are so intertwined at so many levels. We know most of the same people. We have several of the same friends. This person moves in social circles that I have vacated, for the most part, specifically because being present in them at the same time causes me anxiety. I have heard from numerous people that letting another person's presence have this much of an affect on my own feelings is not only stupid, but childish, and while I partially agree, I do not know a way around it. I just don't know how to cope with the level of chaos this individual causes when I have regular contact with them.

How do I do it? How do I go about it, other than severing my other friendships that connect me to this person? If I can't end it, then how can I come to terms with the amount of distress that comes with the chaos inherent in any sort of relationship that touches this person? I am to the point that when I know our paths are going to cross, I start to feel sick, I get sweaty, and my heart starts pounding. I dread the days that I know we will be in the same place. I've turned down party invitations, drinking nights, and have stopped inviting our connected and interwoven friends out to do anything because I don't want there to be a chance encounter, or because with everything else going on, I do not have the emotional reserves it takes to function simultaneously with the kind of energy this individual exudes. I know from experience that new people who are introduced to me secondarily to this other person often have an opinion about me based on a completely false representation of my personality, and treat me according to what they've been told. Often times, I am described as harsh, punishing, and terrifying, unforgiving, unyielding, and cruel. This means that when I am out anywhere in the small sphere of Downtown or in the concentric social circles that interweave to form the Bellingham network, and I am introduced to someone who has "heard of" me, I am treated with frosty looks, awkward pauses, and careful handling. A random comment by a casual acquaintence last week cemented this for me again, as a person who has never seen me in any actual circumstance like the one he was describing me in, to an entire room full of people, randomly began relaying information about my behavior that was patentedly untrue and more than a little insulting. His information about me all came secondhand from this third party, who takes every opportunity to paint me in the most negative light possible. I find this behavior to be disingenious at best and purposefully hurtful at the worst, and I don't want to continue to associate with a person who would so malign me.

So, dear readers (most of whom know me rather intimately,) how do you suggest I go about either changing my attitude so this doesn't bother me so much, or cutting this kind of person from my life?

Shoot me an email if you have a suggestion. I'm serious. I want to hear it.