Hi anybody who may be reading this.

So recently I've had enough of people taking advantage of my niceness.  I have a short temper but I can control my anger.
 What really set me off is this girl who would only talk to me when she's sad.  She'd ask me for advice and always cry to me.
 Anytime I was feeling sad and wanted to talk to her, she'd totally just blow me off and pretend like I don't exist.
 I finally said "Forget it." and I stopped letting her use me as some sort of human diary.
 Then she ended up saying that we are not friends anymore because I am an "a**hole" and a "douche."

   So I just want to know if you guys have ever just been pushed to your breaking point.  Also how did you deal with it? 

This is interesting for me because at one point me and my best friend for years prior to this had this weird falling out where we both had other friends and things to do, but we both counted on each other for emotional support without actually spending time with each other or bonding. So it got to a point where she'd crash at my place, or bum rides or food off of me, but if I needed something, then she was no where to be found. It's an awful feeling.

As time went on though, we realized that we valued each other and that we were a lot happier sharing everything instead of just when we were pissed/sad, so we ended up being inseparable again for a while before she ended up in jail for something stupid and I started dating my husband.

It's a crappy, lonely feeling and I definitely get what you're going through. People grow out of sync and friendships get rocky, and that sucks hardcore. But it's nice because sometimes that distance makes all the difference and you guys realize what you miss about each other and can make amends. And if all else fails, it sucks that she's mad at you, but a friendship/relationship with all take and no give isn't worth having around anyway.

I'm not the type who wants face to face fights or confrontation with shouting involved.
Whenever I'm pushed to the edge I just do the "cut connections" thing. As long as I've already done everything that I can to save the relationship but still nothing has changed, then it's goodbye. No more talking done and I'll treat you like you don't even exist. If I already gave out lots of clues that something's wrong and even talked to you about it straight (in a nice manner) and you still don't care, then let's just cut it all out. Don't expect me to shout back at you if you shout at me; I'll just stay silent but would never talk to you again until the time comes when you're ready to talk calmly.

Well yes I have been pushed to the edge before ended up getting jumped by seven kids and picked on by them so I took 3 out little bro stepped in and we got the rest. Street fighting was the best I learned in life. Also my being push to the edge to me is having a short fuse. (Laughs but off) and this has happened more than once in middle school yet got away with it even with the cops. Even more fun times. Hope I answered it correctly.

Well, there was this one time I was taken advantage of by my friend. He kind of forced me to go out with him when I did not want to in the first place. I had only saw him as an friend but I didn't want to tell him that because he was the kind of person that got his feelings hurt rather easily. I am one that does not like to hurt others, at all. But learning from that experience I now know to say " no " before something like that starts again. Not saying no in the beginning always ends up bad at the end. Bad enough to lose your friendship with that person.

I think everyone at some point in their lives get pushed to the edge. We just all handle it differently. Sometimes I just think you have to let people go and sometimes they are able to mend things with you and vise versa.

Yep, I have been pushed over the edge, I clobbered some idiot, Got into a few fights, and one blind rage which I call berserk (you would know what that is if you have played Doom)   

I often have a problem with being taken advantage of because I'm normally a huge pushover.  I totally hate confrontation and I just clam up if I have to face it.  The only time this doesn't happen is when the confrontation is between myself and a student.

If another adult tries to argue with me, I just kind of freeze and refuse to participate.    I get run over a lot because of it, but I simply can't stand arguments or being yelled at.  I guess it comes from growing up in a verbally ... loud household, for lack of a better description.  The last few years at home were a little volatile verbally and it grew me to resent and be driven away from any type of fight.

That being said, I did one year allow myself to be pushed to the edge.   It's a long story involving my twin sister and I think I'll post it elsewhere in the hopes that someone actually responds to it.  However, I think it's the only time in my life where I did lose it, and I have to say it was one of the most relieving experiences of my life.  It took a lot of pushing to get me to that edge, and it was a large burden better let go.

People try to use me all the time. It's one of the reasons I've developed a phobia of people.

