what do you think of regifting?

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I just wrote a very personal article on another site and I will share it here. you can on this site say if you think regifting is okay or not, here is my article Some of you may not agree with this article, and that is fine, just don’t tell me, I am upset enough as it is. So let me start from the beginning. Many of you know that gather gift certificates are useless to internationals; Only Americans can redeem them. But I am from Canada, and like other internationals here on gather we work, we participate, we write our articles, and we do it because we have made some very good friends here on this site and we love them. I have been a member of gather for two years. I had accumulated close to 30,000 useless points. Many of you know that I live well below the poverty line and I am on disability currently. It goes without saying that I could really use those points but I can’t. I have many friends that have helped me out financially as the years went by, some are from gather, some are from Storytime Tapestry my e-zine. Without them I would be a street person and I am not exaggerating one bit. Until recently I have been concentrating upon “big bad gather admin” and the injustice of not having a system set up where I could use my gift certificates like Americans can. After all I earned them! One certain friend that I have that I met from yet another site has helped me out a lot over the years. That I thank her for from the bottom of my heart; but it always bothered me that I could never do anything for her other than be there for her through emails. Like most emails friends she lives far away. She does live in the states though. Then one night a light bulb went off in my head. I could use my gather points for some good. Even though I couldn’t use them myself I could give them to people that I love that live in the states. I automatically thought of this friend, I wanted to give her something back. No not in the sense of paying her back, but just giving her something. It made my heart feel good that I could do this for her. It made me feel good that I could give to another human being again because this has always been my nature. Knowing that she gives everything away I told her how important this way to me to GIVE HER SOMETHING., and I asked her to promise that she would not give the gift certificates to anyone else, this had to be for her. She agreed. She thanked me, she was happy and I was happier. It made me feel good that I could give her something. The night that I offered them she was feeling really down and I had made her feel better by doing this for her; so she said. So we were both happy. Today she tells me she wants to give it away to someone else. She just does not get it. First of all she is breaking her promise to me that she would use it for herself, And second she is regifting, It is like saying to me your give is not important enough for me to keep it I will give it away. I told her she is taking all the joy out of it for me. It was very important to me that I gave that gift to her. I could have given those gift cards to any number of people but I wanted her to have them. She told me she was not taking the joy out of it, how does she know, is she me? She is also returning them to me now. She has no capacity to understand she is ripping my heart apart by doing that. But now I understand why nobody gives her anything, because they already know she will just take their gift and give it to somebody else. Regifting hurts to the person who put her heart and soul into the gift. Many of my friends have also felt the same way as me when their gift so lovingly given was tossed aside or given to somebody else. We may not always get gift we like or can use, but please don’t be so callous as to just give it to somebody else. Earnestly try to find a use for it especially when it is a gift certificate and you can buy whatever you want with it. Yes, you are doing something nice for the person you are giving to, but you are hurting the person who loved you so much to give it to you in the first place. Especially when they asked you promise you would not give it away.