On Tuesday night I quit my playgroup. I'm sure everyone there thinks it's because of the election. What they don't realize is that the election and the political disagreements on the board for the group was just the icing on my departure cake. It was something I had toyed with for a very long time.

I tried to ignore things that were said that went against my core principles. At first I excused my staying with "I'm trying to be accepting of all people" or "That isn't how I feel, and they are allowed to say what they want". Yet I was leaving each meetup increasingly more uncomfortable when things were said like soy makes men gay, or that depression isn't "real", or the time the hostess was telling us a story about getting into a shouting match with a teenaged boy at the gas station and repeatedly called him the N word and laughed through the whole thing, and then finished the story with "I would NEVER use that word normally" Hmm just when a CHILD pisses you off. Gotcha. Or most recently calling an austic woman a retard when she made a ball call at a childs football game.

Ultimately though my loneliness won over my head. I LIKED being a part of a group. Mostly it was a good time. When the conversations stayed light and banal, I was able to push my uneasy feelings to the side. Near the end, there always seem to be those people that got soap box preachy when something would come up in normal conversation. It would be all finger waving and neck rolling about something they believed in, making the rest of the room feel uncomfortable and squirmy while they preached. Not even politcal stuff, just STUFF. I constantly felt like someone was trying to convince me to "switch sides" almost. I realized in my state of trying to be accepting of their ideals, they weren't being accepting of mine at all.

I knew I had to leave when Aislinn overheard me talking to Tony about what happened at a playgroup, where someone went all soap boxy. She said "Wow, that person seems all nice on the outside, but she seems not so nice on the inside. Why are you her friend?" I realized that she was right. How many times have I told Aislinn I would rather be lonely than be in a miserable friendship when she has come to me heartbroken over a tiff she's had with her friend? Yet, here I was taking crap from people just to get out of the house?

So, I left. I left right when Obama won the presidency.

Yes we can. Yes! I did!