I wouldn't say that I get pushed over the edge a lot of the time in person because I keep folding like a cheap suit into the pressure. When online though, anybody who uses me in any way and can't return the favor is not going to hear the end of it from me.

PonandZi : It isn’t fun being the one that people only go to when things are rough or they need something. It can be real irritating. I have been in those shoes before but as I’ve gotten older I don’t really let it phase me much.

As far as being pushed to the breaking point well I will admit that I have suffered from anxiety in the past and still deal with it. There are times where I just want to throw up my hands because I get frustrated with life. Often times I feel like I am being given some kind of a test to see just how much I can take. My family has been through a lot over the last several years ranging from sickness, to job loss, to legal problems. All of the above has been very trying on all of us. One of the things that gets me through it is prayer.

I do not consider myself to be deeply religious but I do pray daily and pray at least three or four times a day. I have found that it does help me and has become a way for me to cope when things frankly look hopeless. As far as people taking advantage of you my advice is to let it roll off your back. It may not seem like it now but those people will need a friend one day and hopefully they will come to a point where they will realize the error of their ways. It was something that I had to realize eventually and although it wasn’t easy to sit back and ask myself what have I become? Since having what I consider a life changing experience I have allowed myself to mature and have done what I can to mend any fences that I may have torn down when I wasn’t the best person.

I realize in saying that however that it isn’t like that for everyone but hopefully they will wake up and apologize to you. If and when that happens my advice is to forgive them. I know that it may not be easy to do but take it from me the anger, frustration and such will do nothing for you but slowly eat at you and if you’re not careful it will eventually make you a bitter person if you allow it. It was happening to me and I can honestly say it isn’t worth it. It’s simply not a productive way to live.

One way I learned to think of it was to put myself in the other person’s shoes. (This is assuming that I was wronged in some way and not actually in the wrong.) For years I held on to so much resentment toward certain people for how I was treated in school and although I wasn’t treated very well by some people and that along with a couple of other things led to me making a lot of mistakes during a time in my life where I wasn’t thinking things through. For the longest time I held all the anger in and had little or no interest in interacting with many of these people again. I didn’t realize it for a long time but it slowly was turning me into a bitter person. Once I realized that; it was easier for me to simply admit my flaws and my mistakes but also to see things from the other person’s point of view.

More often than not if someone is nice to you one minute but once around others acts as if you don’t exist, it’s most likely that their trying to fit in with the “In” crowd. It doesn’t make it right but if you put yourself in their shoes you can sort of understand their thought in doing that. “Peer Pressure” and trying to “Fit in” doesn’t promote the concept of rational thinking and that leads to making irrational choices and decisions. I speak from experience here. As someone who has been in your shoes with people seeking my advice and or attention one minute and acting as if I didn’t exist the next minute and as someone who did try to “Fit in” it gave me a fresh perspective once I was able to see things for what they were and fully understand it. It doesn’t necessarily change once you become an adult but it does get easier to deal with in time. It’s all part of the maturing process.

Please stay strong and don’t let these things sour you. Believe me it’s not worth it. Best of luck to you.

   My life has been a constant struggle with sanity. I mean this literally, as I have been suspected of autism, psychotic natures, and I definitely am an AD-HD child. I am a pyromaniac and a kleptomaniac. I think often of murder and people describe my works for creative writing as "Gruesome" and "Horrid". However, as little sanity as I posses, I can control my inner demons and stay calm. This has been the case for 8 long years. However, recently, I was talking with my friends and one of them started getting bullied. This is never okay. I have been, and still am, picked on (less so now that I play football and due to incidents stated later), and I can ignore it or look menacingly at the person until they leave me alone, but never, EVER bully my friends.

   This is why I snapped. It wasn't a "punching in the face and attacking with a blunt object" kind of snapped, it was a "Slowly follow and make their life a living hell" kind of snapped. Daily I threatened the bully's life and safety, and one day I actually did attack them. They decided to report me, but I filed myself under victim and, due to a loophole in the county law, they had to drop the case.

