I Will Not Share Good News… I Will Not Share….

Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree of Truth.

I close my eyes tightly and will everything to go away as I chant. I  will not share good news…I will not share good news…I will not share good news….

That’s right! I have a new mantra!

In the past 24 hours, I’ve heard from two old friends I hadn’t heard from much in the past year. I don’t really include them as friends any  longer but they’re still colleagues and I have to deal with them on a  professional basis ever so often. Both called me for work-related  reasons, quickly  dispensed  with  the  discussion  of statutes and regulations, and then asked the inevitable.

“So what  ever  happened  about  your  problem  with ?”

Hmmm,  okay.  Ironic  that  they’re  calling  now,  but something  did  happen  concerning  my  problem  about . Something good. I’d prefer to keep the conversation on more  of  a professional  level but they push and push and part of me just wants to say that see, I wasn’t an idiot for the way I dealt with .

I hem and haw. I’m not really sure I want to share the great stuff or explain why or how I’ve resolved my problem with . I’m still thinking through it, not quite believing it, just settling into the goodness of it. But a little self-validation of my decisions seems in order.

After repeated  “So what’s  going  on?”  I finally  give just a little of the good news. Not full blast. Not the history. Just in a nutshell where  things stand and the decisions I’ve made.

The conversation  played  out  almost  the  same  with both  friends,  24  hours  apart,  1000  miles  apart,  a  year since our last discussion of  anything remotely related to my problem with . I delivered a hopeful but some- what watered down version of my good news.

The first friend: “Well, that won’t last very long. Just wait until you fall off your pedestal. The people who ad- mire you now will be gone faster than you can blink an eye and you’ll be all alone.”

Huh???

The second friend: “Well, that won’t last very long. I was in a situation like that once and I tried the resolve it just like you are now and it was frigging miserable. You’re just going to end up hurt and angry like I did.”

Again, huh???

The  funny  thing  is,  I’ve  avoided  both  people  for much of the  past year because they were always asking about my concerns about and I didn’t want to hear their snide remarks when things were problematic for me. Now that things are excellent in this area, I don’t want their wet blankets. Why do some people have the need to

call your hopes into the light just so they can take shots at them?

I will  not  share  good  news…I  will  not  share  good news….