When our daughters were young, friends with grown children confidently remarked that while boys were hard work while young, girls would provide an entirely different challenge in the years ahead.
Boy were they right. But also wrong in so many ways.
It’s not really about girls at all - it’s more about the kinds of people that are attracted to those that are vulnerable - the kinds of people that see opportunities to pursue, influence, manipulate, control, exploit, and abuse.
I’m being deliberately vague.
We’ve hardly slept this week.
By turns the last few days have been stressful, worrying, depressing… and strangely educational - not just about human nature, but also about the ways some people set out to influence, distance, and deconstruct friendships and relationships.
Thankfully we have a professional web developer in our house that knows his way around most of the social networks - mostly because he was either there when they launched, or he’s picked them to pieces to figure out how they work. He’s also perhaps the most cynical and least easily impressed person he knows. Sometimes those traits are beneficial.
We’re not out of the hole yet. That’s going to take some time. We’re starting the climb out though - and that’s something. Sometimes even the smallest steps forward are worth holding on to.