   As you can see, for an insane man, I'm quite smart, smart enough to save myself from punishment for multiple crimes for a while. This was forgotten, as they had learned their lesson and apologized. But it wasn't good enough for me. There was still a rage inside me, and there is even now. One day the guys on the football team at my high school started to pick on me while we were lifting weights. This is okay, they do it to everyone (including each other), and I brushed it off. Then one of them pushed me in a literal way.

I don't remember what happened after that, as I suffered a blow to the head and got amnesia, but I was told that I used seemingly superhuman strength and lifted up a 400 pound dumbbell and threw it across a room and the guy who pushed me. I broke his arm and three ribs, and then I was hit in the head and pinned to the ground unconscious. I woke up in the hospital three days later and went to court. I got to stay at my school, and I was freed of all charges by the family. However, I realized then that I had gone mad somewhere deep inside. I would never be the same, and I never have.

I finish with this as a lesson: Bullying can change people, even those you aren't bullying. Don't take advantage of those who keep quiet about everything. They will eventually break, like me.

Court adjourned.

I've been pushed to my limit around 5 times. It wasn't from people taking advantage of my niceness. It was more tied into being fed up with bullies.

Because I normally have a massive amount of self-control and I was always calm and quiet, everyone knew something was up. Time and detentions heal all

BNuge :  "Time and detentions"?  LOL!

What do you describe, BNuge, as being pushed to the edge?  To me, being pushed to the 'edge' is quite extreme, so I was wondering why you said it's happened five times.

Then again, I'm also a very mild person.

Singelli :

Two of them involved me (as a quiet highschooler) screaming at someone in the middle of class. They got detentions because of how much they harassed me. The principal knew the kind of person I was, so I had him on my side.

One involved some level of anger towards a teacher (nothing more). I don't remember that one. I only have nice memories of that teacher.

One I actually barely maintained control after someone basically trashed my best friend in every way they could think of.

I forget what the last one was, but I remember having that tally.

Oh yeah, multiple times. i don't have anger issues it just there are some bad people out there who just like pushing people around,

Let see i have this i call ''My big episode'', in when each 2 or 3 years i just go to cry, because something just don't have sense anymore, i don't want to live or i feel that life is just too unjust and no matter what i try it won't work or something like that.

The last time, was that my parents, wanted answers why my college notes have been dropped, so low, that i been seeing the same class multiples periods. The don't like the words no, can't, no matter how i try i can't pass, and i hate this profession and only got it because you were pressing me to do it. So well i snapped, hit my dad hard, and cried, for two days. Because well i don't cry except when i have this episodes. It make me mad, that the only way they could listen to my opinion of my life was when i was a crying mess in the floor.

And of course i act, sometimes that i got angry because well, people think that they can bully me, well the thinking that way ages ago, and thanks to my strategy they feel, like i'm an douche or something, but really, i prefer to do appearances, to have this people bullying me.

Of course, some of them don't learn the lesson, and then i got really angry. Let just say that a good comparation of my state of anger will be 'I HULKED OUT!' yep, i go like hulk, and well thinks don't go nice. The last time around 30 people have to grave me to stop me. Although i never have hurt anyone in that hulk state, they just piss their pants when they see me that angry. Weirdos.

Well to the answer, yeah i been pushed to the edge to my moral, sometimes, but hey i come back and learn sometimes, to life, if you are a nice guy be strong is a path for only the good willed, and the strongest in mind and body.

BNuge : I can relate to that… When I was in school there were several classes where people would just raise a ruckus and it made it very difficult to pay attention to anything involving lessons or listening to anything. I remember one time that it got so bad that the teacher had to call in an administrator to try and calm everyone down.

I don’t remember much about my teen years but that is one thing I do remember. One thing that I didn’t miss when I dropped out was everyone raising a ruckus. It’s irritating just thinking about it. I’m glad that at least now I have control over it with whomever I interact with from that period of my life now of days. I do anything I can to avoid meeting up with most of them and definitely stay as far away from any nasty back and forth that can happen online, especially on social networking sites.

