Contagious

Often times, well...OK...most times, a mood is contagious.  You know, when you are around happy people, you get a little happy.  When you are around people who laugh all the time, you laugh.  You get my point.

Well, what about when you are around negative, soul-sapping people?  It's a real struggle to remain positive.  
We all know this...it isn't like I just discovered some new and amazing truth.  We all KNOW this.

The problem, for me anyway, comes in when I don't realize how negative and soul-sapping a person is becoming.  Some people enter our lives and they are that all consuming kind of negative and we skedaddle up out of there, just like we KNOW to do.  But, some people enter our lives and they are happy and positive and we high five them and call them buds and invest some time and care into our relationships with them...and, they gradually become negative.

Like creeping charlie...my grandma used to HATE that stuff.  I loved it because it smelled green and had pretty little purple flowers and I would be all sad when my grandma attacked it like it was some sort of psychopathic killer, hunting down her family.  Man, she dug it out and poured boiling water on it.  If she would have had acid and a blow torch handy, she would have incinerated it.  And you know what?  No matter what she did, it just grew back.  She fought it for forever but, I am sure it is still there, on that patch of ground by the garage and her rose bushes, on the way to the rhubarb.

She was so determined to kill it because she said it choked out all the other plants (namely the roses.)  And, that is kind of how it is with those sneaky, negative, soul-suckers.  They start out looking all pretty and smelling all new and then they just kill you down by the roots.

So...how o we ferret them out?  How do we let go of those people who maybe didn't start off so happy-stealing but sort of ended up there...and are they stuck there forever...and is it our job to know if they are stuck there forever or do we just cut and run as fast as our legs can take us?

I'm not sure of the answer...hoping someone else has an easy solution.

What I do know is that it took me a long time to find my own happiness and peace.  It was hard fought and I am not relinquishing it for anyone :)