Many of us are unfriending Trump enthusiasts on Facebook. Here is one more story about that, one more shining of the light of personal truth, among our many lights.

Last night on Facebook I took the seemingly easy step of unfriending somebody because of a Trumplodyte post she’d made. It was my first time to unfriend for this. Afterward I had to figure out why that post triggered me, when there have been so many others that were offensive, from so many other people, which I just scrolled on out of sight. Also I stopped to think what this might mean in my future: Unfriending this person and others as time goes on.

What my ex-friend had done was repost a snide piece about Rosie O’Donnell. It sneered and cheered because Rosie said she will leave the US instead of living in the Trump regime. The post was in the class of butt-ugly and dumbass. I typed a brief comment saying I didn’t want to see this kind of person-directed hatred on my feed and that I was unfriending. Period. I did not say, “I’m sorry but… .”  Then I moved to the Friends section and did the click that severed the tie.

Does an unfriending on Facebook necessarily signify an overall unfriending of the person? For me it does. I am pretty much all-of-a-piece, I think is right to say.

This ex-friend had been in my life, about halfway out from ground zero, for 40 years. From day one we had innately liked each other. We were in-laws in the past, and our mild fondness continued after the family relationship ended; well, not completely ended because there are secondary ties, the other people we each relate to and are literally related to, who are important to both of us.  I will need to take into account that those people may sooner or later become aware I cut this tie, and that that may be awkward for them. They may even feel they must choose sides, although I will not make it so.

So this was not just some ole’ somebody I clicked out of my life. And she was someone I’d never have guessed would post hateful messages on Facebook. Which says something about my cockeyed optimism, or whatever this trusting thing is I was born with that leads me every time to assume a person is whole and wholesome simply because they are fun and have not yet done anything to hurt me.

It was not even my ex-friend’s own post, it was a repost, and that is a part of what I refused to tolerate. She’d just gleefully jumped into somebody else’s mud puddle with them and started slinging. If she had been acting under the stimulus of her own thoughts, and had said what they were, I would probably have kept her in my life. I now sorrowfully realize that she does not do original thinking; and because of that, I know better than to trust her. I know it would not stop with Rosie. She would stand together with them while they burned me at the stake or sent me to the ovens for being a witch, or a dyke, or a heretic, or an “anti-American,” or for “treason,” or whatever they came up with.  She would not believe this if I said it to her, but it’s true.

So. Reality. That’s that. I’m going on as a somewhat changed person.

Beware. Beware.