Although I am on social media for business reasons I have gotten into a habit of going invisible while on social media. Part of that is because I have been sporadic with my writing since the summer and because I have had computer problems since then on and off, I have just gotten in the habit of just checking my messages and only updating statuses when I need to. It’s not that I don’t want to be accessible or polite but I am just a reclusive person and sometimes I don’t want to be bothered.

To be honest I probably spend more time just reading and answering stuff on Vizzed than I do on social media. I will also admit that if I didn’t need to for business reasons I wouldn’t likely be on social media. One of the reasons why I’ve been able to avoid much of the negativity attached to it is because I micro-manage my pages and just keep it business oriented.

Far as those people I still keep contact with… I am polite and civil but I keep them for the most part at arm’s length. My way of thinking is it’s been a really, really long time since I’ve seen any of these people much less heard from them and with the exception of very few they haven’t been in my life and, although this may sound a bit cold; from my perspective it’s like “Well, what do you know? They know me, they want to be friends now, where were they when I needed friends?” It’s not that I don’t need or want friends now but it is something that is in the back of my mind. I kind of disappeared without actually going anywhere after I dropped out. I needed to get myself straightened out and for the most part it feels like either I was forgotten or, simply they just looked at me as an after-thought. So much has happened in my life since then so it just kind of feels like, well these people had their lives and their good high school memories, I didn’t. I more or less moved on. So although I try and be polite I prefer to keep things at a distance. I don’t hold any anger toward anyone though. I did for years but I’m passed that now. It’s not worth it to be angry at people who you probably will never see again face to face. Least that’s how I feel about it. It’s been almost fourteen years since I first left school. I would be very surprised if I were convinced to meet up with most of them.


I’m sure there are more than a few who feel the same way about me. I was no saint back then and freely admit it. I never tried to bully anyone though. There’s a lot I kick myself for and am angry at myself for about my teen years, thankfully being a bully wasn’t one of them.

I guess it's time to share my story... sort of.

I've always... been kind of emotional. Well up until I was about 17 or so.

For the longest time, I was pretty much neglected by my family. I was primarily raised by my grandmother as a child, because my mother didn't really care a ton for me. By the time she really wanted kids, and wanted to be a mother, my brother and sister were born, and put all her effort into them. So I was fine to have my grandmother's attention. Because after all, I was a young kid, and young kids need attention to foster their growth.

It was all good. In fact, you could argue I was the best of the three. Then something happened later on.

Around the time I was in 7th grade, we moved.

We, as in my mother, step dad (who was the polar opposite of me), brother, sister and myself. Grandmother stayed behind to live in NH, where she liked living. She wouldn't have had the option to move if she wanted, unless she sold the house and found a separate house.

Because we were moving in with my step dad's grandmother.

My step dad and I didn't really get along either. Remember the child thing above, where I said my mother never paid attention to me? In her case, it was understandable in a way because my mother may not have realized I was being ignored, since I had my grandmother. My step father just didn't care as much, since I was older than the other two, and far less impressionable. As a result, he really favored them.

Now without my grandmother, who was basically my mother at that point, I started to fall into a depression I'm still more or less kicking out of. This led to me being all alone in a state I knew nothing about. I had trouble making friends at school, I wasn't allowed to do sports until high school, and my summer was dominated by doing a lot of work for the family that always seemed to forgot I existed... that is until there was work to do.

In essence, I was just a packmule for the entire family to beat up on.

It was about this time I lost my faith in Christ. At the time, it was more of an anger reaction, more than based on the logical fallacies I point out to this day. I felt alone. Abandoned. I contemplated suicide on a nearly daily basis. And no one ever listened to me. I was 13, and I was already on the edge.

Of course, I stayed strong, otherwise, I wouldn't be here today.

But how did I stay strong? That's something not even I know. I wasn't particularly liked by anyone, and my family continued to neglect me unless there was work to be done around the house, which was basically how I earned my keep (I also had to do more than my brother and sister). I had no problem with work, but I never really felt appreciated for it. In fact, more often than not, I was continually put down for poor performance, which made me even more depressed, and in turn, hurt my performance further.

This continued for a half year or so.

