Hi, besties. Welcome to or welcome back to Turnout to Care. If you're new here, hello, my name is Ashley. I post an episode

every single Monday. It's like a little therapy session for me and you. I have a lot of thoughts.

I have a lot of emotions. And it's not good for me to keep them bottled up. So why not share them all

with you? So obviously it's the new year and I wanted to go

into the new year with a fresh start, letting go of anything that does not serve me or in this case,

anyone that does not serve me. And I thought I did exactly that, but naturally I go to Boston

this past week with my best friend Lauren and a friend who

had ghosted us and if I'm being really honest here just wasn't the best friend to us decided to send

us a lengthy text on Lauren's birthday I'll add not only explaining why she ghosted us, but almost flipping

the script and making it seem as if we did something wrong. And normally I would let someone have that.

Like I don't think it's always necessary to tell us out of the story, especially when you know you

did nothing wrong and you know you tried your best to be a good person or

to be a good friend. There's times where you're going to be the villain in someone's story

and there's nothing you can do about it. But what rub me the wrong way with this situation

and what kind of inspired me to want to record today's episode is my emotions and my hurt in particular

was weaponized against me. My reaction to how someone did me wrong was used to characterize

me as a mean girl. And it's not that I care that this person thinks that I'm a

mean girl because I know I'm not and I know I'm not because I was a mean girl at one point in my life.

If you've listened to this podcast, you've probably heard me talk about how I was always the nicest

girl in middle school or in high school.

There were times that I was insecure and I projected my insecurities on to other girls.

And I was just a bitch.

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