What Happens When you Let People Walk All Over You

Today's post may seem cynical, but I assure it is not.  It's just true.  When you let people walk all over you, they will.  It's as simple as that.  Back in the days when I couldn't walk and when I was still going to that one horrible church with the people who acted so nice, before I realized that the church was horrible, I had two people in my life who for all intents and purposes seemed like my great friends.  They were both tiny Asian girls.  One of these girls, T, asked me if I would help her dye her hair, because I dyed my hair a lot and she had never done hers before and was too scared to do it herself.  I, being the person that I was, said that of course I would.  I said this despite the fact that I couldn't walk, and had to navigate the 6th floor of the dorm building where I lived, either in a wheelchair or on crutches.  It was impossible to get into our bathrooms in a wheelchair.  The girls bathrooms were on our floor and the boys bathrooms were on the floor above.  The girls bathrooms had locks on all four of the main doors, locks that were high enough up that the shorter girls had to stand on their tiptoes to unlock them.  To make things even more difficult for myself on crutches, the doors were also really heavy, so after managing to unlock the door, I had to push it open as far as I could, then wedge one crutch in to hold it open, swing my legs forward a bit, open it as far as possible again then scoot my crutch forward, then swing my legs forward again and then pull away the crutch and lean out of the way so the door didn't hit me when it slammed shut.  I inform you of all this because my what I thought at the time was a friend, T, was too small and too weak to open the door for me, so I had to do it myself and then hold it open for her to come in.  She had really long hair, so it took about an hour of me standing, propping myself up on my crutches, to cover her hair completely with dye.  by that time, my arms were thoroughly asleep.  When T got some dye on her skin, instead of wiping it off with a paper towel like a normal person, she used my light colored bath towel, to wipe off brown DYE.  Which obviously dyed my towel.  Then we sat on the shower benches for 20 minutes for the color to work, and then came time to rinse it out.  And instead of T hopping in the shower and rinsing it out herself like a normal person, she said that she would prefer for me to rinse it out for her at the sink.  Looking back on it, I don't know why I didn't refuse.  Instead, like a doormat, I agreed.  Then followed an hour of me rinsing her hair in the sink waiting for the water to run clear.  As previously mentioned she had very long hair, so it kept going over the drain and blocking it and I would have to hold it out of the way and wait for the sink to drain before continuing.  All of this while propping myself up on crutches, which let me tell you, was no easy task.  Anyway, after that whole thing, she dried her hair on the bath towel that she had already stained with hair dye.  She thanked me and then she left.  All I got out of it was a permanent stain on my light green bath towel and a waste of two hours and 20 minutes of my life, give or take a few minutes, and a thank you.  Oh, and a month or so later, the worst heartbreak I have ever experienced when I kindly explained that I no longer wished to go to their church but I hope that we can still be friends.  They said of course we can still be friends.  And then all 30 or so people who had pretended to be my great friends turned their backs on me and disowned me.  When I would say hi to them on campus, they would act like they could neither hear nor see me.  But that towel, which is one of only two that I own now, serves as a reminder to me not to let people walk all over me.