It was mid December, and I found out we were moving again. This time to our own house. We were switching towns, which meant, once again switching schools, and having to start all over.

Usually, making friends in a new place isn't as bad as you'd think, but once you hit high school... it's hard. Clicques are already established, and almost no one wanted to be around me. I was once again alone, and the thoughts of suicide returned. And again, nobody cared. I kept trying to get attention. Even if it was negative. I just wanted someone to notice me.

So I acted out in class at times. I got kicked out of class about 7 times in a half year. I had several chats with teachers, and I could tell they were disappointed. But I lacked the balls to break down and tell them what the hell was going on. I just didn't have any desire to make things stickier than they were. And I figured by ignoring the problem, I would eventually get through.

The summer came and went, and it became clear we were staying in this town for at least the rest of the kid's school lives, which meant the rest of mine as well.

I embrace this. For the first time in my life, I had a sense of solidarity. I was finally going to be allowed to stay in one place for longer than 4 years. I was finally going to feel comfortable in my surroundings knowing a move wasn't coming.

Then, some more good news came.

They were talking about consolidating school districts, which meant I would have the option to go back to my old school. I hated the school I was in. It was huge and clustered, and there was no sense of individualism. In short, it was the worst place for someone like me, who needed to be noticed by someone. Anyone.

I switch school systems for the final time, and I start my junior year back at the place I was a freshman.

For a short while, things are great. People actually pay attention to me for a couple days. They say things like, "This place was so different without you around." and "Where'd you go? You kind of disappeared for a little bit."

I felt like I belonged. People noticed I was gone. I was happy.

Then people reverted back to not noticing me. So I kind of start acting out again. This time, the results were less satisfactory. I got detentions, and my parents were not pleased. The one time they choose to pay attention, and it's to discipline me. Figures.

Around this time, I decide my only chance of ever getting acknowledged was to be good at something athletic. After all, everyone loves jocks. So I spend all my free time in the summer following my junior year running. Every day, with my motivation being to be noticed. I was running on pure desperation and sadness. I felt like I needed this like my life depended on it. Thoughts of suicide come back yet again.

Finally, the culmination of everything. It all snapped in the senior year of high school.

I started the year on the team, and had a pretty mediocre start. Nothing special. All that hard work, and I was basically the same. It had me wondering if I just wasted my time. All this time, suicide is still on the forefront of my mind.

Then I finally do something I've never done before.

I spill my guts to someone.

And the funny thing is, he listened. We had a bro-hug, and he told me he'd support me the entire way, and that things would be great. And I believed him. It's easier to believe in others than it is to believe in yourself. So something changes to my personality.

And I'm not sure it was for the better.

I got cocky, and loose, and did weird things. Because I no longer cared what anyone thought of me. Someone ackowledged my existance, and made me feel like my problems were real, and my fears were too. I was a total goofball, and I actually gained a few fans on the cross country team. The age of Jake Kostik had finally begun. The guy who I spilled my guts too though felt a little put off, and that I was just goofing off for the sake of it.

So he pantsed me during practice.

This was f***ing embarassing. I felt betrayed for the first time (since I'd never let anyone get close enough to betray me in the past).

As a result, I pulled up my pants, and speared him to the ground before he knew what hit him. That was the breaking point. I finally snapped. Everything up to that point was expected, so I tolerated it.

This however, was the one thing I never expected. I was outraged. I got angry like I've never been before or since.

He was leveled, lost his captain status, and kind of looked like an a**h*** to a lot of people.

I then went out on our practice, and leveled the rest of the team in our out and back. For those not in the running field, that's just an exercise where you run out for a certain amount of time, and then turn around, and try to beat your pace back.

In 20 minutes, I ran about 3.4 miles. Which is about 5:52 minute mile. Before that day, the best I did for 3+ miles was 7:30.

I ran on anger, and crushed my best time by over a minute out of nowhere.

I got the respect I deserved, and ended up being the third varsity runner that season.

That's how I handled being pushed to the edge.

By hauling ass, and running like my life depended on it.

Funny thing is, it might have.