Hitting a wall

I never expected to be liked by everyone. I know the odds that at least half the people who you come in contact with in life will dislike you, and another portion with actively hate you. But some days the active hatred gets to me.

Years ago I was told I was a hard ass with a soft center. Tough as nails, immovable, and if you get past that exterior a total softee. And it's true. A little too soft some times.

It's hard to flirt and laugh and have fun when someone is actively posting hate. The normal give and take on a forum often leads to insults, anger, ranting, and bad manners. Those things usually roll off my back, even when I'm not at 100%.

But some folks go beyond that stage.

At first I thought I would just ignore them and go on. Maybe it's the extreme lack of sleep I'm suffering from right now (day 15 of hubby's injured back) but I don't know that I actually want to. Go on, I mean. I'm just too tired of the vitriol this poster spits out. It's not what they say, it's the obvious and over-the-top hatred that shows in their sentence structure and word usage that tires me. He or she (I forget, tho I think they mentioned it once) makes my enjoyment of the playing with words and the flirtations drop to zero because that much negative emotion is painful to be around.

This means they won. I'm sad about that, I hate to let people like that win at anything because they take it as a sign that they're *right* rather than realizing they may have won only because they're more annoying and not because their cause is right.

Maybe I'll change my mind in a few days if I manage to get a bit more sleep. But for now, I think the Zulu forums will have to do without my flirting. I'll continue to flirt when I'm logged into the game, but I'm just too tired and too irritated to continue to put myself out there when I know the moment I do the thread will be filled with negativity instead of offering a fun read to forumites.

I do greatly appreciate (and owe big hugs to) the forum posters who have stood up for me in various threads -- reading their responses has been worth every single bit of negative emotion I've had to wade through. But I've hit the wall.