NOTE: On a total sidebar, the AI options for title (not so good) and picture (kinda sweet) are new to me and offer some great options.

This is not the blog post I thought I’d write today, but sometimes, the writing spirit moves in strange ways!

Yesterday, a friend of mine posted on social media about their new shirt from a friend who is a printer. Cool. What did the shirt say? “Protect our girls. Keep boys out of girls sports.” The punctuation error alone drives me nuts.

What you believe is your own business, but in doing just a 30-second Google search, I came across this statistic from The Hill, a reputable source. In their article, they quote the president of the NCAA as saying there are 510,000 NCAA athletes with “less than 10” being considered transgender. Me being the math person I am, I divided the number of transgender athletes into the total number of NCAA athletes and came up with 0.00002% of the athletes in the NCAA being transgender. We won’t even go into the transgender mental health issues. But they don’t consider that. “Their quote to a friend: Sometimes friends disagree.” *sigh*

Of course, I could be wrong. The point is, there are very few. For this person, this kind of wedge issue in public speaks to where we are as a society. It’s a distraction away from the fact things are going on in this country that have NEVER happened before.

Several friends have shown colors I didn’t know they had about immigration, the poor, and public education. This started on election night in 2016 and has continued over the last nine years. I posted last night on TikTok that those friends were welcomed into my life during certain stages, but at this point, they are not anymore, and that’s ok.

We outgrow friendships and it’s ok to grieve that they are gone. But it’s also ok to allow that to happen because other friendships/relationships have grown to take their place. I feel a closeness and trust with the people I allow in now that those from my past could not understand, and again, that’s ok.

I feel sadness about those friends. I grew up thinking some of those bonds were unbreakable and yet, here we are. When those true colors come out, it’s ok to question yourself but don’t beat yourself up. Sometimes, people change. I know I have and those changes have turned people off me.

But, it’s ok to allow yourself that grace to feel bad, then move forward because we all deserve better. As I’ve been writing this piece, I feel like a weight has been lifted. I have a very small circle, but I also know they care about me and I care about them. I’m old and refuse to allow people in who’d take away my energy.

So, go live your life as you see fit. Everyone has their opinions and I don’t expect to change yours. But when you show those true colors, don’t expect to see my energy in your life.

This got rambly, so if you made it to the end, thank you for reading. As I said, it wasn’t the blog I’d expected to write today, but the blog I needed all the same.